Lantern is a free night-safety cycling route planner for the Netherlands. You enter a start and destination and it plans a bike route, showing where you would pass dark parks, unlit paths, isolated stretches or tunnels at night, so you can choose a route that feels safer after dark.

Anyone cycling at night who wants to avoid dark, isolated or unlit stretches — it is especially aimed at people who feel less safe biking home after dark, including women and children.

Which areas does Lantern cover?

Lantern covers the Netherlands and is expanding city by city. Amsterdam, Utrecht, Almere and Groningen are live now, with more Dutch cities being added.

Is Lantern free and private?

Yes. Lantern is free and works without an account. Routes you plan stay on your device; if you create an account to save routes across devices, those routes are end-to-end encrypted so no one — not even the operator — can read where you travel.

Lantern — safer cycling routes after dark

Plan a night-time route

Start

Destination

🗺️ …or click the map to drop the start & destination — click a pin to remove it.

💡 Tap the route to avoid a dark stretch and reroute around it.

Safety summary

Recent routes last 3, on this device

🌬 Also by me: Windward — wind-aware cycling routes →

Night discomfort

Lower Higher

▣ Tunnel along route

⌒ Underpass (under motorway / railway)

Safety data areas (Amsterdam, Utrecht, Almere, Groningen)

😊 Community ratings

🌙

Scoring route…

Proposed safer route

📲 Send this route to your phone

Scan with your phone camera, then open the GPX in OsmAnd, Organic Maps, or Komoot.

🔒 Private — this route is only in the link, never stored on our server.

😊 Your ratings

Spots you've marked as feeling safer or worse at night. Tap a route on the map and pick a smiley to add one — they feed the shared community layer.

🧭 Opening your route in a nav app

Lantern hands your exact route to a navigation app — but not every app can follow a custom route:

✅ OsmAnd & Organic Maps — free, and follow the exact route
❌ Google Maps — can't follow custom routes, so it won't appear
⚠️ Komoot — can import the route, but navigating it may need a paid region

For the smoothest ride, pick OsmAnd or Organic Maps.

Don't show this again

🔒 Your privacy

Recent routes stay on this device. The list in the sidebar lives only in this browser and is never uploaded.

Saved routes are end-to-end encrypted. When you save a route to your account, it's scrambled on your device with a key derived from your password before it's sent. We — and anyone who ever got hold of the database — only see unreadable data. We can't tell where you live or travel.

Your password never leaves your device. It logs you in and unlocks your routes, but we only ever receive a one-way "verifier", never the password itself. Because of that, we can't recover your routes if you forget it — a password reset clears your saved routes and starts fresh. Pick a strong password: its strength is what protects you.

What we do store: your email address (to sign you in), and that you saved some routes and when — never their contents.

☕ Buy me a coffee

Lantern is free and made by one person in her spare time. If it's helped you get home a little safer, a small tip is hugely appreciated — thank you! 🏮

Scan with your phone camera, or open the link:

revolut.me/lotte79g1