Drop a GPX, FIT or TCX file and see your ride in seconds: distance, climbs, vertical ascent speed (VAM), normalized power and training stress. No account needed, and your file is read in your browser, never uploaded. New to VAM? Read pacing climbs with VAM.
Drop a .FIT, .GPX or .TCX file, or Garmin’s .zip export, from Garmin, Wahoo, Hammerhead, COROS or Strava. It’s read right here on your device and never uploaded.
First popularized by sports physiologist Dr. Michele Ferrari, VAM measures vertical elevation gain in meters per hour (m/h). Unlike average speed—which varies wildly with wind and road curves—VAM isolates climbing efficiency.
A recreationally fit climber maintains 600–800 m/h on a 7% grade. Elite amateur racers climb at 1,000–1,300 m/h, while Grand Tour peloton leaders push past 1,500–1,800 m/h on alpine cols.
A hilly 50-mile ride with coasting on descents and 400W surges on steep pitches might show an average power of only 190 Watts. However, your body feels like it rode at 240 Watts.
Normalized Power (NP) models the physiological cost of anaerobic surges by applying a fourth-power weighting algorithm. WattsUP computes NP across all imported FIT files alongside Intensity Factor (IF) and Training Stress Score (TSS).
Unlike mainstream commercial platforms where your files are uploaded to centralized ad-targeting servers, WattsUP parses FIT and GPX byte streams locally on your device via JavaScript binary decoders.
Your private home location and training routes are never harvested or sold. Pair your outdoor telemetry with our 12-week Training Load Modeler to see how outdoor miles build your fitness.
Learn how to establish VAM targets, pace 20-minute alpine cols, and convert vertical speed to power.
Read Guide →Feed your imported outdoor TSS scores into the Banister impulse-response model across 12 weeks.
Model Training Load →Accurate VAM benchmarks require accurate Watts/kg. Calculate your power-to-weight ratio in seconds.
Open Calculator →