The 7 Best Trip Planner Apps to Help You Travel Better

Let's face it, life can get pretty crazy sometimes.

That's why we're all about taking that sweet escape for a much-needed break from the world. But, you know how it goes, just when you're ready to unwind and start planning your trip, you're hit with a mountain of stuff to do.

Sorting out bookings, arranging schedules and then trying to align all these plans and paperwork with your travel buddies—it's enough to give anyone a headache!

For many of us, planning a holiday or organizing travel itineraries is the starting point of the fun, like the first wave of excitement that keeps us pumped and ready for the adventure ahead.

My go-to when it comes to making planning easier? A trusted trip planning app! A well-designed trip planner app is a true lifesaver in the travel-planning journey.

What Are Trip Planner Apps?

Anytime you plan a trip, you’ll want to figure out things to do, places to see and activities to experience.

After all, if you’re visiting a new city for the first time, you won’t know everything the city has to offer.

Even if you’re returning to a city because you loved it so much from a previous vacation, maybe you want to try new restaurants and tourist attractions to spice things up.

Trip planner apps help you build itineraries and discover fun places to go with friends. These are especially helpful when planning trips with friends because maybe everyone wants different things.

Good trip planning tools should enable you to collaborate with travel buddies when planning a trip and offer central repositories where everyone can stay on top of what’s happening.

In short, trip planning apps have become a hit because they make life so much simpler when you're putting together your travel plans.

You'll find tons of trip planner apps, each with its own special twist that makes trip planning a breeze.

A top-notch trip planning app should make the itinerary-planning process a walk in the park and help you piece together details without breaking a sweat. So instead of getting buried in organization, you're actually getting stoked for your journey!

What Is the Best Trip Planner for Group Travel?

Every traveler is different and so are the travel apps. But one thing most people have in common is that travel experiences are best shared with friends and loved ones.

This is why I've rounded up the best trip planning apps, focusing on ones that can be used to plan group trips with friends. You no longer have to be stuck with the same old Google Sheet or notes app that doesn’t make life easier, especially when planning for a group.

Though not all travel apps help with trip planning when it comes to building activity itineraries. Some of the best travel apps focus more on booking flights or accommodations; other online tools like packing apps are for backpackers to help prep gear.

Here, our main focus is on trip planning apps specifically so you can find the best one for you to build, edit and share travel itineraries using the features they offer. 

Here are the 7 best trip planning apps you'll want to download and try out, each with its own specialties!

7 Best Trip Planning Apps for Stress-Free Travel

1. Pilot

Pilot is a social trip planner that helps you discover fun things to do in different cities, build travel itineraries and easily collaborate with friends while planning your trip.

By specializing in group travel through its unique collaboration features, Pilot enables you to overcome the challenges of coordinating logistics with friends, accommodating different travel styles and reconciling various travel preferences so you can create memories and have a blast.

Best For:

Making travel plans with friends and collaborating with others to bring the joy back into building shared travel experiences.

Why You’ll Like It:

As a social trip planner, Pilot makes travel planning an immersive experience and more than a mere task because you can do it with your favorite travelmates (or yourself)!

Pilot makes it fun and easy to share and relive your favorite travel memories with many useful features.

Whether it’s brainstorming ideas, seeking inspiration, voting for places to visit or discussing a group budget, Pilot has got you covered.

In Pilot you can manage multiple trips, invite friends to each trip and view which group is attached to each one.

All guests in each trip can access the trip planner and collaborate on discovering activities & accommodations and building itineraries, with a chat tool, voting functionality and group notifications all built in!

My personal favorite feature? The fact that you can set different icons for different types of itinerary items and use color-coding!

Its user-friendly interface is a delight for perfectionists who love categorizing events, activities and attractions in different forms. Plus it integrates all your travel ideas into one place.

Travelers can also use the app to import essential travel details like flight booking numbers. If you're looking for something both more fun & flexible than a plain-old Google Doc or spreadsheet to plan your trip, you've come to the right place!

