How accurate is AllTrails? A look at how trail information is managed
Every AllTrails trail page is built on three layers: a dedicated data team, 900+ land manager partners, and millions of community reports. Here's how they fit together.
One of the misconceptions we hear about most often is that AllTrails is 100% user-submitted content, and therefore unreliable. Many people think that someone tracks a route (any route), uploads the track, and that gets published as a public trail page.
We understand where that concern comes from, but it isn’t how AllTrails actually works. While our community is a huge part of what makes the platform work, it’s only one layer of several. So, let’s talk a bit about how trail pages actually get made and kept current, and the organizations we work with to provide you the most up-to-date information.
Members can and do submit new routes
AllTrails has more than 500,000 verified routes and many of them started as somebody saying «there’s a route here I think you’re missing.» However, that doesn’t mean that these routes go straight to the site and are searchable by the entire community (in fact, they never do). Both new submissions and existing routes are reviewed and updated by our team.
Our team made over 1.2 million edits across all trails worldwide in 2025 (that’s over 20k a week).
Our dedicated team of trail experts reviews routes, trailheads, parking locations, difficulty ratings, and trail metadata. When something is wrong, whether it’s flagged by a member, a ranger, or our own review process, this team fixes it. They also review member-submitted issue reports, whether that be flagged reviews or recommended changes to published trails. Our trail information is actively maintained.
That work is invisible when things go well, which is most of the time. But, there are a lot of trails on AllTrails. If you find something that needs to be updated, please let us know via the «Suggest trail update» link on web or mobile (you’ll find with reviews).
Land managers can edit their own trails
Through our Public Lands Program, the people who actually manage trails (park rangers, forest staff, trail nonprofits, SAR teams, etc) have direct access to trail pages. They can adjust routes and trailheads, correct difficulty ratings and trail information, see how visitors are actually using the trails, and publish alerts for closures, hazards, and seasonal conditions. We work with more than 900 partner organizations worldwide, including national parks, state park agencies, and local land trusts. When you see an alert on a trail page, there’s a good chance it came straight from the agency responsible for that land.
Take the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming. Friends of the Bridger-Teton, a local nonprofit, sits down with the rangers to audit routes and make edits, and posts alerts as conditions change. That partnership has put more than 1,000 edits and alerts onto AllTrails on behalf of the Forest Service. Scott Kosiba, Executive Director at Friends of the Bridger-Teton said: “AllTrails has been a huge support when it comes to reaching the public and better informing our visitors.”
We recently added a new feature to the Public Lands Program to better allow land managers to see what key issues might need to be addressed in their area. This TrailSense data provides a prioritized queue of trails that need attention, tagged with closure reports, negative reviews, stale content, and more.
It’s a great example of how community engagement via AllTrails helps feed directly to local land managers, which can respond on the ground, and then that all gets fed back to AllTrails so the next person can hit the trail more prepared and informed.
Our community adds details you can’t find anywhere else
On top of trail information and land manager input, millions of AllTrails members contribute reviews, photos, and condition reports. That’s how you find out there’s still snow at the pass in the summer or that a stretch of trail with previously downed trees has actually been cleared recently. A dotted line on the map can tell you where the trail goes, but our community can tell you what conditions are like this week.
So, what’s that all mean for you?
Trails change, bridges wash out, reroutes happen, and parking availability can change unexpectedly. No amount of internal review can completely keep up with everything. But when you land on an AllTrails trail page, you’re looking at the blend of these three different systems, all working together to provide the most up-to-date and accurate trail information possible.
So the answer to «is AllTrails user-submitted» is…not exactly. Our community, composed of land managers, members, trail staff, and really, everyone who loves trails, are each an integral piece of the puzzle; every review and condition report you leave makes the next person’s plan a little better. The power of AllTrails is the management, partnerships, and data layered on top of the routes themselves.
And if you manage trails yourself, or volunteer with a group that does, we’d love to have you in the Public Lands Program.
