100% private — files never leave your browser
GPX to FIT Converter
Turn a planned GPX route into a .fit course file your Garmin Edge, Wahoo ELEMNT or COROS computer can navigate with turn-by-turn directions. Draw the ride in RideWithGPS, Komoot or Strava, drop the exported GPX here, and copy the converted course onto your device — the whole thing happens in your browser.
or click to browse — the output will be FIT; format is detected automatically
How to convert to FIT
- 1
Drop your file
Drag a FIT, GPX or TCX file onto the box above, or click it to browse. The source format is detected automatically from the file contents.
- 2
Wait a beat
The conversion runs in a background worker on your device. Typical activities finish in well under a second; even 50 MB files process without freezing the page.
- 3
Check the preview
Distance, duration, ascent and average heart rate are shown alongside a map of the converted track, so you can confirm nothing was lost before downloading.
- 4
Download
Click the download button and the .fit file is saved straight from memory. Nothing was uploaded, so there is nothing to clean up.
What is a GPX file?
GPX (GPS Exchange Format) is the universal, open XML format for GPS data, standardized by TopoGrafix and supported by essentially every mapping application on earth — Strava, Google Earth, Komoot, RideWithGPS, Garmin BaseCamp, QGIS and hundreds of others. A GPX file stores waypoints, routes and tracks as latitude/longitude pairs, optionally with elevation and timestamps, and Garmin's TrackPointExtension carries heart rate, cadence and power alongside each point.
Because GPX is plain text XML, it is readable, diffable, scriptable and trivially editable — which makes it the lingua franca when a track needs to move between ecosystems. The cost is size: the same activity as GPX is typically 5-10× larger than FIT, and consumer-oriented apps sometimes ignore the extension channels. For archiving, editing and cross-platform sharing, though, GPX remains the safest long-term bet.
What is a FIT file?
FIT (Flexible and Interoperable Data Transfer) is the binary activity format created by Garmin and maintained by the FIT Coalition. Every Garmin watch, cycling computer and trainer writes .fit files, and brands like Wahoo, Zwift, COROS, Suunto and Bryton use it too. Because it is a compact binary format, a FIT file can hold a full season of second-by-second records — GPS position, altitude, heart rate, cadence, power, laps and sessions — in a fraction of the space the same data needs as XML.
The trade-off for that compactness is compatibility. FIT is a device format: desktop tools, older websites, GIS software and many coaching platforms either cannot open it at all or only import it through a vendor uploader. That is the moment most people go looking for a converter — and why this page exists. A faithful conversion preserves every sample your device recorded, including the extension channels (heart rate, cadence, power) that generic GPS formats often drop.
Why convert GPX to FIT?
Route planning happens in GPX; course navigation happens in FIT. The tools you plan in — RideWithGPS, Komoot, Strava, Garmin BaseCamp — export GPX, while the computer on your handlebar wants a FIT course: Garmin's native format for navigation, and the format every Edge loads as a course without a conversion step of its own. Several other head units treat FIT courses the same way, which makes FIT the safest thing to copy onto a device when you cannot test beforehand.
This is the classic Saturday-morning workflow: plan the route at a desk (or grab one a club mate shared as GPX), convert it here, and copy the .fit file onto a connected Garmin or push it through Garmin Connect as a course. A hand-drawn route has no heart rate, no cadence and no timestamps — and none are needed, because a FIT course is a spatial object: a line to follow, not a recording of a ride.
One clarification worth making: a course file is not an activity. It tells the device where to go, not how fast you went, so the geometry and elevation of the GPX track are exactly what matters — and exactly what converts. The device records your actual ride afterwards, as always.
The single lap, and other FIT scaffolding
GPX has no lap concept — a track is one continuous list of points. A FIT course file, however, includes exactly one lap message wrapping the whole route; it is a structural requirement of the format, not an interval. It carries no timing, it will not beep at you halfway round, and it has no effect on how the course navigates. Since the GPX side has nothing to map laps from, a single lap covering the entire course is the standard and expected fallback.
Elevation carries over whenever the planning tool included it, so the profile pane on your device shows the real climbs instead of a flat line. If the GPX track has no elevation data at all, the course still navigates perfectly well — you just lose the elevation profile, exactly as the planning tool showed it (or didn't).
Your files never leave this browser
This tool — like every tool on this site — runs entirely as client-side JavaScript. The file you drop is parsed in a Web Worker on your own device, converted in memory and handed straight back to you as a download. There is no upload endpoint, no server-side conversion service and no temporary storage: you can watch the network tab in your browser's developer tools and confirm that no file bytes are transmitted anywhere.
That matters more with fitness data than with most files. A GPS track is a precise log of where you were, at what time, and how hard your heart was working — home address, training habits, favorite routes and race schedule all in one file. Keeping conversion on-device means third-party converters never get a copy of that log, and the tool keeps working identically on a plane, in a basement, or anywhere else without signal.
GPX route vs FIT course
| Aspect | GPX route | FIT course |
|---|---|---|
| Native habitat | Planning tools (RideWithGPS, Komoot, Strava) | Bike computers and watches |
| Turn-by-turn prompts | Depends on device-side handling | Fully specified by the format |
| Elevation profile | Optional per-point elevation | Carried over when the GPX has it |
| Timestamps needed | No | No — a course is a route, not a recording |
| Lap structure | None | Single lap wrapping the whole course |
| Typical use | Planning and sharing a route | Navigating it on the road |
Frequently asked questions
Garmin devices want a FIT course file for navigation. Depending on model and firmware, a GPX dropped into the Courses folder may load as a plain line to follow — or not load as a course at all. Converting to FIT gives the device the format it was designed to navigate, with course points and turn prompts handled natively rather than approximated from a raw track.