As the Apple adage goes, “there’s an app for that” — and traveling is no exception. Most of us use travel apps, like Uber, Google Maps, or Airbnb, to navigate, reserve and get around. We have used vacation apps for so long now that many travelers are entirely loyal to one trip app or another for particular travel needs. However, it’s a new year, and technology keeps improving.
It could be time to replace some of the dated travel apps on your phone or add a few new ones to improve how you plan, book, and navigate your time off this year. Whether you are an Android or Apple traveler; looking for planning, booking, or navigating apps, our list of the best travel apps of 2023 will have something new for you!
Here is everything you will find out about on this page:
- Must-Have Travel Planning Apps
- Top Apps for Booking Travel
- Leading GPS Apps for Driving and Hiking
- Infographic: The 30 Best Travel Apps of 2023
Best Apps for Planning a Trip
Wanderlog - Travel Planner
The Wanderlog trip planner app lets you create, edit, re-sort, and expand trip itineraries in seconds. Plan entire vacations out point by point, including lodging, site-seeing, rest-stops, and every other detail using real-time Google Maps information automatically loaded into your schedule. With the tap of a button, you can get instant driving directions between your destinations, and Wanderlog will calculate the travel time between each location and the total time for each day in your schedule.
TripIt: Travel Planner
When you start making travel plans, your inbox fills with confirmation emails, itineraries, and reservation receipts. It’s easy to lose track of all this information. That is where the TripIt trip planning app comes in handy! Simply forward your confirmation emails to [email protected], and the app will curate a full itinerary for your trip. Upload additional information for each point on your schedule, such as documents and files, and then you will be one savvy, organized traveler!
Lambus | Travel Planner
Lambus is one of the best travel-planning apps for expense tracking, especially when splitting the cost of a vacation; it helps track who paid for this meal or that parking meter. Like the other two best apps for travel planning, Wanderlog and TripIt, Lambus lets you create itineraries with all your planned stops and points of interest. Store confirmation documents and bookings, or even book transportation directly through the app!
Best Apps for Planning Road Trips
Roadtrippers - Trip Planner
Are you planning a long multi-day cross-country road trip with numerous stops using Google Maps? Take a look at Roadtrippers. This road trip planner is a workhorse app that lets you create route itineraries with all your visits before your trip, then uses turn-by-turn navigation to execute your plan. The app will suggest the best places along your route to add and additionally calculate estimated fuel costs for your entire trip.
GasBuddy: Find & Pay for Gas
An excellent road trip planner app to consider is GasBuddy. The program’s primary function is to help you locate the cheapest gas near you and display this information on a detailed map or list of all nearby gas stations with updated prices. GasBuddy also shows you the spread between the lowest and highest gas prices in your area to further help you determine if heading to a particular gas station is worth the extra time.
iExit Interstate Exit Guide
Ever wish interstate exit service signs for food, lodging, and gas were more detailed or told you what was beyond the next exit? That’s what the iExit Interstate app will do. Using real-time location information, it shows what businesses are at the next 100 off-ramps ahead of you. iExit is the perfect app for planning a road trip if you prefer to plan stops in real-time instead of mapping your entire vacation itinerary out ahead of time.
Best Apps for Travel Packing Lists
PackPoint - Travel Packing List
We all experience feeling or realizing that we forgot to pack something. PackPoint can help ease that stress by creating a customized travel packing list for each trip based on your destination, duration, gender, travel purpose, activities, and weather forecast. The app generates a packing checklist for each vacation with quantities to pack. You can add and remove items, edit quantities then save your list to put those packing woes behind you!
PackTeo - Travel Packing List
PackTeo is an excellent alternative to PackPoint that also lets you create travel packing checklists for every type of travel possible with every possible situation. The app generates lists based on various considerations, including your transportation and lodging choices, like flying or camping, and activities you might engage in, like sailing or partying. With the PackTeo app, every packing list is customizable for your vacation, and there is even a to-do list section to keep your packing and readying all in one travel list.
Available on Android
Packing Pro
Are you creating multiple packing lists that are somewhat identical yet require you to wrack your brain from A-Z for everything you need every time you plan a trip? If only there were an app that let you create a master catalog of all the items you ever bring on trips to pull from when creating each vacation packing list. Oh wait, there is — Packing Pro for iOS does just that, plus everything else you could want from a packing list app!
