About GTFS·X
GTFS·X is the fast, free GTFS editor — browser-based, no signup required for editing or export. It was built for the people who actually publish transit data — small agencies, mobility consultants, and transportation planners. Editing is free for everyone, forever; paid plans add premium feed management and route planning features.
Why this exists
Most existing GTFS tooling is either a command-line script aimed at engineers, a heavyweight desktop GIS application, or a hosted SaaS product that locks your data behind an account. None of those are a good fit for a planner who just wants to draw a route, lay down stops, type in a timetable, and walk away with a valid gtfs.zip. GTFS·X fills that gap with an interactive map-based interface that mirrors how planners actually think about transit service.
Making GTFS-Flex easy to publish
A second, equally important motivation: an honest, agency-friendly editor for GTFS-Flex. Flex is the part of the GTFS spec that describes demand-responsive service — microtransit, dial-a-ride, deviated fixed-route, on-demand zones — and authoring it correctly today is hard. The result is that most agencies running flex service don't publish it: zone polygons, booking rules, pickup/drop-off windows, and the dozens of inter-related fields rarely make it into the operator's GTFS feed.
That gap is invisible to the agency but consequential for riders. Without flex data in the canonical feed, trip planners (Google Maps, Apple Maps, Transit, OpenTripPlanner deployments) silently drop demand-responsive options from their suggestions. Someone in a small town who could in principle ride a county dial-a-ride to a medical appointment never learns the service exists, because the app that planned their trip didn't have the data. The same is true for tourists arriving in a regional resort area, transit-dependent commuters connecting to a microtransit-served suburb, or anyone relying on a phone to navigate a system they don't already know.
GTFS·X treats flex as a first-class feature, not an afterthought: draw zones on the map the same way you draw routes, configure booking rules and pickup windows in a structured form rather than hand-editing CSV, and validate the result against the spec before export. The goal is to make publishing flex data the obvious next step, not the heroic one.
Who it's for
- Small and mid-size transit agencies publishing or updating their own GTFS feed without a dedicated GIS team.
- Microtransit and demand-responsive operators who need GTFS-Flex support for booking rules and service zones.
- Transportation planning consultants sketching service alternatives for client agencies.
- Researchers and students building example feeds for analysis, tutorials, or coursework.
- Anyone who needs to clean up, validate, or lightly edit an existing feed without setting up a Python environment.
What makes it different
- Editing runs in your browser. No installation, no waiting on a backend. Anonymous edits stay in your browser's local storage; signed-in users sync to the cloud across devices.
- Map-first workflow. Draw route alignments on an interactive Mapbox map with snap-to-road, then place stops along the route with curbside-correct positioning.
- Standards-compliant export. Generates a valid GTFS ZIP that passes the canonical GTFS validator, including optional files like
fare_attributes.txt,calendar_dates.txt, andshapes.txt. - GTFS-Flex support. First-class support for demand-responsive zones, booking rules, and continuous pickup/drop-off — see the GTFS-Flex overview.
- Built-in validation. Errors and warnings are surfaced inline as you edit, not just at export time, so problems get caught early.
Route planning features
GTFS·X isn't only an editor. Five route planning capabilities ship in the same tool, so the agency that builds the feed can also evaluate the service:
- Cost estimation computes revenue hours, peak vehicle count, and weekly + annual operating cost per route and system-wide from the timetable. Configurable cost-per-hour and deadhead factor; the output is the figure agencies hand to a finance team or grant reviewer. (Pro tier.)
- Demographic coverage answers "who lives within a 1/4-mile walk of each stop." Population, households, and workers from US Census ACS, apportioned via circle-overlap so the totals are accurate at the block-group level. (Pro tier.)
- Demand-propensity layer is a nationwide map layer of transit-propensity population, other adults, and jobs, rendered as block-resolution dots from ACS and LODES. Useful for spotting underserved demand pockets when laying out a route or a Flex zone. (Team tier.)
- Title VI equity analysis classifies block groups by regional minority share and reports the trip-ratio between minority and non-minority groups using the four-fifths threshold from FTA Circular 4702.1B. The output is the table agencies put in their triennial Title VI submission. (Team tier.)
- Snapshots save any feed state at any point and let you restore, compare, or branch from it later. For evaluating "what would happen if we added Saturday service" or "how does this restructure compare to the current network," snapshots + the analyses above cover the substantive planning workflow without leaving the editor.
What this doesn't replace: drag-to-edit network design at scale or multi-stakeholder workshop tooling. For active service redesign with frequent stakeholder workshops, a dedicated planning suite is the right tool. For evaluating your own service alternatives and producing the analytical work product that justifies the decision, GTFS·X handles it.
How pricing works
The core editor is free to use without limit. You can build, validate, and export GTFS feeds — including GTFS-Flex — without ever paying. Anonymous users save their work in the browser; signing up for a free account adds cloud sync for up to a few feeds at no charge.
Paid plans add two categories of features that don't make sense as a free service:
- Premium feed management. We host your feed at a stable URL (
feeds.gtfsx.com/<slug>/gtfs.zip) that you can hand to riders, regulators, and the Mobility Database. Includes auto-generated rider-facing embed widgets and a mini-site, plus draft preview links for stakeholder review. - Route planning features. Cost estimation, demographic coverage analysis, demand-propensity mapping, Title VI equity reporting, and snapshot-based scenario comparison — the work product an agency actually hands to a board or a federal grant reviewer.
See the pricing page for the specifics. The short version: Pro is for an individual operator or consultant; Team is for an agency or firm with unlimited members; Enterprise is for state DOTs and large consortiums. The free tier is not a trial — it's the permanent home for the editor.
Other tools in this space
GTFS·X is one of several tools agencies and consultants use to author and maintain GTFS feeds. Side-by-side comparisons covering features, pricing, and fit:
Get started
The fastest way to understand the tool is to open the editor and click around. If you want a guided walkthrough, see the quick start guide or the full documentation. If you're new to GTFS itself, the What is GTFS? primer is a good place to start.
About us
GTFS·X is created by Mark Egge, AICP. Mark is a transportation planner, technologist, and chair of the board for his local transit agency. GTFS·X was born out of the need for better GTFS authoring tools.