Frequently asked questions

Spokli is a bike navigation app for everyday city cycling. For every trip it compares the fastest route with calmer alternatives: a Comfort route with fewer turns, fewer traffic lights and smoother streets, and after dark a Night route that prefers lit streets. You see the trade-off in metres and minutes, pick one, and ride with voice guidance.

Spokli for Android is in a closed pilot with testers in Berlin. There is no public release date yet. Join the waitlist and we will write to you when the app is available.

Berlin, including the city boundary, for the pilot. Every route is checked against the covered area, and the app tells you when a start or destination lies outside it. More cities follow only after we have audited their data and ridden the routes.

Not yet. Android comes first because that is where our testers are; a native iOS app is planned after the pilot.

During the pilot, yes. Pricing is a decision for after the pilot. Whatever we decide, nothing will interrupt an active ride, and no advertising will be shown while you ride.

No. Planning and riding work without any account. Saved places and recent rides stay on your phone.

From Berlin's public street-lamp inventory, about 205,000 lamps, combined with OpenStreetMap and surveyed unlit paths from the bbbike project. This is a proxy for lighting, not a measurement: Spokli shows for every Night route how much of it the data covers and marks unknown stretches as unknown, never as lit.

Nothing that identifies you. Your location is used while you plan and ride and is not uploaded. If you opt in, the app shares anonymous statistics such as which route type you chose. The website stores your email address only if you join the waitlist.

Usually a little longer, sometimes not at all. Spokli allows a detour only within a budget, by default up to 20 percent more distance and five more minutes than the fastest route, and always shows you both numbers. If a longer route would be worth it, you get it as a separate choice, never preselected.

Once a ride has started, guidance continues on the planned route without a connection. Calculating a new route after a wrong turn needs a connection; the app tells you so instead of guessing.