I hope I can state my confusion so you aren’t confused also. 

We are currently touring. I’ve used RWPGS exclusively for years. I’ve noticed that their elevation numbers are generous, and gone on with my day. 

After a spectacular hike a bike routing fail (route said all paved, but the road was dirt), I’ve finally agreed with Jacinto to try a new app. We’ve mostly been using Komoot, as a result. 

But I had already created route maps for this trip with RWGPS, so I’ve been comparing. It’s interesting how their suggested route often varies wildly.  I will leave that statement to ere as observation, but the actual question is in elevation gain,  it concerning the roads the route takes. 

It doesn’t seem to matter which day I am working on, here is my process. We create the route in Komoot, it goes to my Coros Dura GPS, which automatically sends it to RWPGS, where I track my mileage. 

It seems to me that the numbers should stay the same. The route is created. The route info is just being shared. Yet, on a daily basis, as the info moves from one app to another, the elevation numbers inflate. 

Example - a potential route for today is a climbing route between Enbrum and Briancon, France. Created in Komoot, it has 3,300 feet of climbing.  By the time it is transferred to RWGPS, it has 4,600 elevation gain. The daily examples aren’t usually that extreme, but today’s example is enough difference to make me finally ask the question. 

I am sharing the route, not recreating it, where there could possibly be human error. So why aren’t t the numbers the same?

I can’t go back and edit that post. I’m on my phone and have fat fingers. The exact Komoot numbers are 2,325 elevation gain. Coros has 2,083. RWGPS has 3,578. 

Again noting that this is the exact same route shared through the apps, not that I recreated in each app. 

I shouldn’t dream about things all night and then post about them before I put my glasses on! My 3,500 foot RWGPS route is the climbing route. Somewhere in there we got a 4,600 climbing.

suffice to say my exact examples are bad, but the basic question is correct. Why don’t the numbers stay the same as they move through the different apps?

I don't know this definitively, but I don't think the actual elevation gain is embedded in the route file. I think it just has the actual elevation for various waypoints, and then the app calculates the gain from that, and all the apps do their math somewhat differently. I always record my rides with my Garmin, which then automatically syncs with both Strava and RidewithGPS. When I look at the ride afterwards on all three apps, they all show different elevation gains, sometimes significantly different. 

As I understand it, the programs calculate cumulative elevation gain by estimating the elevation at points a certain distance apart along the route, calculate the difference between adjacent points, and add them up. So if RWGPS estimates elevation every 100 feet, and Komoot estimates elevation every 500 feet, RWGPS will "see" more little ups and downs, and give a higher cumulative total. I don't know if that's the main reason for the discrepancy, but it might be part of it.  

The mountains have always been there and cyclists have ridden up or pushed their bikes without the benefit of technology other than contour maps. 

Does it really matter how many metres you have climbed in the day?

Mike

I have physical limits. Some people can do anything. I can’t. It does matter to me how many feet elevation I need to climb in a day. When I was younger, that number was larger. Surprise big days were just a surprise. Now I need to pace myself. The goal is to finish each day in good enough condition to do it again the next day. 

Henry,

That makes perfect sense, now that someone in the know explained it to me. Thank you!

Kelly

Bob,

We have the same experience with different numbers. Jacinto and I can record the exact same ride, on the same app, and get different numbers. It's a little game we play every day, which of us climbed the most. Even though in reality we climbed exactly the same!

Kelly

I think also that Komoot may rely more heavily on user data, while RWGPS seems to use some kind of land surface data that doesn’t account for roads passing through tunnels. This is why, imo, Komoot is inferior in Canada (I’ve never used it but that’s how it seems when I’ve looked) and my RWGPS routes almost always indicate far more elevation gain than recorded by my Garmin when I ride them.  I think bike GPS devices use atmospheric pressure to determine elevation change but this may be adjusted when the data is uploaded to a site like Strava (and perhaps Garmin or RWGPS). 

Then there’s the weird fact that two people riding the same route at essentially the same time and using the same model of device can get different elevation data.