Discover the best travel apps that simplify your DIY trips, making travel planning, navigation, and organisation effortless.
Contents
- Introduction to the Best Travel Apps
- Ideas and Inspiration
- Flight and Transport Apps
- Accommodation Apps
- Activity and Experience Booking Apps
- Packing App
- Navigation and Maps
- Language and Communication Apps
- Currency Apps
- Safety and Health Apps
- Organisation and Itinerary
- VPN & eSIM
- Surfshark
- Entertainment
- Test Out These Travel Apps For Yourself!
Introduction to the Best Travel Apps
Although I like to use all sorts of resources when planning my travels, there are quite a few travel apps that can make life simpler. Using travel apps can really quicken and streamline the process of trip planning and be a helpful tool while you are abroad.
Take a look at the best travel apps that my family and I use.
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Ideas and Inspiration
Lucky Trip
Especially great for a weekend break, I use this app to quickly find the cheapest deals from my local airport. You just type in your dates, airport and budget and the app finds you a range of deals within seconds.
It suggests flights, destinations and places to stay. This gives you a great indication of which flights and destinations are within your budget without having to check all the flight prices and hotel prices separately.
Once I’ve found the destination I fancy, I book everything myself separately but you can choose whether to book through the app.
Jack’s Flight Club
This app alerts you to hundreds of cheap flights across the world, including error fares. It also has oodles of trip inspiration articles.
Amazing for finding blogs for practically every destination on earth and not just the ones that Google rates. Lots of smaller bloggers can be found here who have written useful travel guides and itineraries – including me!
Flight and Transport Apps
Skyscanner
My first port of call when searching for flights is Skyscanner. It finds you every flight price within seconds and you can choose your preference for direct, non-direct and which airline you prefer. You can even set up price alerts so it will notify you when the price drops.
I also use it to find out when the cheapest times of year are to fly to the destination that I am researching. I love searching for multi-centre trips, that can break up a long journey and make it cheaper and more enriching.
Note: I always choose the option to book directly with the airline so I don’t have any issues dealing with third parties.
Read more about how to find cheaper flights here.
Rentalcars
Great app for finding the cheapest prices for car hire abroad. Easy to use and reliable, this app almost always finds you the best deal and has free cancellation.
Rome2Rio
This app is fantastic for figuring out how you will get from A to B anywhere in the world. Simply type where you want to travel to and from and it will give you all the bus, train, boat and tram routes and prices.
Grab / Uber
Quick and efficient taxi ordering straight from your phone. Prices vary according to demand so not always the cheapest. It’s a good starting point to compare prices, for instance if you’ve arrived at an airport and you want to see if the airport taxi rank prices are a rip off.
In-Drive
We discovered this taxi app while we were in Mexico. It’s a bit different to Uber because you kind of negotiate a price with the driver before they pick you up. It was super useful in Mexico and helped us get the best prices for taxis. It covers the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia.
Accommodation Apps
Booking.com
Although not the cheapest, I find Booking.com to be the best app for finding accommodation. Easy to use and with great customer service – I really cannot fault them.
Read my guide to Booking.com here.
Vrbo
Vrbo used to be Owner’s Direct so it has a great range of villas and houses to rent around the world. It’s not as straight forward as Booking.com but it often has more listings for these type of rentals.
Hostelworld
This is the app my daughter uses for booking hostel accommodation. Not only does it specialise as a booking app for hostels, similar to Booking.com but it will also link you up with other travellers, especially useful for solo travellers who want to meet up with fellow explorers.
Activity and Experience Booking Apps
GuruWalk
For a free walking tour by a local guide, GuruWalk connect tourists with guides all around the world. Their mission is for you to be able to enjoy this type of tour any place you can imagine.
It is simple to use, just type in your destination and you will get a choice of pay-what-you-please walking tour options to book. It’s a fantastic introduction to a destination, find your bearings and get some good recommendations from a local.