Available on iOS
Best Apps for Tracking and Booking Cheap Flights
Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker
There’s a reason Flightradar24 is the best flight tracker app on the market today. The flight app is jam-packed with features that make it perfect for anyone from the casual user to the wanna-be flight traffic controller. Search for individual flights to track flight status, delays, ETAs, and weather conditions. Get real-time airport conditions, such as the current average flight delay. In addition to the plethora of valuable features, Flightradar24 gives you fun stuff like a Cockpit View and a real-time world map of flights worldwide!
Hopper: Flights, Hotels & Cars
Hopper is currently one of the all-around best travel app companions in the store today. The app helps find the best deals on flights, hotels, vacation rentals, and rental cars. Focusing specifically on its utility as a cheap flight app, Hopper is a scout that uses its amazingly accurate price predictions to notify you of the best time to book a flight directly through the app. Additionally, the flight app’s deal calendar helps you find the best travel dates for your vacation if you know where you want to go but are flexible about when.
Skyscanner – Travel Deals
Long before Hopper, there was Skyscanner, and it’s still one of the best flight apps available today. While you can’t book flights directly with Skyscanner, the company has a long proven track record for predicting the cheapest flight dates and will notify you of tracked flight price changes. Skyscanner excels at open-ended searches, helping you find unique deals worldwide when you have no predetermined destination.
Best Apps for Hotels and Apps Like Airbnb
Booking.com: Hotels & Travel
Booking.com is one of the best hotel apps to download, no matter what kind of traveler you are. The primary reason Booking.com is valuable is the sheer volume of hotel listings available to book through the app. With a claimed “27 million hotels, vacation rentals, homes, apartments, and other unique places to stay,” the hotel app will eliminate the need to bounce between various booking services when comparing prices.
HomeExchange - House Swapping
HomeExchange is a vacation rental app like Airbnb that is more of a barter system. As the name suggests, the app lets you swap homes with another member. HomeExchange facilitates transactions with “Guest Points,” which are earned through hosting and spent by staying at another house. Your home is assigned a guest point value per night. The app is versatile in that you can either reciprocally exchange homes with another member on the same dates or at different times. You can also use guest points to book a stay without mutual exchange.
Hostelworld: Hostel Travel App
If the social aspect of Airbnb appeals to you, but if you are looking for a cheaper deal, you should check out Hostelworld. Part booking app, part social media, the Hostelworld travel app lets you browse over 16,000 hostels around the globe and see who is staying at each location before you book. Hostelworld users create profiles in the app; you can check these out to get a sense of your future travel friends and even chat with fellow hostelites before booking. The app is a great way to expand your travel network!
Best Apps for Planning RV and Camping Trips
Outdoorsy - Rent an RV
Owning an RV can be liberating, but the cost-prohibitive ownership — not so much. Enter Outdoorsy — one of the best apps for RV travel. Outdoorsy makes RVing more accessible and is the perfect solution for anyone wanting to try RV camping without committing to a large rig parked outside your house 90% of the year. The app is like Airbnb for RVs; browse listings by location, travel dates, and vehicle types, then book instantly to reserve anything from a customized camper van to a luxury Class A drivable.
The Dyrt: Tent & RV Camping
Finding the perfect campsite online can be a painstaking process with information scattered across private camping and State park websites or Google Maps. The Dyrt simplifies this process, aggregating all the camping information on the web to provide you with a one-stop shop for all your campsite booking needs. The Dyrt is a community-led organization that crowdsources all the best campsites in the U.S. and presents that information in a highly user-friendly and easy-to-navigate format, making it one of the best camping apps and RV trip planners available today!
Recreation.gov
Not to be outdone, the federal park and land management organizations that comprise recreation.gov have contracted the creation of a free camping app that aggregates thousands of campsites across the U.S. for you to discover and reserve in the app! The app’s real-time availability feature lets you book campsites on the go, and the QR feature enables you to pay for a site you discovered on your own by scanning a code where available.
Best Apps for Rideshare and Taxis
Uber - Request a Ride
Based on sheer availability, Uber is one of the best rideshare apps today. It is well-established in most U.S. cities and is one of the oldest car-sharing apps. Alternatively, Lyft is another excellent app like Uber; we recommend using both and seeing which works best for you. The two apps are very similar at this stage in the rideshare game! But if you are traveling internationally, Uber is your best bet; no other ride app comes close to its global coverage.
