The Best Travel Apps for 2025

Under the umbrella name Google Travel are a few great resources. Take Google Flights, for example, which helps you research and compare flight options. It doesn’t let you buy tickets directly, however, which is why we classify it as a planning app rather than a booking one. In any event, these search tools are great for getting a quick estimate of what a flight might cost or how long it will take. Google Travel has other tools for researching destinations, too, such as recommended things to do and hotel reviews.

Consult Hopper before you buy a ticket. It tracks flight prices and gives you clear advice on the best time to buy, including through notifications when the price drops. What makes this travel app valuable is its level of detail. It doesn’t just tell you to wait to buy your ticket, but also gives you a date when the price will likely rise. You can book through Hopper, too, with extra cost options for cancellation and price freeze protection.

Find interesting places to stop during a road trip with Roadtrippers. With this app and website, you can explore a map of Canada and the US (and some parts of Mexico) that highlights roadside amusement parks, attractions, campsites, museums, restaurants, and more. When you find a site you like, just add it to your trip, and Roadtrippers draws your route accordingly. A free Roadtrippers account limits you to saving one trip with just three stops at a time. To create unlimited trips with up to 150 stops, save offline maps, and use a few RV-specific features, you need to pay for a $59.99-per-year Premium membership.

Booking.com is a site for booking accommodations, airport taxis, attractions, car rentals, flights, and tours. It’s especially good for helping you find great hotel rooms around the world that fit all your needs at the right price. Booking.com is part of Booking Holdings, Inc., which also owns Agoda.com, Kayak, Opentable.com, Priceline.com, and Rentalcars.com, so you might notice some similarities among these services. The app now has an AI feature that helps you decide where to go and what to do.

Like Wanderu, Busbud specializes in travel by motor coach or train. It has a clear interface and works worldwide. For some carriers, you can get a QR code in the app to show when boarding, saving you time in line at the ticket counter.

Once an app and site for reading about travel destinations, Culture Trip now primarily offers package tours. Search for the country or region you want to explore, and Culture Trip dishes up multiday trips to your destination of choice, such as an eight-day trekking adventure through Patagonia or a safari through Kenya and Tanzania. You book these tours directly through the app or website. Culture Trip also has plenty of recommendations and magazine-like articles, too, covering arts, food, and regional activities.

Expedia is an all-in-one travel search and purchase site, or fare-aggregator site. In other words, you can search for accommodations, car rentals, and flights across many providers to get the best options. You purchase or reserve your travel details right from Expedia, not the airline, hotel, or other provider. Expedia is part of Expedia Group, which also owns Hotwire.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, and Trivago, among other travel aggregators, so you might notice similarities among them.

Hotels.com is a search and booking site for accommodations, though it isn’t just for hotel rooms. The site also has apartments, bed and breakfasts, motels, and vacation homes you can explore and book. Hotels.com is part of Expedia Group and shares similarities with some of its sister brands, such as Hotwire.com, Orbitz, and others. Warning: Hotels.com can be fickle when a US user accesses it from abroad. You might end up in a localized version of the site that doesn’t price things in dollars or isn’t even in English.

​You might panic at the notion of having to book a hotel room at the last minute. For travelers ready to fly by the seat of their pants, there’s Hotel Tonight. This travel app specializes in selling same-day hotel reservations, often at steep discounts. It has options to book in advance, too, but the best deals are same-day bookings.

Hotwire, one of the brands that Expedia Group owns, is a travel aggregator search and purchase site (much like Expedia itself). The web version is a one-stop shop for finding car rentals, flights, and hotels; the mobile app doesn’t do flights. You can search for one, two, or all three of those travel needs, as well as reserve or purchase directly from the site.

Kayak is another all-in-one travel search site, though it doesn’t let you book anything directly. Instead, Kayak finds you the itinerary you want at the price you’re willing to pay. It then sends you off to other sites where you finalize your travel deals, whether that’s another aggregator, an airline, or a rental car agency. Kayak covers hotel stays, rental cars, train and bus tickets, and travel experiences. It has some handy tools for exploring destinations based on flight prices for the dates you want to travel. Kayak is part of Booking Holdings Inc., which also includes Agoda.com, Booking.com, Priceline.com, and Rentalcars.com. Kayak also operates other metasearch brands, including Cheapflights, checkfelix, HotelsCombined, momondo, Mundi, and Swoodoo.

Orbitz is a search aggregator for cruises, flights, hotels, and rental cars. When you bundle more than one purchase together, such as a flight and hotel stay, you might be able to get a discount, or at least a good price, by booking directly through Orbitz. Orbitz is part of Expedia Group, Inc., which also owns Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, Travelocity, and Trivago, among other travel sites.

Priceline is another mega travel search app for cruises (like Orbitz), flights, hotels, and rental cars. When you bundle more than one purchase together, such as a flight and hotel stay, you might be able to get a discount. Priceline is part of Booking Holdings Inc., which also owns Agoda.com, Booking.com, Kayak, and Rentalcars.com. Don’t be surprised if you notice similarities among them.

