MapRider is an idle road sim. Pick a destination, your car drives the real road route in real time, and you check in whenever you want. Close the tab — the car keeps going. Open it later — it's wherever it should be. The rest is collecting, racing, and keeping your cars (mostly) out of trouble.
Tap anywhere on the map to set a destination. MapRider asks Mapbox for the actual road route, draws it, and tells you the distance and drive time. Tap Drive and the car follows the route at a real pace.
There's no GPS — MapRider doesn't know where you are. You're driving a virtual car wherever you point it. The car's position is a function of wall-clock time, so background, sleep, or a closed tab don't desync it.
The gear segment is your throttle:
speedFactor).Tap a different car card to switch which car your controls drive. Other cars keep doing whatever they were doing — every car runs independently. Tap the active card again to rename or recolour it.
The fuel gauge shows how much you have left and your current range (gallons × mpg, minus wear penalty). Run dry mid-route and the car stops — call a Tow to get rebadged at the nearest station.
Tap 🔍 Nearby to find the five closest gas stations, or 🔍 In view to search wherever the map is centred (pan ahead, plan a stop). Park inside the green dotted ring and Refuel appears.
Every driven mile adds to a car's wear bar — Overdrive counts 1.5×. Each car class has its own service interval:
At 100% wear, you take a permanent −20% speed and −20% mpg penalty until you service. No catastrophic breakdown — just a steady tax that bites racers and is ignorable for casuals.
Hit 🔧 Nearby to find auto repair shops, drive to one, park inside the amber dotted ring, and tap Service car. After 10 seconds the wear bar resets and you're back to full pace. Other cars in your fleet are unaffected — they keep driving while one services.
Drive in Overdrive and you're rolling dice. Two ways to catch a ticket:
Ticketed cars park themselves at the spot they got caught. Open MapRider and you'll see a 🚨 Speeding ticket alert above the car controls. You have two choices:
The whole trap network builds organically from every ticket fired. Traps live 1 year, refreshed by any future ticket at that spot — busy routes stay marked, quiet ones fade. Traps spawn at least 1 km apart, so no single road wall-to-walls.
Missions are timed routes. Drive into a yellow start pin's ring and you'll be offered the mission. Accept it and the clock starts the moment you tap Accept.
Multi-stop missions (e.g. the Central Park loop) require you to hit every checkpoint before the finish counts.
To bail on a mission in progress, tap the small ✕ in the top-right of the mission box. You'll be asked to confirm before your time is wiped.
Two passive collections fill up as you drive:
US-NY, CA-ON, etc.).
Picked up automatically as you cross state / province /
country lines.
See your full haul on the Collection page.
28 achievements track everything from your first mile to your first ticket. Most fire passively from natural play — you'll see a 🏆 toast when one lands.
A few are hidden — they show as ??? in the
Collection screen until you earn them. Discover them as you
play.
Reveal every known speed trap on the map as a small amber dot, so you can plan around them. Without goggles you only see the 24-hour community warnings (the bigger amber dots).
Toggle in Settings → 🥽 Speed Trap Goggles. Free in beta — pricing TBD.
Add cars in Settings → + Add a car. Each car has its own fuel, route, mission, odometer, wear, and ticket history. The active car is the one your controls drive — the others run on autopilot toward their last destination.
Different car classes are real tradeoffs:
Lost? Open the map and just start driving.