The indoor cycling app built on real roads.

Why ride real roads indoors?

It is a wet Tuesday in January. The roads outside are dark and greasy, and your plan says two hours with a long climb. So you clip into the trainer, and instead of a cartoon island you are at the bottom of Sa Calobra, looking up at the hairpins.

That is the idea behind Atlas Indoor. Most indoor cycling apps build their own worlds: invented roads, invented climbs, gradients chosen to be fun. They can be great. But you will never ride them outside, and nothing you learn on them carries over to the road.

Real roads are different. When you ride a real climb indoors, you learn where it bites, how long the steep part lasts, and what pace you can hold to the top. Then, when you get there in person, you already know it. Use it to rehearse Mallorca before a spring trip, to keep your climbing honest through winter, or to turn a spare room into a training camp.

It also keeps your riding in one place. Your indoor rides live in the same Atlas account as your outdoor ones, with the same club, the same training plan and the same habit of chasing your own best times.

What you need to start indoor cycling

You don't need much to start. Here is the full list, with what's essential and what's optional.

• A smart trainer or power meter. A controllable smart trainer is best: Atlas changes its resistance to match the road's gradient or your workout's power target. A power meter on a basic trainer also works for a recorded ride.
• A screen. Use the Atlas app on iPhone or iPad, or open the ride in Chrome or Edge on a Mac, Windows PC or Chromebook. You can also pair your phone as a companion to a bigger screen, and use it for gears, pause and camera controls.
• A heart-rate strap (optional). It adds context to every effort, and Atlas shows it alongside power and cadence.
• A fan and some space. Not essential, but you will be glad of both after twenty minutes on Puig Major.

No trainer yet? You can still explore any world with demo watts, to see the roads and how the ride works. Demo rides don't count towards results or progress, so when you're ready to train, connect a trainer or power meter.

Which smart trainers work with Atlas Indoor?

Atlas Indoor works with Bluetooth FTMS trainers, Tacx trainers that use FE-C over Bluetooth, such as the original NEO, and older Wahoo KICKRs on Wahoo’s own protocol. Not every trainer offers every feature: power, cadence and resistance control depend on the model, firmware and connection. The setup screen checks what your trainer offers.

Most trainers only talk to one app at a time. Before you pair, close Zwift, the Wahoo or Tacx app and anything else that might be connected, and disconnect bike computers or switch them to ANT+. Then press Connect on the ride screen and pick your trainer by name. The connection guide covers every step, and what to do if something won't connect.

How to train indoors with a structured plan

Riding a beautiful road is one thing. Getting faster is another. Atlas Indoor does both, because your structured sessions run on top of the real route.

Pick a session from your Atlas training plan and ride it on any road. The screen shows your current interval and the next one, the time remaining, and your power or cadence target. On a supported trainer, ERG mode holds the target power for you, so you can focus on pedalling while the road rolls by.

Outside of workouts, the trainer follows the gradient. You can set how hard climbs feel with the difficulty setting, and shift with virtual gears. Live graphs of power, heart rate, cadence and effort show how the ride is going.

A good place to start: threshold intervals on Coll de sa Batalla, which climbs at a steady 5% with nowhere to rest, or long endurance work on the flat roads around Binissalem vineyards.

Make every indoor ride count

Indoor riding gets dull when nothing is at stake. Atlas gives every ride a reason.

Race a ghost of your own best ride on a route and see, second by second, whether you're ahead. Pick eligible ghost efforts from riders you follow or your club-mates, and ride against them. Or set a computer pacer, clearly labelled as one, to hold you to a target.

Route collections group routes into sets to complete, and track your progress through each one. Finish a route and your best full-route time is saved against it.

Atlas is built on territory, and that comes indoors too. Ride an eligible public loop world and you can claim territory on a separate Indoor map in the Atlas iPhone app, with the same battles and fading as outside. It never mixes with your outdoor territory, so your local roads stay yours.

Ride indoors with your club

The best part of a club ride is the club. Atlas Indoor keeps that, even in January.

Club leaders can schedule indoor rides as club events, including recurring evenings. Members RSVP, then roll out together from a shared start line on the same road. You see the other riders live, you can sit in and draft, and the ride leader can regroup everyone so the group stays together on the climbs.

Afterwards, indoor rides count in your club's statistics, with their own leaderboard categories in the Atlas iPhone app, separate from outdoor rides. New to clubs on Atlas? See Atlas clubs.

Turn your own rides into indoor worlds

The curated routes are only the start. With Atlas Premium you can turn your own roads into indoor worlds.

Build a world from an eligible recorded ride, one of your saved routes, or an upcoming club event course. Atlas creates the road in 3D, with its real gradient, so you can ride it on the trainer. It's the best way to rehearse a ride before you do it: a sportive course, a club route, or a climb you have never tried.

New builds currently support routes in mainland Spain, from 5 to 160 km. Each Premium account can build five worlds per calendar month, shared across ride and planned-route builds.

When you finish, save the ride to Atlas with its data and the section you rode. World-linked rides can carry a 3D snapshot and a route map into your ride history.

Is Atlas Indoor a Zwift alternative?

For many riders, yes. But it depends on what you want from riding indoors, so here is an honest answer.

Choose Atlas Indoor if you ride outside most of the year and want your indoor riding to connect to it. The roads are real, so the climbs you train on are climbs you can ride. Your indoor rides sit in the same account as your outdoor ones, with your club, your training plan and your territory. And one Atlas Premium subscription covers both.

Choose a dedicated indoor platform if your riding is mostly indoors, and what you want most is large live races and events in game worlds, with thousands of riders online at once. That is a different kind of riding, and those platforms are built for it.

Plenty of riders use both. If you want to see how Atlas compares outdoors, read Atlas vs Strava.

How much does Atlas Indoor cost?

You can download Atlas and explore the indoor route catalogue for free. Saving your 3D indoor rides and building your own worlds needs Atlas Premium.

Atlas Premium is £4.99 a month or £39.99 a year. It also includes the rest of Atlas Premium for your outdoor riding. Regional pricing and trial eligibility are shown at checkout. See Atlas pricing for the full details.

Indoor cycling questions

Still have a question? Talk to Atlas.