Read your running shoes.
Flip a shoe over and take one photo. Sole Reader maps where the rubber has gone, estimates the miles you have left, reads how you land, and tells you what to look for in the next pair.
Takes about ten seconds · works on any phone
- crisp
- smoothing
- tread gone
- worn through
Outer heel worn through · heel striker · ~60 mi left
Photograph the sole
Flip one shoe over on a table or the floor. Whole sole in frame, toe at the top, good light, no flash. Both shoes side by side is fine too.
Three things the odometer cannot.
Miles left, not miles run
Two runners can put 300 miles on the same shoe and get very different soles. The rubber and the foam tell you where the pair actually is; the mileage only tells you where it should be.
How you land
Heel, midfoot or forefoot shows up as where the rubber goes first. It decides which part of the next shoe needs to be tough and which part can be soft.
What to buy next
Wore through the outer heel? You want a full rubber crash pad, not exposed foam. Inner-edge wear plus shin pain? That is the one case a stability shoe earns its keep.
The seven wear patterns.
Outer heel wear
The most common pattern on earth, and usually nothing to fix.
Inner edge wear
Wear on the inside of the heel and forefoot points to the foot rolling inward.
Outer edge wear
Wear all the way down the outside of the sole suggests the foot stays rolled outward.
Forefoot wear with a clean heel
Wear under the ball of the foot and toes with a crisp heel means you land on the forefoot.
Even midfoot wear
Wear spread from heel through the middle of the shoe means a flat, midfoot landing.
Toe drag and scuffed toe caps
Scuffing at the very front of the sole means the foot is not clearing the ground on the swing.
Even wear
Wear spread evenly across the sole is what a well-matched shoe and a balanced stride look like.
Honest about what a photo can and cannot say.
A vision model rates the wear in nine zones of the outsole from your photo: crisp, smoothing, tread gone, or worn through. That map is the fact. Everything after it is arithmetic done in plain code you could check: miles left comes from the wear plus the distance you enter, landing style from where the wear concentrates, and the next-shoe category from a short, conservative rule set.
Pronation is the one call we hedge, on purpose. Research that measures the foot directly finds only a loose link between how much it rolls and how the shoe wears, so we report a tendency, and we only suggest a stability shoe when the wear and a symptom you told us about point the same way.
Your photo is resized in your browser, read once, and discarded. Nothing is stored. Full method and sources.
Before you flip the shoe.
How accurate is it?
The wear map is a direct read of what is visible in your photo, zone by zone, and the miles-left estimate combines that with the distance you enter against the usual 300 to 500 mile lifespan of a road trainer. Landing style is well supported by where the rubber goes. Pronation is the softest call: outsole wear is a rough proxy that shoe stores use as a starting point, so we label it a tendency and only act on it when you also report a symptom.
What happens to my photo?
It is resized in your browser, sent once to the analysis model, and discarded. Sole Reader keeps no copy, no thumbnail, and no link between the photo and the result. Share links contain the wear map data only.
Does it work for trail, track spikes, or walking shoes?
Trail shoes yes, and the shoe picks switch to trail models. Walking shoes read fine too, though the lifespan math assumes running loads. Track spikes and football boots have no comparable outsole, so skip those.
Why does it ask which shoe is in the photo?
A sole photo alone can be read either way up, and inner versus outer edge is the whole story for pronation. Telling us left or right lets the read anchor the arch side correctly.
Is this medical advice?
No. It is the same kind of read a good shoe-store fitter does when they flip your old pair over, done from a photo. If you are injured, see a physiotherapist or a sports doctor. A shoe change is rarely the whole fix.