Why You Might Not Like It:

If planning trips yourself isn’t your thing or you’re a solo traveler who doesn’t vibe with itineraries, Pilot may not be ideal—but it does offer some cool AI functionality to help you find places to visit and things to do so you don’t feel left out still, like Quick Start for generative itinerary-building or Discover for automated trip suggestions!

The Pilot trip planning app is also in its early stages with tons of cool new features being added every month. This is also a good thing—it means Pilot values customer feedback more than you might expect. There’s even a “Product Suggestions” feature directly accessible in the support chatbox so you can have your voice heard!

Top Features:

• Plan trips together in real time with your travel crew, friends or family!
• Chat with your travel crew and vote on travel itineraries!
• Import and store your travel information for offline access.
• Create notes, reminders, packing lists and travel wishlists!
• FlightDeck, Pilot's blog, contains an extensive database of destination guides, things to do and where to stay!

Pricing:

• Totally free!

Versions:

• Web and Android (iOS coming soon!)

2. TripIt

Best For:

People with complex travel plans and lots of bookings made from different sources.

TripIt is a minimal and old-school travel planner to organize all the essential details for trips so you can keep all your documents and logistical details in a central place with reminders, notifications and maps.

Why You’ll Like It:

TripIt is straightforward in what it does. It gathers and syncs all travel-related booking and confirmation emails related to flights, transportation and accommodation to form an itinerary. This way, you don’t have to spend time searching for them individually.

What's great about TripIt is the ability to automatically import and sync your booking and ticket reservations via email forwarding. This will input your booking or any ticket information onto your planner without you needing to do it manually.

For example, if you have your flight information, Airbnb reservations and event tickets in your email, all you'll have to do is forward them to TripIt. They'll automatically sync them into a master itinerary for you to use.

If you find yourself setting multiple alarms for the airport, TripIt will automatically remind you when it’s time to leave based on your ticketing information.

TripIt Pro, the premium version, sends important alerts regarding flight status, delays and gate numbers, improving your experience even more.

The app also has a neighborhood safety score which can be really helpful for solo travelers and backpackers from minority groups; you can also filter neighborhoods to visit by with a personal safety preference.

We think the app is best suited for busy professionals on business tours and last-minute travelers who don’t have the time to sort through their trip details.

Why You Might Not Like It:

If you believe that travel planning should be fun and as exciting as taking the trip, TripIt might not be for you. TripIt doesn’t scream “fun."

It's owned by the enterprise technology company SAP, which means the interface is very formal and stiff, so probably not what you're looking for if your trip is for leisure.

If you’re looking for features other than organizing booking details, such as interesting travel content, guides for inspiration and the ability to add specific attractions, you’re out of luck.

TripIt has a map view to import all your trip details onto a map and an itinerary list that resembles a social media timeline, and it can even autosuggest venues when you’re making plans, but it’s not great for discovering attractions, things to do or places to visit.

It’s also not the best for planning trips with friends. Itineraries can be shared, but it's hard to do much collaboration on them if you're taking a group trip.

If you’re traveling with friends, TripIt is satisfactory if only one person does most or all the planning. Then you can use TripIt to share all the details your travelmates need once you’re ready for your trip to begin.

All in all, TripIt is best if you’re not using it to plan your trip but instead want a tool to help you organize and share trip details that you already planned & booked elsewhere.

Top Features:

• Automatically imports travel details from your inboxes.
• Has neighborhood-safety scores.
• Provides flight information from your bookings, notifications, map views of your activities, etc.

Pricing:

• The basic version is free but you’ll probably need TripIt Pro, which costs $49 per year, to get the full value.

Versions:

• iOS, Android and web

Still unsure if you should use TripIt? Check out our in-depth TripIt review to learn more about its features and pros & cons!

3. HipHerd

Best For:

Travelers who want to save their travel inspiration in one place and don't need or want advanced planning functionality.

Why You’ll Like It:

HipHerd makes sure you don’t lose track of exciting destinations, inspiring travel stories, adventure trips and other information you come across when surfing the web at random.

