AllTrails Launches AI-Powered 'Peak' Membership with Smart Routes and Enhanced Features

AllTrails debuts $80/year membership that includes AI-powered smart routes | TechCrunch

AllTrails, the hiking and biking companion that was named 2023's iPhone App of the Year, is launching a new premium membership called "Peak" that includes an upgraded feature set. This $80-per-year subscription will introduce AI tools to build custom routes, real-time trail condition forecasts, trail traffic heatmaps, and a feature that lets you identify trees and plants using your phone's camera. The new option will initially roll out in the next few weeks to select members and will be available globally to all users by June. AllTrails users can sign up for early access on its website. A longtime popular app for outdoor enthusiasts, AllTrails raised a growth round of $150 million in 2021 when the COVID pandemic saw people rekindling their relationship with nature amid lockdowns and social distancing measures. Unfortunately for the company, Apple entered AllTrails' market just ahead of naming it App of the Year by adding support for topographic maps with trailheads, contour lines, hill shading, elevation gains, and more in Apple Maps in the U.S. The following year, Apple encroached even further, with features like offline maps, custom routes, and tools to explore national parks and other trails outside the U.S. AllTrails' latest update, then, can be seen as the company fighting back with a selection of features targeted at its most engaged and most active members. The new AI-powered feature in the Peak membership, for instance, lets users build their ideal trail either by starting from scratch or customizing existing trails. Smart-routing functionality uses AI to change a trail by making it shorter, less steep, or even "more scenic," among other things. The new trail conditions forecast will provide information about the temperature, precipitation, snow depth, and more, essentially putting a weather app inside AllTrails. There are also alerts for things like air quality and mosquito activity. A later update will add terrain and ground conditions, like pavement, gravel, or mud. The added heatmap option can help hikers and bikers who hate getting stuck on crowded trails, as well as those who prefer a crowd for safety purposes, like when hiking alone. To work, the app's access to millions of users' activity provides it with traffic data to make estimates, similar to how Google Maps uses data to predict when a store, restaurant, bar, or other venue is the most "busy." This summer, Peak members will also gain access to an Outdoor Lens feature, which lets them instantly identify a tree, plant, or flower and log it in the app. Over time, more identification features will be added to the Lens, the company notes. In addition to Peak's launch, AllTrails is rolling out updates to its Base and Plus memberships. Base is the company's free offering with trail maps, community reviews, and navigation, while Plus adds offline access, wrong-turn alerts, 3D trail previews, and live trail activity sharing Both will receive a feature called Points of Interest, which adds more than 500,000 mapped viewpoints, landmarks, and trail amenities to the app. Plus subscribers, meanwhile, will also gain a feature called Offline Area, which lets them download a customized area for offline exploration that includes high-resolution maps and other details.

AllTrails is the latest app with an AI-powered subscription tier - but it looks way more useful than the genAI from Garmin and Strava

Peak comes with a raft of AI tools including Community Heatmaps, Trail Conditions and Outdoor lens Another day, another premium AI-powered subscription tier added to one of the best fitness apps. Following hot on the heels of Garmin, Strava, Polar, and Whoop, AllTrails has announced its latest subscription tier, Peak, which comes with a bunch of cool-looking AI tools. AllTrails Peak, the new, most expensive membership tier at $79.99 / £79.99 (around AU$125 for Australian readers), includes everything from AllTrails Plus and the app's free tier Base, and adds a series of AI tools: AllTrails Peak's AI-powered features seem very comprehensive. However, the price hike (no pun intended) is significant, as AllTrails Plus costs just $35.99 / £35.99 per year (around AU$56). In our AllTrails review, we said the premium tier was worth it only for regular hikers, so the increase is likely to only be truly worthwhile for power users. Base subscribers get access to a new Points of Interest feature to help users explore along the trail, and Plus subscribers also get Offline Areas, a feature allowing users to download a map of a large area and access all the trails within that map. Once heralded as Apple's iPhone app of the year, AllTrails' most premium tier is expensive enough that only very frequent recreational hikers and those who spend a lot of time outdoors will be tempted. A $45 / £45 price hike is not a small increase, especially when you're paying annually in a single lump sum. However, dividing that price over 12 months leaves you with $6.66 / £6.66 a month, which isn't a dissimilar price point to Garmin Connect+ ($6.99 / £6.99) or Strava Premium ($11.99 / £8.99). For that price, you're getting (what seems to be) a very comprehensive set of AI-powered tools, ones that go far beyond those services' paragraphs of advice created by generative AI. Garmin, in particular, has been lambasted for the apparent design laziness in the AI features on its paid tier. As an AllTrails user, I'm particularly excited to try the Trail Conditions and Outdoor Lens features, although I'd be unlikely to spring for the full subscription. As someone who's excited by (and largely clueless about) different plants and trees, it would be nice to have a tool I can use on the trail that will help me identify certain species. Besides, as someone who lives in the UK, where the threat of rain is never far away, the Trail Conditions would allow me to time my hikes to ensure a minimal chance of downpours. Plus, it would improve my chances of packing the right shoes!