dashcam.bike vs NLR OpenPATH
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
dashcam.bike
Transform your smartphone into a bicycle dashcam. Record rides with cinematic stabilization, low-power standby, and gesture controls. Capture evidence, report hazards, and share your cycling experiences.
- Cinematic stabilization
- Low-power standby mode
- Gesture-based controls
- GPS track recording
- Timelapse video export
- Loop recording
- Report hazardous conditions
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dashcam.bike is built for bicycle commuters to record every ride. Why buy a separate camera when you already have an iPhone? Our in-app "Cinematic Stabilization" and our anti-shake phone mount work together to create high-quality footage with just your iPhone. "Live Link" lets you share your live video feed & GPS location with loved ones so they know you're safe. Use your smartphone's camera to record your rides. Our low-power standby mode uses close to zero battery, and our power-saving features let you record up to six hours on a single charge. In standby mode, you're ready to record any hazard you encounter with a single tap of the screen. The average commute uses just 5% of your battery. We recommend you record every commute or short trip, and leave the app on standby mode for longer rides. Stay safe on the road with these features: - Report hazardous conditions to your city officials - Have video evidence in case of a crash - Feel safe knowing that aggressive drivers can face consequences - Create compilation videos to share group rides and give your friends FOMO - Share cars parked in bike lanes with 311, or whoever deals with this in your city Features: - Doesn't disrupt your music or podcasts: Record video while playing through phone speakers or bluetooth headphones - Super-low-power: automatically enters low-power-mode - Gesture-based controls so you can start and stop recording without looking at your phone - Records GPS tracks and overlays footage on a 3D map - Export timelapse videos, up to 32x speed (nobody wants to watch your 10 minute ride at 1x speed!) - Export videos to social media or save to your phone - Export compilation videos - Uses loop recording to automatically manage your storage - Works in portrait or landscape mode - Rain mode to ignore taps from raindrops Premium features for subscribers: - Cinematic stabilization (available on iPhone X and newer phones). - Remove the watermark - Multiple dashboard themes, including our new "Driver's Seat Perspective" overlay to show the absurdity of what commuters can encounter - More scrolling on our 311 Feed, which lets you see what users in select cities have reported. - Live Link video feed sharing Privacy and Security: - Your videos and GPS tracks are stored locally on your phone, not on our servers - Exported videos can hide select addresess Hardware: - We recommend you use our app in combination with our footage-stabilizing mount: https://dashcam.bike/mounts - No external cameras are needed. We use your smartphone camera. - You can mount your camera on your handlebars to record in front of you, or on your seat post to record behind you. FAQs: >> How do you keep my data private? Everything we do centers around your privacy! Your videos and location are stored locally on your device, not on our servers. >> When can I use the app? We recommend opening the app on every ride around town. You can leave it on standby to save battery power. >> Can I play music while riding? Yes! When you launch the app, your music will be paused. Just hit play again. >> Can I use my maps app while riding? Yes! Our phone mounts are designed to tilt upward so you can switch apps, check maps, then switch back. >> How do I find my ride's highlights? All you have to do is tap the screen while it’s recording. When you reach your destination, every tap will be visible as a purple marker in the timeline. >> How do you make those cool 3D flyover videos? Just hit Share > Video Clips and select multiple clips. The app will create a flyover video between each of the clips you selected. >> How do I report hazards? Use your city's 311 system. In select cities, our One-Tap 311 Reporting can do this for you. This includes Boston, Washington DC, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh. >> When is One-Tap 311 Reporting coming to my city? See https://dashcam.bike/311 to bring 311 reporting to your city. EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
NLR OpenPATH
Track your travel modes like car, bus, or bike to measure energy use and carbon footprint. Understand your travel patterns, experiment with sustainable options, and contribute to community-level data for better urban planning.
- Track various travel modes
- Measure energy consumption
- Calculate carbon footprint
- Analyze travel patterns
- Contribute to community data
- Smart background data collection
- Annotate travel diary
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The National Laboratory of the Rockies' Open Platform for Agile Trip Heuristics (NLR OpenPATH) enables people to track their travel modes—car, bus, bike, walking, etc.—and measure their associated energy use and carbon footprint. The app empowers communities to understand their travel mode choices and patterns, experiment with options to make them more sustainable, and evaluate the results. Such results can inform effective transportation policy and planning and be used to build more sustainable and accessible cities. NLR OpenPATH informs individual users about the impact of their choices, and also makes aggregated, community-level data on mode shares, trip frequencies, and carbon footprints available via a public dashboard. NLR OpenPATH incorporates continuous data collection and analysis via a smart phone app backed by a server and automated data processing. Its open nature enables transparent data collection and analysis, while allowing it to be configured for individual programs or studies. On first install, the app does not collect or transmit data. Once you click the link or scan the QR code to join a given study or program, you will be asked to consent to data collection and storage before the app begins functioning. If you are not part of a partner community or program but are simply interested in quantifying your individual carbon footprint, you can join the NLR-run open-access study. In the aggregate, your data might be used as the control for experiments run by our partners. At its core, the app represents an automatically sensed travel diary, constructed from background sensed location and accelerometer data. You can annotate the diary with semantic labels as requested by a given program administrator or researcher. Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life. Therefore, the app automatically turns off the GPS if you are not moving. This significantly reduces the battery drain caused by location tracking. The app results in ~ 5% battery drain for up to 3 hours of travel per day.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: dashcam.bike at 74% against NLR OpenPATH's 0%. dashcam.bike also leads on rating (4.6 vs 2.7) and ratings volume (57 vs 13). NLR OpenPATH's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and iOS requirement (13.0 vs 15.0). On price, update cadence, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. dashcam.bike sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $1.99 per month. NLR OpenPATH asks for nothing beyond the download.
dashcam.bike holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 2.7. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 57 and 13 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 74% of dashcam.bike's written reviews are positive against 0% of NLR OpenPATH's.
dashcam.bike ships an update every 2 months, NLR OpenPATH every 5 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 8, 2026 and June 4, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | dashcam.bike | NLR OpenPATH |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (57 ratings) — better | 2.7 (13 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 73.7% of reviews — better | 0.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 57 — better | 13 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 5 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Freemium | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 13.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 198 MB | 74 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Dashcam for your Bike, Inc | National Renewable Energy Laboratory |
Customer experience
dashcam.bike
NLR OpenPATH
In-app purchases
dashcam.bike
- Dashcam Premium7 Days trial$1.991 Month
NLR OpenPATH
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is dashcam.bike free?
Is NLR OpenPATH free?
Which has better reviews, dashcam.bike or NLR OpenPATH?
Do dashcam.bike or NLR OpenPATH have ads?
Which is updated more often, dashcam.bike or NLR OpenPATH?
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