Route Difficulty

Strava estimates the difficulty levels for hiking, walking, or running routes as Easy, Moderate, or Hard. Mountain biking and gravel ride routes can be categorized as Easy, Moderate, Hard, or Extreme. Route difficulty is unavailable for the regular cycling sport type.

We calculate route difficulty based on attributes like distance, elevation, and aggregated community completion time. Routes are assigned an overall difficulty level but you can also view how the difficulty level may vary along the route from the details page.

Overall Difficulty Level

• The overall difficulty level can be seen on the Maps tab from the Strava mobile app for both generated community and Saved routes. An Easy, Moderate, Hard, or Extreme designation can be seen just below the route name.
• On the Strava website click on either Maps from the top navigation bar or Dashboard > My Routes, to access your saved routes. Click on the route details page to view the difficulty level below the save and edit options.

Difficulty Along the Route (Mobile-Only)

• Tap on any generated community or Saved route of the qualifying sports types and scroll down to the “Terrain” section. Swipe to the difficulty map to see the route’s polyline displayed as a gradient of color based on the difficulty. Easier sections will be green, moderate sections will be blue, and hard sections will be black.

Please be aware that route difficulty is unavailable for the ride sport type.