Best Travel Apps (2026): Navigation, Money, Stays and More

Phones have become one of the most useful things you can pack. A handful of apps make a real difference to how smoothly a trip goes — from navigating an unfamiliar city to avoiding a €5 ATM fee at the worst moment. These are the ones we actually use.

Navigation

Google Maps

Google Maps is still the most useful and widely used app when travelling, whether to a different continent or to that new pub in your neighbourhood someone told you about. You can download an area to navigate offline, which is essential when you want to avoid roaming charges.

Tip: save your places of interest beforehand and you will see a star on your map. Useful for keeping track of restaurants and sights across a city before you commit to any one area.

Citymapper

Citymapper is one of the best apps in the market for city transport. It offers a smart journey planner with information about departures, disruptions, alternative and cycle routes, prices, Uber integration, and more. It even tells you which part of the tube to board to get to the exit faster. The downside is that it focuses on complex cities, so check the list first. You can also use it via the web browser.

Tip: use the three tabs at the bottom. City for maps and the live status of all transport; Go for directions; and Near to see what options are close to you.

Rome2Rio

Rome2Rio is the first place to check when working out how to get from A to B. Type in any two locations and it shows every possible route: flights, trains, buses, ferries, and driving, with rough costs and journey times for each. It maps out your options at a glance, which saves a lot of time in the early stages of planning a multi-stop trip. Our link goes to Omio, which covers the same multimodal research and also lets you book tickets directly.

Tip: use it before you book flights. Sometimes a train or overnight bus combination is faster door-to-door and significantly cheaper.

Flights and Getting Around

Skyscanner

Skyscanner is a search engine to compare flights, hotels, and car hire. I mainly use it for flights, and it searches hundreds of airlines in seconds with no commission added. Other sites like eDreams can increase the net price in the last step of the booking. Skyscanner redirects you directly to the airline or agency without adding any cost. I have not found a better app for searching flights.

Tip: use the filter to adjust departure time and number of stops. You can also set up price alerts to track a route over time.

Trainline

Trainline is the standard app for booking train tickets across the UK and Europe. It covers National Rail, Eurostar, and rail networks in France, Spain, Germany, Italy and more. Prices are the same as the official sites and tickets are stored digitally, so no printing needed. The fare split feature is worth knowing: it often finds cheaper combinations by splitting a single journey into two tickets booked separately.

Tip: UK train fares drop significantly when booked in advance. The same journey can cost three or four times more if you buy on the day.

Uber

Uber lets you avoid expensive taxis, paying by cash and wandering around looking for a car. You search for a ride from your current location and it shows the waiting time. Once requested it shows the name and photo of the driver, and you can track the car on the map. Payment comes from your nominated card — no cash in the car at all. You can get an estimated fare in advance, choose the type of vehicle, split the bill with friends, and check availability by city.

Tip: drivers can increase the price during peak times. If you see a multiplier like 1.5x before confirming, it means surge pricing is active.

Where to Stay

Booking.com

The app from the well-known website. Search and compare prices for hotels, apartments, villas, B&Bs and guest houses. It is hard to think of a hotel that is not listed here. You get instant confirmation, paperless check-in, and offline maps on your phone every time you book.

Airbnb

Airbnb is the app from the famous website to list and rent accommodation. It now has over 7 million listings in 220 countries. Overall you can find interesting places for less money, with a more personal atmosphere. Some hosts are wonderful: they can give you unique local knowledge, useful tips, and a level of welcome you would not get from a hotel.

Tip: not all places have Instant Book, so make sure your request gets accepted and confirmed before you cancel other options.

Hostelworld

Hostelworld is the standard app for finding and booking hostels. Covers a huge range of budget accommodation worldwide, with reviews from other travellers. Particularly useful for solo trips where meeting other people is part of the point.

Trusted Housesitters

Trusted Housesitters connects homeowners who need someone to look after their property and pets with travellers who want free accommodation in exchange. Both sides pay an annual membership fee rather than per-stay fees. It works particularly well if you are flexible on dates and want to spend longer periods in one place.

