Navigation app for scenic drives with tappable saved places
Problem
Drivers who enjoy the journey itself have no navigation app built for them: Google Maps and Waze optimize purely for speed, routing them onto interstates, and niche apps like Kurviger get scenic routing right but don't allow adding waypoints during active navigation. People who want to explore 'blue roads' (scenic two-lane highways and backroads) end up fighting their tools the entire trip.
Opportunity
A navigation app that prefers scenic backroads over fastest routes, keeps saved places always visible so they can be tapped and added as mid-route waypoints without ending navigation, and shows an always-on speedometer — a 'journey-first' alternative to Google Maps for road-trippers and motorcyclists.
Market analysis
Real gap voiced by a passionate niche (mid-navigation waypoints + scenic routing + always-on speedo in one app), but the segment is served by several well-entrenched freemium competitors that each nail part of the pitch. Viable for a solo builder only as a sharp, journey-first wedge, not a general Maps replacement.
Market · Motorcyclists and road-trip drivers; concentrated, reachable communities (subreddits, REVER's 14k+ Play Store ratings) with proven loyalty to niche routing apps.
Pricing · Freemium subscriptions are the norm: Kurviger Tourer Plus ~EUR 30/yr, Roadtrippers $35.99-$59.99/yr, Calimoto/Scenic Premium tiers. Modest but proven willingness to pay.
Pros
- + Specific, verifiable feature gap confirmed by the requester against named competitors.
- + Niche audience is concentrated and reachable through motorcycle/road-trip communities.
- + Proven subscription willingness-to-pay in the segment.
Cons
- − Crowded field: Kurviger, Calimoto, REVER, Scenic and Roadtrippers all cover parts of the pitch.
- − Curvy-road routing engines take years to tune and are map-data dependent (Kurviger is weak outside Europe).
- − Commercial map licensing (Mapbox/HERE) at consumer subscription prices squeezes solo-builder margins.
- − The waypoint-during-navigation gap is incremental; incumbents could ship it in a sprint.
Existing / similar tools
- → Kurviger ↗
- → Roadtrippers ↗
- → Calimoto
- → REVER
- → Scenic
Source
r/SomebodyMakeThis (Reddit)
The hard part is not the UI, it is the routing engine. Curvy-road routing requires either licensed map data with custom cost functions or your own penalty weights on OpenStreetMap, and Kurviger’s weakness outside Europe shows how data-dependent that quality is. The “add waypoint mid-navigation” gap is real but incremental, so the defensible play is being journey-first end to end (saved places, always-on speedo, route library) rather than winning on a single feature an incumbent can copy in a sprint. Map licensing costs at consumer-subscription prices are the quiet margin killer a solo builder must solve before anything else.