Camino de Santiago elevation gain: all 10 routes compared

By August Frederik Kramer, who has walked the Camino twice · Last updated 22 August 2026

Ask which Camino is hardest and the usual answer is "the Primitivo", with no number attached. Here are the numbers. All ten routes, measured the same way, plus the figure almost nobody bothers to work out: metres of ascent per kilometre. Depending on which question you actually mean, three different routes can honestly claim the title.

All 10 routes, ranked by steepness

Sorted by metres of ascent per kilometre, not total ascent. That is the difference between "a lot of climbing, because the route is long" and "steep".

What the ten routes actually look like

The same measurements as the table, drawn. The shape is the part a table cannot show: whether the climbing arrives as one wall or as a hundred small ones, and where in the walk it waits for you.

There are three right answers, not one

Which route is hardest depends on what you mean by hardest. Three answers, each defensible:

By total ascent: the Camino del Norte, 14,663 m. This is the figure that impresses, and it comes mostly from length: the route runs 831.6 km. The ascent is spread over many small climbs across weeks, rather than a few big passes.

Per kilometre: the Camino Lebaniego, 32.1 m/km. On any given kilometre, more height is gained here than on any other route in this table. It never appears on a plain totals table, because that kind of table rewards length rather than steepness.

Sustained over weeks: the Camino Primitivo, 22.1 m/km across 306.6 km. It is neither the steepest route here nor the one with the highest total, but it holds its gradient for the whole walk rather than concentrating it in one stage. That is probably why everyone assumes it is the hardest, and on this reading they are right.

Why every source gives a different number

Open two guidebooks and you will find two different elevation figures for the same route, sometimes thousands of metres apart. That is not sloppiness. It is a definition problem: elevation gain is not a measurement, it is the result of a calculation, and three choices inside that calculation move the answer a great deal.

The elevation model. Every height comes from a dataset, and datasets disagree with each other, particularly in narrow valleys and on steep ground.

The sampling interval. This is the biggest lever. Take a point every ten metres and you sum every ripple in the ground; take one every five hundred metres and you smooth away climbing that was actually walked. Same route, same underlying data, two very different totals.

Smoothing. Raw elevation data is noisy. With no smoothing at all, phantom ascent appears that nobody walked; with too much, real climbing that every pilgrim felt disappears from the number.

An elevation figure with no stated method is not something you can check. Here is ours.

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How we measured this

Every figure on this page comes from the routes' GPS tracks, measured against the SRTM 30 m elevation model, sampled every 100 m. All ten routes were calculated in exactly the same way.

That consistency is the actual point. The absolute number stays an estimate, and we are not claiming otherwise. But because every route went through the same process, the comparison between them holds up, which is precisely what you lose when you line up figures pulled from ten different sources.

One honest caveat: sampling at a fixed interval necessarily adds some ascent that was never actually walked, because the model jumps between two points rather than following the ground between them. That affects all ten routes equally, so it does not change the ranking, but it does mean these figures sit nearer the high end than the low one.

Elevation gain per stage

A route total says little about what any single day feels like. The Camino Francés averages 13.6 m per kilometre, and that average describes almost none of its actual days: the opening stage over the Pyrenees is a mountain day, and the meseta that follows is close to flat for hundreds of kilometres.

That is why every route's stage table now also lists ascent per stage, alongside distance, computed from the same track:

• Camino del Norte: 14,663 m over 831.6 km
• Vía de la Plata: 11,724 m over 994.6 km
• Camino Francés: 10,446 m over 768.6 km
• Camino Primitivo: 6,777 m over 306.6 km
• Camino Portugués: 6,519 m over 620.2 km
• Camino de Invierno: 4,941 m over 263.1 km

For a full elevation profile, with the ability to pull distance and ascent between any two points on a route, see elevation profiles.

Every figure on this page is published as an open dataset as well: the Camino elevation dataset, free to download and reuse under the ODbL, with the attribution line on the page.

Common questions

Which Camino has the most elevation gain?

The Camino del Norte, with 14,663 m of ascent over 831.6 km. That is only one of three defensible answers, though: per kilometre the Camino Lebaniego is steepest at 32.1 m/km, and the Camino Primitivo is the toughest to sustain over a multi-week walk, at 22.1 m/km across 306.6 km.

How much elevation gain is on the Camino Francés?

10,446 m of ascent over 768.6 km, measured from the GPS track, which works out to 13.6 m per kilometre. The climbing is very unevenly spread: the first stage over the Pyrenees alone accounts for 1,351 m over 25.9 km, and long, largely flat weeks follow it.

Why do elevation figures for the Camino disagree online?

"Elevation gain" is not one fixed number. It depends on which elevation model was used, how far apart the sample points are, and how much the resulting curve was smoothed. A densely sampled track adds up every small ripple in the ground and returns a higher figure than the same route sampled coarsely. A number without its method is not really comparable to another number without its method, which is why ours is stated below.

Is your elevation data more accurate than a guidebook’s?

Not necessarily more accurate, but more consistent. We measure all ten routes the same way, from the same elevation model, at the same sampling interval, so the routes are comparable to each other. Figures pulled from different sources rarely share a method, so they are not really comparable at all. The absolute number here is still an estimate; the comparison between routes is the reliable part.

Where can I see elevation gain per stage?

On each route’s own page. Every stage table lists that stage’s climb and its highest point, computed from the same track as the totals here.

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All guides · Compare all 10 Camino de Santiago routes