HomeExchange

HomeExchange lets you swap your home with someone in another city or country. You stay in their place while they stay in yours, or you accumulate points by hosting and spend them on stays when it suits you. The membership fee covers unlimited exchanges per year, which makes it excellent value for regular travellers who own or rent their home.

Money, Cards and ATMs

Wise / Revolut / Monzo

If you are still using your regular bank card abroad, you are paying more than you need to. Wise, Revolut and Monzo all offer fee-free foreign transactions and competitive exchange rates. We have a full breakdown of the best travel cards in this post, including how each one handles ATM withdrawals and what the exchange rate difference actually means in practice.

XE Currency

XE Currency handles currency conversions on the go. It can convert any currency in the world and remembers the last rate if you are offline. It also has historic values and some business-oriented features. Simple and reliable.

FreeATM — Find Free Cash Machines

FreeATM is a web app that shows you the nearest cash machine with no operator fee, wherever you are in the UK. It uses live data from the LINK network and filters out charging machines, so you avoid paying £1.75 to withdraw £20. Around 21% of UK ATMs now charge a fee — they tend to be placed in exactly the spots where you need cash urgently: corner shops, train stations, tourist areas. In most places a free bank or supermarket ATM is nearby if you know where to look. We have more detail on how ATM fees work on the site, and a full guide to avoiding ATM fees in the UK on this blog.

Airalo

Before you travel, buy an eSIM for your destination through Airalo and skip the roaming charges entirely. You install it before you leave, it activates when you land, and you have data immediately. Prices are almost always cheaper than activating roaming with your home carrier. It works on any unlocked phone that supports eSIMs, which covers most phones from 2019 onwards.

Tip: check that your phone supports eSIMs and is unlocked before buying. Dual SIM support means you can keep your regular number active at the same time.

Planning and Activities

TripIt

TripIt is good and very easy to use. Forward your confirmation emails to [email protected] and the app builds your itinerary automatically. It shows detailed information about your flights, car rentals and hotels in one place. The Pro (paid) version adds online check-in for some airlines and real-time flight alerts.

TripAdvisor

The app from the well-known reviews site TripAdvisor, which now has over 1 billion traveller reviews. Very handy for checking reviews and asking questions to the community before you go. The mobile app lets you find and save places near you: hotels, restaurants, things to do and holiday rentals.

GetYourGuide

GetYourGuide is the best app for booking tours, activities and skip-the-queue tickets once you are already at a destination. It has solid coverage across European cities and beyond, and you can usually book something the same day. Particularly useful for museum tickets in cities where walk-up queues are long — a booked slot at the Uffizi or the Sagrada Família saves a lot of time.

Language

Google Translate

Google Translate‘s camera feature has transformed travel. Point your phone at a menu, a street sign, a museum label or a rental agreement and it translates the text in real time, with the translation overlaid on the image. There is also a conversation mode for basic back-and-forth with someone who speaks a different language. Not perfect, but good enough for most situations.

Tip: download the language pack for your destination in advance so it works without an internet connection.

Duolingo

Duolingo delivers language learning in short daily sessions. It will not make you fluent, but picking up the basics before a trip makes a real difference in how people respond to you. Even knowing how to order food and say thank you in the local language goes a long way.

Travelling with Others

Splitwise

Splitwise is the standard app for splitting shared costs in a group. Add expenses as you go and it keeps a running total of who owes what to whom, handling multiple currencies without requiring manual conversion. At the end of the trip it tells you the minimum number of payments needed to settle up. We have used it on group trips and it takes all the awkwardness out of the money conversation at the end. Free for the core features, which is all most people need.

Tip: enter expenses as you go rather than trying to reconstruct them at the end of the trip. It takes about 20 seconds per expense and saves a lot of confusion later.

Also Worth Knowing

• Journi: document your travel experience using text and images. Good for keeping a record of a trip as you go.
• SeatGeek or Songkick: find gigs, concerts and events and buy tickets. Useful if you want to catch something live while you are in a city.
• CouchSurfing: a social network for staying with locals or meeting travellers in a new city. It went behind a paywall in 2020, which damaged the community significantly, but it still has an active user base in many cities.
• Jet lag tools: not an app, but two useful links if you are crossing many time zones: British Airways Sleep Advisor and JetLagRooster.