A free alternative to Detecht for group rides

Detecht is a well-made app, and a lot of riders are happy with it. This page is for the ones who want a live group map without a subscription, an account or a feed. It says what Detecht charges, what an account costs you, what 6signals does instead, and, plainly, what Detecht does better.

What Detecht charges for a live group map

Live group map Share your live position, on the Premium tier.
Premium price $7.99 a month, $40 every six months, or $60 a year (USD, as printed on the US page on 15 September 2026).
Account Required before you ride.

Tiers and prices are as printed on Detecht's own page on 15 September 2026, in the currency shown there; they change, and other regions differ. Nothing here comes from review sites, and no ratings are quoted. Source: https://www.detechtapp.com/premium

What an account costs you

Detecht asks you to create an account before you ride, and everything you do there is tied to it. 6signals creates an anonymous account on the phone the first time it opens; the only thing you type is a name for the ride. No email, no phone number, no password, no contact list, nothing to reset, and nothing to sign into on a new phone but a join code.

What 6signals does instead

Free, with no subscription, no sign-up and no feed. 6signals puts your motorcycle group on one live map and gives every rider six signals a gloved thumb can hit at speed. Public beta, on iPhone and Android.

Nothing to unlock. The live map is the whole app, not a premium tier. There is no trial that turns into a bill, no account to create, no phone number or contact list to hand over, and no feed between you and the ride. Type a name, start a ride, read out the code.
One live map. Every rider shows on the same map, moving as you go. The leader can see the sweep hasn't lost anyone. The sweep can see which fork the leader took. Join late and the group is already on your map.
Six signals, no keyboard. Four logistics keys, plus OK and SOS. A gloved thumb hits one and the whole group sees it.
One route for the whole group. Search a start and a destination, tick Avoid motorways or Avoid tolls, and check the distance and time on the map before you commit. The route is calculated for a motorcycle.
Join with a code. Type your name, start a ride and read out the six-character code at the fuel stop. The others type it in, and a 0 heard as an O still works, as does an I or an L heard as a 1.
Made for the bar mount. Signal keys are 64 points tall. Turn the phone sideways and they line up on the left, where the clutch hand can reach without the throttle hand leaving the grip, with OK and SOS pinned where a scroll cannot move them.
Who sees your position. Only the riders who share your join code, and only while the app is in use. Nothing tracks you in the background, your last position expires from the server within a minute of your last update, and leaving the ride clears it.

What Detecht does better

Detecht's automatic crash detection is free, on the free tier, and it is the feature 6signals most conspicuously lacks. Detecht also records rides with lean angles and speed, keeps a history, and in Premium adds the live position sharing and route planning. If crash detection is what you want a phone to do on a motorcycle, use Detecht for that.

What 6signals does not do

Coming from Detecht, you will miss crash detection, ride recording with lean angle, ride history and route planning beyond a start and a destination. The rest of the list, so nobody installs it for the wrong reason:

No chat, no voice, no feed and no clubs.
No rerouting, no spoken directions, no ETA and no via-points: it is not a sat-nav.
No offline maps yet. Map tiles and positions need mobile data.
No background tracking, no ride recording, no history and no GPX export.
No crash detection, and SOS does not call emergency services.
No push notifications, invites or QR codes. The join code is read aloud.
No night mode, no second language and no iPad layout yet.
No payments, and nothing to unlock.

Where to get it

Arriving on the App Store and Google Play. Bookmark this page, or write to robertas@fragile.digital.

The other apps

Detecht is a trademark of its owner. 6signals is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to it.