Different distances for same .gpx routeFORUMS HOME SEARCH FORUMS

Hi

I had not used Plotaroute for some time but to-day I wanted to plot the Ronde van Vlaanderen route. Plotaroute is a great tool for this thanks to its very useful features. 

Plotaroute showed a distance of 275,8 km ; I downloaded the .gpx file on another tool (RidewithGPS) which showed a length of 277,5 km (race website announces 277,4 km). 

When I was a frequent user of both sites, both showed exactly the same length for any .gpx file that I downloaded.

Wondering what happened. 

Hi Laurent,

Could you send me a link to the route or the GPX via the help desk?

This way I can take a look and report this to the devs if this is a bug.

Thanks,
Julien

Hi Julien

Thank you for your answer ; further to your request, I sent a .gpx file to your helpdesk - not the file I mentioned in my question but a lighter one, with which I get the same discrepancy : 152,8 km on RwGPS and 150,699 km on Plotaroute.

I downloaded the same .gpx file to other websites that I know (but almost never use) ; most of them show a length of 152,6 / 152,75 km so I would think that the bug lies with Plotaroute : for the same .gpx file, I get : VisuGPX : 152,65 km ; RouteYou : 152,6 km ; cronoescalada : 152,6 km ; Komoot : 153 km ;  GPSVisualizer : 152,746 km ; Strava : 152,73 km

I also downloaded a gpx file that I made with Plotaroute in 2025 : it showed 202,6 km then, it shows 202,6 km on Ridewith GPS to-day but only 201,847 km on Plotaroute.

I am surprised no one seems to have come across the same problem. No idea when this bug appeared as I had not used Plotaroute or any other website since last October (and it was OK then)

Plotaroute is a tremendous resource with many features which do not existe elsewhere, I hope this bug will be resolved soon. 

Thank you for your help.

Hi Laurent,

Thanks for providing such a detailed bug report.

To confirm your finding, I tested importing the GPX to Visorando, and the result is yet another: 151,79km vs 150.699 on Plotaroute and 152.8km on RwGPS.

I don't know how this is handled on the tech side, so I'll share this with the devs.

I'll update this topic as soon as I receive any news on this.

All the best,
Julien

Hi Laurent,

I just talked this over with the devs, and here is what they told me:

The distance of a route can vary because the value/coordinates of single points can be slightly rounded up/down. Especially on long routes, with a lot of points, this rounding up/down can add up to a difference, as you have reported.

As long as the difference is not significant, this is not a bug. 

The devs told me that the most important thing is that this difference will not impact the ability to follow the route.

I hope this clears things up a bit.

All the best,
Julien

Hi

Thank you for the time and research you and your workmates for trying to address the problem I encounterd. 

However the site worked perfectly until recently, so I can only guess that a change has been made in the software settings, leading to this difference. 

Also a 2 km difference on a 150 km ride is for me quite significant ; truth to be said, other .gpx files showed smaller discrepancies, so I guess I will have to get used to this.

Kind regards

I confirmed that something must have been changed recently in the way the route distance is calculated when a file is uploaded.

I am the television producer for cycling races like Giro d'Italia and Milano - Sanremo. I always use plotaroute to reverse the route and generate km markers, before exporting the kml and adding the other information we need (points of interest, sprints, etc.). So we always have a reference of km to go that matches with the information coming from tv graphics and gps on the motorbikes.

I used this workflow for races in March and everything worked fine. Now, the Giro d'Italia starts tomorrow, but I can't used this method anymore, and this is very frustrating. I am experiencing differences up to 4 or 5 kms in the route distance.

Please get the algorythm back where it was!

After further testing, it looks like that distance markers are generated correctly when exporting the kml from the website. However, route distance shown in the dashboard is not.

I also noticed that when correcting a route (for instance cutting through a roundabout for a cycling race); the distance shown which should be lower is sometimes higher - and vice versa. 

Finally it seems the distance shown on the screen works in an utterly erratic way. 

Like Alessio I found this is a new fault which appeared quite recently. 

Please ask your developers to correct it as it ruins the fantastic experience we had with plotaroute.

Hello Laurent and Alessio,

I'm Aurélie, one of Julien's colleague.

Tech team is asking to get the GPX you are talking about to check more precisely what is happening.

Could you please send me GPX via the help desk ? and add what are the real values you are expecting (if you know it)

Kins regards,

Hi Laurent and Alessio,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention and for providing examples.
Other users got in touch with us to raise issues with distances as well.

I have reopened the previous bug report and will discuss this with the devs again.

I'll update this topic as soon as I receive any news.

All the best,
Julien

Hi 

Distance shown on Plotaroute still very erratic, no improvement for the time being. 

It would be so grat if your team could go back to the older system which worked pefectly fine. 

Best regards

Hi Laurent,

I'm sorry to say that so far, there has been no progress on this matter.

What I can share however, is that we haven't deliberately changed something that explains why all of a sudden distances are not the same as they used to be a few months ago.

Therefore, this sadly isn't something the devs can simply roll back, and they are still looking into what has caused this change.

I'll make sure to update this topic as soon as I receive any news.

Kind regards,
Julien