What should you do when you’ve prepaid for a hotel, and you suddenly have to cancel your trip? Download Roomer or go to roomertravel.com/sell. It’s a marketplace for prepaid hotel stays. Roomer can help you recoup money that might otherwise be lost to the travel gods, and it can save you money if you buy a hotel reservation at a discount from someone who can’t use it. You can explore hotel stays that people are trying to sell by location or date. The Android app didn’t work for us, so Android users may be better off with Roomer’s mobile website, which looks identical to the app on iOS.

Viator specializes in helping you book tours. When you travel to a destination where having a guide or daily itineraries would be ideal, take a look at what Viator has to offer. Available tours include daily excursions as well as weeklong adventures with transfers. Note that the quantity and quality of the deals vary dramatically by destination.

Vrbo, which apparently stands for “vacation rentals by owners,” started out as a booking site for vacation homes. It now includes not only houses, but also apartments, cabins, cottages, and villas. Vrbo’s closest competitor is probably Airbnb, though Vrbo doesn’t offer rooms within someone’s private home. Expedia Group, Inc. owns the site, but it’s quite different from any other travel site in its catalog.

Harvest Hosts is an app and online membership program that connects people with self-contained RVs to scenic places where they can park the night for free, such as breweries, distilleries, and farms. The hitch is you won’t necessarily have access to hookups, so it’s only for RVs that have independent water and sewage systems. Memberships start at $99 per year for unlimited stays, but each stay is one night only. Plan rates go up to $179 per year for All Access, which adds access to golf courses where you can park for the night and other perks. For even more benefits, the higher-level plans offer access to Harvest Hosts’ Boondockers Welcome program, in which private property owners offer a place to park for up to five days.

With Hipcamp, you can find public parks as well as private land where you can pitch a tent or sleep the night in one that’s already set up for you. The site lets you find and book cabins, glamping spots, tent camping spots, RV parks, and tree houses. It works in the US, as well as Australia, Canada, France, and the UK.

At Pitchup, you can find and book campgrounds, RV parks, and other tenting and glamping accommodations. Filters help you find a location based on whether you’re bringing your own equipment or want more of a full-service experience. Pitchup also has cabins and lodges to book if you aren’t quite ready to sleep in the great outdoors. The site covers North and South America, along with Africa, Australia, Europe, New Zealand, and the UK. It’s a web app that works well on both desktop and mobile devices.

Lonely Planet, a popular publisher of travel guidebooks, has a great mobile website that lets you explore your next travel destination. Find top activities, restaurants, sights, and stays for your destination or get ideas for where to go in the first place. Expect gorgeous photos alongside these recommendations.

Travel writer Rick Steves has an app for European travels with dozens of audio files. Some give you background information on a particular city or region, while others are audio guides for navigating popular sites. I listened to some of his Rome content while viewing the Sistine Chapel and again when walking around the Roman Colosseum. If you’re traveling to any of the top destinations in Europe, download this free app and consider listening to some of the segments while planning what to see and do, or for a guided walking tour while you’re there.

Sometimes you have to go to unexpected places you didn’t choose, like for a business trip or a wedding. When you don’t know anything about your destination, turn to Tripadvisor. It’s one of the most comprehensive online sources for travelers, with background information about different cities and regions, along with highlights of what to see and do. You can read reviews of activities, hotels, and restaurants from members of the Tripadvisor community, as well as see their photos. It lists the top-traveler-rated hotels in order, so you can find the best one you can afford. Tripadvisor has relationships with various booking sites, too, which means you can usually reserve them directly in the app once you finish your research.

If you’re traveling outside the US, you’re going to need to get familiar with another currency. This app supports all world currencies as well as cryptocurrencies. It works offline, and the paid version ($3.99 per month) lets you take pictures of price tags for conversions and set up custom conversion rates.

On driving road trips, GasBuddy helps you find gas by location and price, but be careful of it collecting and selling information about you. It works in real time on your phone, but that’s where you will run into privacy issues, so we recommend using GasBuddy’s website instead, which takes a tiny bit of planning ahead. It’s available in Australia, Canada, and the US.

On the ground, Google Maps shows you where you are and how to get to where you need to go, whether by bike, car, foot, or public transit. Google Maps is equally helpful when you want to explore what’s around, including gas stations, hotels, and restaurants. Often, the listings for businesses and sites include hours of operation, photos, and other details. You can save places on your map by adding icons (hearts, stars, and so on). Best of all, Google Maps lets you save maps offline so that you won’t get lost even when you don’t have service.

iExit is a travel app for driving trips across the US, including in Alaska and Hawaii. It tells you exactly what’s near every highway exit, from ATMs to gas stations. If there’s a particular restaurant chain or other service you love, you can mark it as a favorite, and the app tells you if it’s coming up on your route.