Looking for realistic hiking profiles

Open Source Routing Engine
1

Dear forum, for our project where we help hikers to plan mountain hut to hut tours, we have been using an open source instance of Graphhopper as a routing engine.

However, the default hiking profile has way too critical time estimates discrepancies in compare to commercial Graphhopper Maps, Komoot or Outdooractive.

Since our mission is to provide reliable time estimates, we are looking for helpful formulas, ideas, other open and public profiles that would help us to improve the accuracy. I’ll be happy for any hints!

Currently, we adopted OsmAnd approach for less hilly pedestrian routes which made estimates slightly better.

2

Historically I have applied a speed multiplier based on elevation changes between instructions.

This requires you to know what those adjustments should be up front though.

3

We improved the elevation data for the Directions API recently: https://www.graphhopper.com/blog/2026/03/23/more-precise-elevation-data-for-graphhopper/

You probably want to use the same data for your own instance, if you want to achieve similar results. The hike profile can likely also be improved, so feel free to share some of your findings so they can be included in the open source engine.

4

News about mapterhorn elevation data looks exciting! I found how to enable that and will duplicate here just in case for future reference:

graph.elevation.provider: pmtiles
graph.elevation.pmtiles.location: /data/pmtiles.pmtiles
graph.elevation.pmtiles.zoom: 11
graph.elevation.cache_dir: /tmp/pmtiles-cache

We however use Graphhopper 11.0 release and I doubt whether this change will work yet. I’d give it a go and then let you know whether the discrepancy with the official Graphhopper Maps passes away.