Terms of service

Who you are agreeing with

routess is operated by Robbe Verhelst, Buisstraat 45, 2890 Sint-Amands, Belgium (enterprise number BE 1024.261.897). By creating an account or using the service you accept these terms. If you do not, please do not use it.

Questions about these terms go to [email protected]. Privacy questions are answered in the privacy policy and at [email protected].

What routess is

routess is a route planner for cyclists, runners and hikers. It is free to use. We may add, change or remove features, and we may introduce paid plans in future, but we will not start charging for something you already have without telling you first.

Your account

You need an account to save routes. You must be at least 16 years old, give an email address that reaches you, and keep your credentials to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us promptly if you think someone else has access, and revoke the session from your settings.

One person, one account. Do not impersonate somebody else, and do not pick a handle designed to make people think you are someone you are not.

Acceptable use

Use routess for planning routes. Do not:

• Upload content that is unlawful, harassing, hateful, or infringes somebody's rights
• Publish routes or descriptions that reveal another person's home or movements without their agreement
• Scrape, crawl or bulk-download other users' content, or use the API to build a mirror of it
• Attempt to break, overload, or gain unauthorised access to the service or anyone's account
• Circumvent rate limits, or use automation that degrades the service for other people

The public API is there to be used. Use it at a sane rate, identify your client honestly, and do not route it around the limits we publish.

Your routes stay yours

You keep every right you have in the routes, names, descriptions and other content you create. We claim no ownership.

You give us the limited permission we need to run the service: to store your content, back it up, and display it to you. If you mark a route unlisted or public, that permission extends to showing it to the people you have chosen to show it to, including on public pages and in Discover. Set a route back to private and that extension ends, other than copies already cached elsewhere on the internet.

You confirm you have the right to upload what you upload, including any GPX file you import from another service.

Map and routing data

Routing, elevation and the node networks are derived from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence. Map tiles, search and terrain come from Mapbox and are subject to Mapbox's own terms. If you export or republish data derived from OpenStreetMap, the ODbL attribution and share-alike conditions travel with it.

Routes are suggestions, not instructions

This is the part that actually matters. A generated or planned route is a suggestion computed from map data that can be incomplete, outdated or simply wrong. It does not know about roadworks, a washed-out bridge, a private gate, a seasonal closure, traffic, weather, or whether a path is sensible for you on the day.

You are responsible for your own safety and for obeying the law where you are riding, running or walking. Judge the road in front of you over the line on the screen. Surface classifications, distances, elevation figures and turn-by-turn cues are estimates. Do not rely on routess where being wrong would be dangerous.

Availability

routess is provided as-is and as-available, without warranties of any kind. It is a free service run by a small operation. We do not promise a particular uptime, and we may take it down for maintenance, or permanently, though we would give notice and time to export before shutting the hosted service down.

Keep your own copies of anything you cannot afford to lose. The export in your settings gives you every route as GPX plus your full account as JSON, and it is the reason self-hosting exists.

Ending things

You can delete your account at any time from your settings. Deletion has a 30-day grace window, after which it is permanent and we cannot recover your routes.

We may suspend or terminate an account that breaks these terms, or that we are legally required to remove. Except where the breach is serious or ongoing, we will tell you why and give you a chance to export your data first.

Liability

To the maximum extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost data, lost profits, or anything arising from your reliance on a route. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

If you are a consumer in the European Union, you keep every mandatory statutory right you have. Nothing in these terms takes those away.

Changes to these terms

We update the date at the top when these terms change. For material changes we will notify account holders by email at least 30 days beforehand, and continuing to use routess after that counts as acceptance. If you disagree, delete your account and export your data.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of Belgium, and disputes go to the courts with jurisdiction there. If you are a consumer, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory law of the country you live in, nor of the right to bring proceedings there.