Free Trip Planner Apps: Which Ones Are Actually Free

"Free" on an app store listing rarely means free for what you actually need. Most trip planners let you in the door for nothing, then put the one feature you were counting on — real-time flight alerts, offline maps, collaboration — behind a paywall a week before you leave. As of September 2026, here's what's genuinely free in five apps people search for, and where each one starts asking for a card number.

Tripperama

The free plan includes every core tab: Calendar, Transport, Stays, Activities and Travelers. That means flights, trains and rentals; hotels and rentals with check-in dates; a shared activity wishlist with voting; inviting other travelers with owner, editor or viewer roles; plus expenses (split equally or unequally, with a settle-up suggestion), documents with attachments, the reservation scanner, and a trip assistant you can ask questions of — all on the free tier.

The catch, such as it is: the two AI features (the reservation scanner and the trip assistant) are capped to a handful of uses per trip on free, plus a small monthly account-wide allowance, and flight status is on-demand only — you have to open the app and check, rather than getting a push when something changes. Pro ($9.99 for one trip, or $39/year) removes those AI caps and adds automatic flight/transit alerts with a 24h check-in reminder, weather/tide conditions for every day, activity suggestions for your destination, and calendar sync.

Wanderlog

Wanderlog bills itself as one app for planning, guides and bookings together, with real-time collaboration, a map view with route optimization, and expense tracking that splits bills across a group. It has a free version and a paid Pro subscription — the App Store lists several annual price points between $31.99 and $59.99. It also lists an AI assistant, flight status and offline access among its features, but Wanderlog's own pages don't say which of those are free and which need Pro; some reviewers report offline access and route optimization as Pro-only, worth checking before you rely on either mid-trip.

TripIt

TripIt's whole trick is forwarding confirmation e-mails to plans@tripit.com to build an itinerary, and that works on the free plan. Free also gets you trip details on the go and the ability to send plans to your calendar or share them with anyone. Where it turns into a paid product is real-time flight alerts, a seat and fare tracker, a 24-hour check-in reminder, up to 25 documents per trip, airport maps at 103 airports, and Inner Circle (automatic access for chosen people) — all bundled into TripIt Pro at $49/year after a 30-day trial. TripIt is built around one traveler's itinerary rather than group co-planning or splitting costs, so don't expect that from either tier.

Roadtrippers

If the trip in question is a road trip rather than flights and hotels, Roadtrippers is worth a separate mention because its free plan is genuinely limited: one saved trip, three stops, no collaboration, no export, no navigation. Getting more stops or trips, plus collaboration and navigation, means Basic ($35.99/year), Pro ($49.99/year, 5 trips, 50 stops) or Premium ($59.99/year, unlimited trips, 150 stops, offline maps and RV-specific tools). For anything past a short weekend drive, the free tier runs out fast.

Splitwise

Splitwise only does one thing — splitting expenses with friends — and it does it on both iOS and Android. The free plan works but has ads and a daily cap on how many expenses you can log. Pro removes the ads and the cap, and adds receipt scanning, currency conversion, spending charts, itemized bills and custom default splits. It has no itinerary, flight or document features on either plan, which is fine if expenses are the only thing you need solved.

What This Means for Picking One

• Tripperama: every core tab (calendar, transport, stays, activities, travelers, docs, expenses) is free; Pro removes AI caps and adds alerts, weather/tide and calendar sync.
• Wanderlog: broad free feature set, but which specific extras (AI assistant, offline access, route optimization) require Pro isn't spelled out by Wanderlog itself.
• TripIt: forwarding e-mails to build an itinerary is free; real-time alerts and the check-in reminder are Pro-only, and it's built for one traveler, not a group splitting costs.
• Roadtrippers: free plan caps you to one trip and three stops — fine for testing it, not for planning an actual road trip.
• Splitwise: free plan works but is capped and ad-supported; good if expenses are all you need.

None of these are lying about being free — they're just free for different slices of the problem. If you're planning with other people and want flights, stays, a shared activity list, documents and who-owes-whom all in one place without hitting a paywall on day one, that combination is what Tripperama's free plan covers. If flight alerts, weather for every day of the trip or calendar sync matter enough to pay for, Pro is $9.99 for a single trip or $39 for the year — otherwise the free plan keeps working exactly as before.