Essentially, you can gather and save travel ideas at your own pace using this platform. This way, you'll have a ton of interesting attractions lined up when you start planning an itinerary.

You can also create boards with lists of places to visits, hotels, aetc. for each destination on your trip, categorize relevant details and share them with others for real-time collaboration. Once you have sorted your itinerary, it will be displayed on a map to picture your trip at a glance.

Perhaps most helpfully, you can browse “travel boards” by other users to get inspiration.

Why You Might Not Like It:

If you’re looking for a travel planner, HipHerd will not deliver. The travel itinerary extension can help you store inspiration and destinations, but you’ll need another travel planning app to help you with the actual planning.

You can discover things to do and places to visit and add them to your board, but it’s not clear how they sort or filter suggestions and how they display boards is more in the style of Pinterest than a helpful travel itinerary.

HipHerd isn't for you if you’re looking for essential features like the ability to store important travel details like flight information and track your budget to give you an idea of expenses.

You can share travel boards with others who can gain editing access, but that’s the extent of any collaboration features, so HipHerd isn’t the best for planning trip with friends.

Top features:

• Curate mood boards for destinations.
• Downloadable Chrome extension.
• TripAdvisor partnership for finding and booking deals for things like hotels.
• Sample trips and travel boards to browse.
• Travel-personality quiz to curate content to your preferences.

Pricing:

• Free

Versions:

• Web

4. Wanderlog

Best for:

Travelers looking for a decent, all-around trip planner for creating & sharing itineraries, tracking expenses, creating checklists and more.

Why You’ll Like It:

If you want a dependable trip planner app that does a little bit of everything, then Wanderlog can get the job done.

Wanderlog is an all-purpose trip planner for building and mapping trip itineraries all in one place. You can share your trips with friends and have them contribute to the planning process as well!

It also has AI functionality to help you create trip itineraires if you’re looking for ideas. Plus you can import details form flight & hotel bookings and track costs to manage budgets.

What makes Wanderlog stand out is that you can build your own travel guides for certain types of trips, share them with the public for inspiration and receive likes or you could like & upvote other people’s guides too.

Why You Might Not Like It:

Wanderlog is a go-to safe option for planning trips that does most things you need it to well enough and in a relatively clean & easy-to-use dashboard, but it’s not the best in any one category.

You can share trips with friends and have them collaborate with real-time editing, but it doesn’t have any advanced chat or communication tools to help facilitate the collaboration.

Its AI features for creating travel itineraries are nice but they suggest basic daily itinerary items and can’t edit or interact with what you might already have.

Discovering things to do and places to visit requires some manual work and even then automated imports from the internet require the Chrome extension, which isn’t free lest you upgrade to Wanderlog’s premium version, which also isn’t free.

And of course, the premium version is also a little pricey for budget travelers. There are other things you can’t do without it as well, such as exporting trip details, gaining offline access, unlimited AI assistance and more.

Top Features:

• AI tool for itinerary suggestions.
• Expense-tracking and cost-splitting features.
• Guides to local and authentic travel.

Pricing:

• Free or $59.99/year for the Pro version.

Versions:

• iOS, Android and web

5. Roadtrippers

Best For:

Anyone who only wants to plan a road trip!

Why You’ll Like It:

As the name suggests, the RoadTripper app is specially built for road-trip enthusiasts who want to have a heads-up about interesting attractions along their chosen route.

It also shows dining and lodging options that come in handy for people on long journeys. Every interesting stop is pinned on a map so that you can add what’s interesting to your itinerary.

There’s also the ability to search for specific attractions using filters. Once done, the itinerary can be edited, saved and shared with others who partake in the trip. Talk about useful!

But should you try Roadtrippers Plus? The premium version of Roadtrippers allows you to extend your trip, adding up to 150 waypoints onto your journey. It's also ad-free!

The premium version comes with its AI tools that help you plan your road trip for you, with suggestions for stops along the way.

Why You Might Not Like It:

For one, if you don’t plan on taking road trips often, the subscription will cost you a bit, $59.99 annually. While Roadtrippers have the basic version for free, it’s very limited in features.

