Three related things sit close together in Holloway's Menu, saved routes, member-shared GPX loops, and sharing a route with someone before you ride, and they don't all behave the same way once you look at what's actually free and what needs Holloway Premium. Worth untangling properly rather than assuming they're one bundle.
Saved routes: Holloway Premium, start to finish
Once you've strung a few lanes together in Plan Route mode, a "+ Save this route" link appears in the route panel. Give it a name and it's stored against your account, reachable afterward from Menu > Account > My saved routes. It's a genuinely useful thing to have, plan a route once, ride it again next month without rebuilding it lane by lane, but it only exists as an extension of route planning itself, and entering Plan Route mode at all is a Holloway Premium feature. There's no separate free tier of saved routes to unlock, if you can plan a route, you can save it, and if you can't plan one, there's nothing to save yet.
One detail worth knowing: a saved route doesn't freeze a snapshot of the lanes at the moment you saved it. It stores the ordered list of lane and stop IDs, then resolves that list live against the current map every time you reload it. If a lane you saved gets re-graded, or picks up a seasonal closure flag, that shows up correctly the next time you open the saved route, rather than the route quietly going stale.
Member loops: free to browse, paid to take with you
Member loops are a different thing entirely, a whole GPX track another rider has uploaded and had approved by a moderator, browsable in the "Member loops" section of the sidebar, grouped by county so it doesn't turn into one long list as more get added. This side is genuinely free: you can see the loop's name, its description, its distance, and its full track drawn on the map, no account and no subscription needed. What's gated is taking it with you, the "Download GPX" button on a loop's own detail panel needs Holloway Premium, the same as every other GPX export on the site.
Every member loop carries its own "not independently verified" disclaimer too, worth remembering, a moderator does a sanity check before approving one, not a lane-by-lane legal audit of the whole route, so treat it the same way you'd treat any rider's personal recommendation, useful, not gospel.
Sharing a route: bundled with planning, not a separate gate
"Share route" sends a plain-text summary of your planned route, lane count, total distance, the first few names, and a Google Maps link to where it starts, over WhatsApp, text or email. It isn't separately paid-gated as its own feature, but since it only appears inside the route panel, and getting into route planning at all is what needs Holloway Premium, it ends up behind the same door in practice. Built for the sensible habit of telling someone where you're actually riding before you go, not for posting a route publicly.
The actual line, drawn simply
Finding and browsing is free: searching lanes, filtering by difficulty or type, and looking at a member loop's name, description and track on the map. Taking something away with you, planning it, saving it, downloading it as GPX, sharing it, or navigating it live, is Holloway Premium. That's the same split that runs through the rest of the app, and it's worth knowing up front rather than discovering it one gated button at a time.
Holloway's free to browse, every legal green lane in England and Wales with its classification, difficulty, hazards and a Legal Status Search, plus every approved member loop's own name, description and route on the map. See our honest breakdown of what green laning actually costs for where the £20/year sits against everything else you'll spend getting into this. And if you're stringing more than a couple of lanes together, our guide to planning a multi-day route covers the planning side this piece doesn't.