Get Your Guide and Viator
Both these apps offer basically the same service. They find tours, tickets and experiences for activities in the area you request. Super useful and quick to see what’s on offer, read reviews and compare prices.
I also like the way you can usually pay at the last minute and that there are mostly free cancellation options.
Not all areas are well represented, in which case, you might want to ask the tourist board for ideas.
Tiqets
Here you can buy tickets for attractions all around the world, often with audio guides. I used Tiqet to buy my Acropolis tickets in Athens, as it was the cheapest option and they came with a free audio guide.
Please note: tickets are not refundable, which is why they have an option to buy cancellation insurance.
TripAdvisor
We usually use TripAdvisor to find restaurants. Although not all the reviews are genuine, it is a great app for finding restaurants and all sorts of other things like beauty spots and beaches.
See my guide to planning a perfect itinerary here.
Packing App
PackPoint
Packpoint creates a travel packing list based on destination, gender, travel dates, duration, type of travel, planned activities and weather forecast. Great for people who find packing a logistical nightmare and families. You can even share the packing list with your group.
For more packing tips, see my guide to smarter packing here.
Navigation and Maps
Google Maps
Google Maps uses GPS to give you directions whether by foot or car, all over the world. I am a huge fan of Google Maps and love the way you can download an area onto your phone so that it will work using the GPS even when you are offline.
Maps.me
Offline maps for exploring without data. Turn-by-turn navigation for android phones.
Language and Communication Apps
Google Translate
Instant translations with voice and camera features. I find the camera feature useful for translating menus and notices.
Duolingo
I have used Duolingo to learn Spanish. It’s designed to make learning languages easy. Perfect for learning basic phrases before your trip.
iTranslate
Real-time voice translations for conversations. Like having your own personal translator with you.
Currency Apps
XE Currency
Checks live foreign currency exchange rates. We use this all the time and to be honest it does make me a bit lazy and I become completely reliant on the app.
Safety and Health Apps
Trip Whistle
Global SOS – international emergency phone numbers for travellers abroad. Dial local emergency numbers at the touch of a button.
Life 360
The free version lets your chosen group know where you are and when you land at an airport. Super reassuring for anxious parents when children are travelling solo.
Organisation and Itinerary
TripIt
This handy app, is an easy way to organise all your itineraries, bookings and travel documents all in one place. You can sync it with your google calendar and it will even let you know when your flight is delayed and which gate to go to.
For more ideas about how to plan a perfect itinerary, see my guide here.
VPN & eSIM
Surfshark
SurfShark is an easy to use, affordable VPN for those who are not tech savvy (like myself). A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is like a private tunnel between you and your device. Your real location and IP address are hidden, your internet activity is encrypted (protecting you from hackers) and you can make it look like you’re in another country.
We mainly use it for What’s App and watching Netflix abroad but it can even help you book cheaper flights. You can read more about Surfshark here.
Saily eSIM
We find that SIM cards can be pretty pricey when you buy them at the airport so to ensure we have coverage as soon as we land, we buy an eSIM in advance.
There are many eSIMs available on the market but we think Saily is the best eSIM for international travel. Saily offers affordable mobile data in over 200 countries, and for frequent travellers – there’s the Saily Ultra subscription plan.
It’s really easy to set up and plans start from just $1.99.
🔗 Blog to Read: eSIM or Physical SIM: Which is Better for Travel in 2026
Entertainment
Netflix / Audible
For when I’m bored at the airport or on a flight with no inflight entertainment, I always download some favourite films and audiobooks to keep me company.
Test Out These Travel Apps For Yourself!
As you can see travel apps have become a vital tool for the modern day traveller. We are so lucky to have all these resources at our finger tips, things were very different for us before the internet!
I encourage you to test out some of these apps for yourself and see which ones you find most useful and beneficial for enhancing your trip planning and travel experience.
Which travel apps do you use? Share your favourites in the comments.
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