The app is also not very user-friendly in terms of navigation, so you’ll most likely need to bring your laptop along with you on your trip and use data to access your travel itineraries.

You can share your itinerary with friends if you have any road-trip buddies, but the collaboration features for trip planning are limited.

Top Features:

• Gives you info on lesser-known attractions.
• AI tool that helps you plan your road trip.
• Features for RV travelers such as suggestions for RV parking spots.
• Paid upgrades for roadside assistance.

Pricing:

• Their paid version costs $55.99 per year, with a 7-day free trial.

Versions:

• iOS, Android and web

Check out our Roadtrippers app review if you'd like to learn more about the features that come with the app and pros & cons!

6. GEOVEA

Best For:

Travelers who are super planners, serious about the time schedules, budgeting and logistics of the trip down to the fine details.

Why You’ll Like It:

GEOVEA aims to make itinerary building easy for travelers with its detailed user interface. Once a destination is selected, activities for each day of the trip can be selected and dragged into time slots.

It also allows you to keep track of transportation, accommodation and other bookings made, including what’s yet to be done. Then, you can estimate costs for each activity and edit them later on. You can share your itineraries with friends and family as well.

Why You Might Not Like It:

If you’re looking for an app, this might not be the travel planner solution for you. GEOVEA’s main drawback is that it’s only a web-based platform, although travel content can be viewed using mobile.

Secondly, it’s not a platform for collaboration to plan trips in groups, although itineraries are shareable.

Third, it's not super flexible. So if you like to plan your trip your way, you might just be better off with some of the other options on this list.

Lastly, although its user interface is detailed, it can be a little clunky and not very appealing.

Top Features:

• Intuitive itinerary builder with integrated services like Yelp.
• Easily track expenses, transportation, lodging, etc.
• Shareable to your travel friends and family!

Pricing:

• Standard package is free with a limited number of itineraries.
• Other subscriptions are available at $20 for six months, $50 for one year and $80 for one year with additional premium features.

Versions:

• Web

7. Tripadvisor

Best For:

Travelers who want tips and recommendations from other travelers and book accommodations, flights and things to do straight from the same platform.

Why You’ll Like It:

Tripadvisor is one of the largest leaders when it comes to review-based travel bookings.

With their comprehensive public forums, you can find just about any information you’d need for any destination, transportation, attraction or accommodation. You’ll also be able to book and create your trips straight from their app, from hotels to excursions & activities!

Its “Destination Forums” are akin to Reddit and offer user-generated suggestions. And it offers a “Digital Passport” so you can cross off places you’ve been.

And of course it has AI tools to help you plan your trip with automated suggestions.

Tripadvisor makes it easy to navigate different activities, explore different options and compare prices and ratings of different accommodations.

Why You Might Not Like It:

If you want any control over planning your trip, Tripadvisor is certainly not the app for you. The trip planner from Tripadvisor is not very user-friendly and fun to use.

For example, it’s almost impossible to import other bookings or information into your travel planner.

You can share your trips with friends and let them help you plan your trips but the collaboration features aren’t very advanced.

That being said, it's a great way to browse through all the different options out there. You'll likely find a lot of ideas that you hadn't thought of before!

Top features:

• A platform to share and read public reviews and recommendations and book all without leaving the app.
• Database of attractions and things to do with reviews and ratings.
• Trusted platform amongst millions of travelers.

Pricing:

• Free
• TripAdvisor Plus ($99/year): discounted rates on over 100,000 flight prices, hotel bookings, experiences and car rentals.

Versions:

• iOS, and Android and web

Alternatives:

• Spot

Time to Get Planning Your Trip!

So, this is my list of the top trip planner apps.

Make sure you find one that helps you plan a trip with friends so you can have a fun, stress-free vacation.

If you're up to trying out an up-and-coming trip planner, join us on Pilot! We specialize in planning trips with friends so you and your crew can experience the ultimate fun together. Plus, it’s free!