Zwift Update: Personalized Route Time Estimates

January 6, 2025

LAST UPDATED January 6, 2025

Today, Zwift announced an update to the game’s route time estimates. While past estimates were universal across all riders and rounded to the nearest 30 minutes, the new estimates are more precise and based on your individual FTP.

Comparing Estimates

I checked route estimates for a 75kg rider at various in-game FTP settings. Here are the new time estimates supplied by Zwift, along with our ZIMetrics time estimates:

	Zwift 2 w/kg FTP	Zwift 3 w/kg FTP	Zwift 4 w/kg FTP	ZI 2 w/kg	ZI 3 w/kg	ZI 4 w/kg
Tempus Fugit	45m	35m	30m	32m	28m	25m
Road to Sky	2h	1h 15m	1h	1h 40m	1h 9m	55m
Three Sisters	3h	2h 30 m	1h 45m	1h 58m	1m 32m	1h 22m

Without spending hours digging deep into the new route estimation algorithm, it would appear Zwift is estimating route completion times based on riders holding around 75% of FTP for the duration of the ride.

(It’s entirely possible that Zwift’s algorithm is much more complex than this, though. Since the estimates are rounded, it’s hard to pin down exactly what’s happening behind the scenes.)

FTP Setting, Restart Required

If you’ve never set your FTP in game, you may want to double-check to make sure it’s accurate so your route time estimates will be accurate. Do this by going to “My Profile” and changing the “FTP” field:

Don’t know your FTP? It’s worth noting that, thanks to a recent update, the game now auto-detects your FTP using any effort in the 8-60 minute range. So you can do an actual FTP test to estimate your FTP, or simply go out and smash a maximal effort for 8-60 minutes and let the game estimate your FTP based on that effort.

(Pro tip: set your FTP unrealistically low in your profile before doing an FTP test/effort, to make sure the game detects an increase and sets your FTP automatically).

It appears that the game needs to be restarted in order for your route time estimates to be updated after your FTP setting changes.

Rounding

The new time estimates get more rounded the longer they go. That means 5-minute rounding if the estimate is 60 minutes or less, 15-minute rounding for 1-2 hour estimates, and rounding to the nearest 30-minutes for 2+ hour estimates.