Welcome. If you're new to motorcycles, new to MotoScore™, or both, this guide is the shortest path to getting something useful out of the app without getting overwhelmed. We'll cover what a verdict is actually telling you, the important thing it doesn't tell you, what to read instead while you're still building skills, and a practical starting point for picking your first few routes.
The one thing to get clear first
A verdict tells you how well a road fits a kind of riding. It does not tell you whether the road is safe.
MotoScore rates every road for Touring and for Sport, side by side, and gives each a verdict from Poor up to Great. The two can differ, because the same road genuinely is a different proposition depending on what you came for. What none of it measures is danger: not how demanding the road is for your experience level, not how much traffic you'll meet, not whether the weather will cooperate on the day.
This is worth repeating, because it's the single biggest source of confusion for new riders: MotoScore reads the road, not the rider. A Great verdict for sport says the road has a lot of what sport riding looks for — usually many tight corners, sustained climbs and good pavement. It says nothing about whether those corners suit a rider in their first season. The roads that score highest for sport tend to be, by what MotoScore measures, the ones with the most corners and climbs; whether that's a road you're ready for is a question only you can answer, and the verdict isn't trying to answer it.
That's not a gap we're hedging around. Nothing MotoScore measures knows your experience, your bike, how you slept or what the weather is doing, so no verdict can tell you a road is within your ability. Use the verdict as a planning tool, not a safety signal. Your own judgment, the weather, your recent practice, and what the road actually asks of you are all separate inputs you have to weigh on top of whatever the app says.
What MotoScore actually looks at
MotoScore reads what makes a road good to ride — its shape, its surface, its climbs and altitude, and how often stop signs and traffic lights break up the road — and weighs those for each kind of riding. These are the things that make experienced riders describe a road as "great." None of them are about whether the road is easy to ride.
Notable things MotoScore does not rate:
- Traffic volume
- Fuel availability
- Cell reception
- How narrow or wide the lanes are
- How much runoff room exists in the corners
- Weather
All of those matter enormously, especially for a newer rider, and all of them need to be checked separately. The good news is that most of them are easy to look up on Google Maps, Street View, or by reading a few trip reports before you go.
How to read a verdict as a new rider
MotoScore gives a route a verdict, not a number, from Poor up to Great. Read it as an answer to one question: how much of what this kind of riding looks for does the road have? Poor and Below Average roads have little of it — often straight, flat, or broken up by junctions. Great roads have a lot of it.
Don't read the verdict as a difficulty scale. A Good road isn't a gentler Great road, and a Great one isn't a harder Good one. Two roads with the same verdict can earn it in very different ways: one on corners, another on long climbs into high country with only a few bends. The verdict alone can't tell you which you're looking at. The description under it can.
What the summary is telling you
The verdict is the headline. Underneath it, MotoScore describes the road in plain language and tags the things that stood out. Those words are where the useful detail is for a new rider, and a few of them are worth reacting to.
"Good pavement" or "excellent pavement" is the one to look for. New riders do not need to be dealing with gravel, frost heaves, or patched tarmac while also learning to read corners. If you instead see "rough pavement" or "poor pavement", that road is asking something extra of you no matter how good the verdict is — and on a road-biased bike it's the part of the description that will actually be under your tyres.
"Very twisty", "winding", "curvy", "slightly curvy" and "straight" describe how much the road bends over its whole length. Corners are how you learn, and you want some. But the word is an average: it can't tell a road of open sweepers from one with long straights broken by a few tight hairpins. For that, turn on Section view on the map and hover over (or tap) each section. A section noted "Tight curves ahead" bends hardest, and the corners in it are tighter still than its average; "Winding section" bends a lot, with wider corners. That's where to look before deciding a road is for this month or for later.
"Sustained grades" means the road climbs or descends steadily for long stretches. It says nothing about what's beside the road, so it can't tell you whether the ground falls away. Look at the map and some photos before you commit to a mountain road — cliff-edge riding is a lot of pressure while you're still learning.
And if a route climbs into high country, MotoScore will say so. Altitude mostly isn't a safety matter, but it changes how the bike feels — less power up there — and how you feel. Coming up from sea level to ride something above 10,000 ft, plan a shorter day than you think you need, and eat and drink more than feels necessary.
Beginner Mode
Beginner Mode is coming. It's a setting for riders who are new to the bike, and you can already see it on your profile page, marked coming soon. It can't be switched on yet.
We're holding it back until we're confident it works every time you rely on it. When it's ready, this section will say what it does.
Until then, the verdict and the route summary are the tools you have, and everything in this guide is written around them — including the starting plan below.
A suggested starting plan
Here's a concrete week-one-to-month-three progression that has worked for plenty of new riders:
The plan steps up by what the description says, not by the verdict, since the verdict doesn't rank roads by what they ask of you.
First two weeks. Pick routes the description calls well-paved ("good pavement" or "excellent pavement") and "curvy" or "slightly curvy", that don't mention long sustained grades, and with no "Tight curves ahead" in Section view. The description mentions pavement and grades only when they stand out, so if it says nothing about pavement, look at photos before you go. Practice reading the road ahead, matching gear and speed to corners, and being smooth on the throttle.
Weeks three to six. Keep the same surface and grade requirements, and let the curvature go up to "winding". You should start feeling like you're riding the road rather than just riding down it.
Weeks six to twelve. Try a road with a "Tight curves ahead" section or long sustained grades, in ideal conditions — dry, warm, not much traffic. Ride it at a pace well below what the road invites. If it feels comfortable, ride it again later and push a little. If it feels at the edge of your skill, back off and put in more time on roads that felt comfortable.
After three months of regular riding. You're making the decision yourself, road by road, based on how you feel about the specific road rather than a general heuristic. At this point the verdict is a shortcut to finding the roads you want to ride, and the description is how you check whether today is the day for one.
The last thing
The reason to ride is that you want to. MotoScore exists to help you find more of the roads that are worth riding and avoid the ones that aren't. It isn't a gatekeeper. If a route rates middling and you love it, it's a great route. If a route rates Great and you bail five miles in because the drop beside the road is too much today, that was the right call — the road will still be there next month.
Ride within your ability, always have an out, and enjoy the process. The verdicts will make more and more sense to you the more you ride, because eventually you'll have strong opinions about a hundred roads and you'll find the app mostly agrees with you.