What is tile hunting?A cyclist's guide to collecting the map.

How tile hunting works

Picture a grid laid over the whole world. Every square you touch with a recorded ride counts as collected. That's it. What makes it addictive is what follows:

• The tiles near your home fill up fast, and the gaps become obvious.
• Every gap is a little mission: a dead-end lane, a hill you've avoided, a village you've never had a reason to visit.
• The further out you go, the more each new tile costs. Riders plan whole days around a handful of squares.

How big is a tile?

The classic Explorer tile is a map tile at zoom level 14 of the standard web map grid. The world is split into 16,384 × 16,384 of them. Because the grid is square on the map but the earth is round, the real size depends on where you live:

• At the equator, a tile is about 2.4 km wide.
• In southern Germany (48° N), it is about 1.6 km.
• In London or Berlin (52° N), it is about 1.5 km, roughly a mile.

Squadrats also uses a finer grid, the squadratinhos (zoom 17). Each one is an eighth of a tile's width, about 200 m in Central Europe. That makes even dense city areas worth hunting.

Tile hunting terms explained

• Tile: one square of the grid. Ride through it once and it's yours.
• Max square: the largest square block of tiles you have completely collected, for example 12 × 12. It is the number most hunters compare.
• Cluster: tiles whose four neighbours (up, down, left, right) are all collected too. Your max cluster is the biggest connected group of those.
• Total tiles: simply every tile you've ever ridden through.

Which apps are used for tile hunting?

• VeloViewer: the original Explorer tiles, part of a large Strava analytics tool.
• Statshunters: free, with tiles, max square, heatmaps and achievements, based on Strava.
• Squadrats: tiles plus the finer squadratinhos, rankings, and a mobile app that shows squares live while you ride.
• Wandrer: not tiles, but the share of roads and paths you've ridden in each area.
• GRYDX: a game built around revealing tiles live, with its own recording, crews, seasons and quests. No Strava needed.

We compare them side by side in Squadrats alternatives for cyclists.

How to start tile hunting in five steps

1. Pick a tool and connect or import your past rides, so the tiles you already have show up.
2. Look at the map around your home. The gaps closest to your door are your first targets.
3. Plan a route through the gaps. Route planners like komoot or BRouter work well, especially with a tile overlay.
4. Ride it. Clipping the corner of a tile is enough. A recording of a few metres inside it counts.
5. Grow your square. Once the area around you is done, work on closing one big square, edge by edge.

Ride it right: safety and access

A tile is never worth a risk. Stay on public roads and paths, respect private land, nature reserves and military areas, and don't ride motorways or closed roads to grab a square. If a tile can't be reached legally, leave it fogged. Every serious tile hunter has a few of those.

When your home area is done

Tile hunting has a known problem: after a year or two, the next new tile can be a long ride away. Riders on forums describe needing an 80-mile ride for a single tile. That's where a game layer helps. In GRYDX, your all-time map stays, but a season map starts fogged again, with fresh quests and rewards. Your home loops become worth riding again.

Frequently asked questions