Curb - Request & Pay for Taxis
The Curb app is one of the best apps for taxi rides. Its interface is similar to Uber but connects you with taxi services in 65 major U.S. cities. Prices are more transparent; with the cab meter out of play, you will see your trip’s cost up front in the app. In certain cities, the app lets you pay for your fare through Curb, just like Uber, removing the need to pay with cash or a credit card.
Via - Smarter Mobility
Although lesser known nor as widely available than Uber and Lyft, Via offers cheaper and more environmentally friendly rideshares in large cities. The app combines private cars and public transit by matching you with a nearby driver who likely already has passengers. You will share your ride to your destination with drop-offs and pick-ups like public transportation. Expect some walking to or from your pickup and dropoff location. With just a few extra steps and a little sharing, Via can cost no more than your standard public transportation options.
Best Apps for Dog Walking and Sitters
Rover—Dog Sitters & Walkers
Rover is the Uber of dog walking apps in that it connects pet owners with nearby trusted dog sitters and walkers. All 200,000 registered sitters and walkers on the app are background checked by Rover and backed by 24/7 support providing you with peace of mind. Rover can connect you with various pet services, from overnight boarding at your sitter’s home to house-sitting your pet and home to simple walking or just a drop-in visit!
Wag! - Dog Walkers & Sitters
Newer but already a fierce competitor to Rover, Wag! is one of the best apps for arranging dog sitters and walkers. It’s ideal for scheduling last-minute appointments using the on-demand feature. Each dog walker and pet sitter on the app goes through background checks, and you can monitor every walk your pet takes with real-time GPS tracking that even sends you instant pee/poop notifications. Wag! also offers boarding, overnight sitting, drop-in visits, vet consultations, and one-on-one personalized dog training sessions!
PetBacker: Dog Cat Pet Sitting
Another great pet-sitting app to consider is PetBacker. Boarding, sitting, walking, daycare, and grooming availability can vary by location, so if you are having trouble finding services in your area, someone could be close to you through a different app! All three apps, Rover, Wag! and PetBacker, also offer cat-sitting services. PetBacker ensures your pet during the booking duration, including emergency vet coverage and accidental injury insurance.
Best Apps for GPS and Traffic
Google Maps
Having just celebrated its 18th birthday, Google Maps is a titan in the GPS app industry. The sheer volume of data that Google Maps has collected from its users over the years enables it to be one of the best driving apps, still nearly two decades since its inception. Whether you walk, drive, cycle or take a bus to your destination; Google Maps is a no-brainer traffic app every traveler needs.
Citymapper: All Your Transport
Citymapper solves the problem of bouncing from app to app when comparing transportation options. Backed by the data of Google, Uber, Apple, Lyft, and major global localities, the app lets you compare route options for almost every mode of transportation except flying. Find routes you never knew existed by combining Uber and Lyft rideshares, bus routes, nearby E-scooters, traditional cabs, local light rail, plus regular walking and driving navigation. Citymapper is one of the best navigation apps for travelers using various ground transportation methods.
Best Apps for Hiking and Backpacking
AllTrails: Hike, Bike & Run
Since 2010, the AllTrails community-driven and crowdsourced app has been a staple trail source for hikers, bikers, and runners globally. Over a decade of accumulated trail knowledge with nearly half a million routes at your disposal, plus a smooth user interface, makes AllTrails the best GPS for hiking or app for backpacking in the store today! Use the app to chart your next hiking trip or to discover paths in your backyard you never knew existed!
PeakVisor - 3D Maps & Peaks ID
If you are an avid trailblazer, you don’t want to miss PeakVisor. No other hiking apps can provide you with the level of detail that PeakVisor can with its 3D topographic maps. Grasp the actuality of the peaks and valleys in your proposed route using its high-precision terrain modeling. Answer all your questions on the trail using the app’s mountain identification features that let you find the name of peaks using your phone’s camera.
TrekPack - Packing Checklist
TrekPack is simple but one of the best hiking apps you can download today. The app is a packing checklist explicitly tailored for backpacking. Generate automated checklists based on your travel duration, accommodation mode, pack weight preferences, and more! Customize your lists, then check off your items as you pack. Use the app to track and optimize your pack weight and share your lists with your travel companions to more easily share the load!
Available on Android
