Best Apps for Traveling

We are always looking for the best and most efficient way to do things. Especially while traveling with carry on bags we can’t always bring all the books and contraptions that make life easier. But there are still lots of ways to help find our way and keep track of everything we need with nothing but our phones. We use all of these apps regularly while traveling and love them all! Here are our recommendations for the best apps for traveling and why each one of them is important!

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All 12 of these apps are FREE which makes it even easier to click download and start using although you do need a subscription to use some of these! You might not need all of these depending on where you are traveling and for how long. I group them all together in a group called Travel on my iPhone. That way I know they are all together and easy to find when needed.

Transportation Apps

There are so many apps that can help with transportation whether you’re walking, driving or flying.

1. Google Maps or Maps.Me

No matter where you are traveling you absolutely need a map app. Both Google Maps and Maps.Me are free to us and offer the ability to use them offline. This offline feature is so crucial when traveling! Having the ability to access offline maps allows you to get to where you need to go without phone service or wifi.

We had international phone service and these still came in so handy! There are so many places while traveling that we had no service or very little. By having maps downloaded offline we didn’t have to worry about finding service to get directions.

2. Ride Sharing App- Uber / Grab / Free Now

You probably already have a ride sharing app thats active in the area where you live. Basically you put in your current location and where you want to go and request a ride.

At home in the US we would use Uber but many places, especially in Europe, recently have banned Uber. In ten European countries the Free Now app is similar giving you various taxi options that can be requested. The Grab app is very similar to Uber and is used in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Cambodia and Myanmar.

3. Priority Pass

Priority Pass gives you access to over 1,300 airport lounges worldwide. If you’re traveling often it makes your time in the airport so much more comfortable! We have used it countless times to get free wifi and free food anytime we fly. Food in the airport is never that good and always expensive but the Priority Pass means we never have to buy food and we also can use wifi to work or book more travel.

We got our Priority Pass as a perk from having the Chase Sapphire Reserve Credit Card but you can also buy a pass directly from Priority Pass. Although our benefits from the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card include free unlimited visits and free guests which is a really good deal!

The Priority Pass App lets you look up qualifying airport lounges in whatever airport you are going to be traveling in. For each lounge it includes information about hours, lounge amenities and lounge locations.

4. Lounge Buddy

If you have the Priority Pass or other airport lounge access Lounge Buddy is a really good and free app. Again you can search for any airport and see all the lounges in that airport. Lounge Buddy gives more detail about each lounge as well as reviews and pictures so you know more about each one before visiting. Reviews are helpful for lounges that get particularly busy or only accept priority pass holders during certain hours.

It lists all the available lounges though not only Priority Pass lounges. So this includes specific airline lounges that you may not have access to.

I usually will first look on the Priority Pass app to see which lounges we have access to. Then in the Lounge Buddy app I will look each of them up to read reviews and see pictures.

5. Railway Planner

We used the Railway Planner app everyday while we were traveling around Europe. Trains are seriously one of the easiest ways to get around Europe! We purchased a Eurail Global Train Pass and had the most amazing experience taking trains for 3 months visiting 15 different countries.

The Railway Planner app lets you put in any train station within Europe and gives you all of the train route options to get from where you are to where you want to go. It’s completely free and we recommend it even if you don’t buy a Eurail Pass but are just looking to take a few trains within Europe. It is so helpful as it gives you the timetables for trains going across countries within Europe all in one place.

You can also save routes to your trip if you have an upcoming travel day. That way when it comes to going to the train station and finding the right train you have all the details saved and ready to go!

Read More: 10 Everyday Things to Travel With

Money Apps

There are a few finance or money apps that we used regularly to make sure our accounts were kept safe while also still letting us take out money whenever we needed!

1. Charles Schwab

The Charles Schwab Visa Platinum Debit Card is a no-fees debit card that allows you to take out money worldwide. This means you pay no foreign transaction fees and no foreign ATM fees! If the ATM itself charges fees Charles Schwab will reimburse you so you pay nothing! This seriously saved us so much money during our eight months of traveling. We never had to worry about paying expensive fees to take out money no matter which country we were in.

The Charles Schwab App lets you see your balance and transfer money from an account in a different bank. So we both put money in from our separate bank accounts to our Charles Schwab account and then used it to take out cash while traveling. The app helped us make sure we always had enough in it to withdraw!

2. Venmo

Venmo is an app you probably already have if you live in the US and can be really helpful while traveling too! If you’re traveling as a couple like us it is so helpful for splitting travel costs.

At the end of the month we simply look at all of our expenses and used Venmo to even out for everything we had spent.

As well if you’re traveling with a friend that books your accommodations or flights, you can send your portion of the cost using Venmo.

3. VPN

A VPN is an absolute necessity while traveling to keep all your information secure! A VPN runs your internet connection through a country of your choosing through a VPN instead of through the internet connection of your actual location. Basically it adds further protection and encryption for information such as bank account details or any other confidential information making it harder for that data to be stolen.

Public wifi networks or restaurants where many people use a internet connection are easy for people to hack and steal information because there is less security.

We use Nord VPN and always felt secure enough to do whatever we needed to do online wherever we were. The Nord VPN app can be used on your phone once you login and choose the country of your choice. There is also an application to run it on your computer as well.

We have it on both of our phones and both of our computers and pay about $2 USD a month. So for the price it is so worth it!

Communication Apps

Communicating with people in the country you are visiting can be difficult if you don’t speak the language. As well it can be hard to communicate with people back home without paying high fees. Here are a few apps that are really helpful with both of those!

1. Google Translate

This is probably one of the apps we used the most while traveling. Google Translate translates whatever you need to say to whatever language you need. The best part of the Google Translate app is that you can download languages offline so you don’t need to rely on having phone service or strong wifi.

The app has a camera feature where you can use the camera on your phone to translate a sign or label to the language of your choosing. It’s a really good feature if you’re in the grocery store and trying to translate labels!

Travel Truth: We have learned that offline languages work best when your phone is in airplane mode. If you have at least a tiny bit of phone service it will try to run the translation through service even if you have it downloaded offline. If you turn on airplane mode it will work instantly!

2. WhatsApp

WhatsApp is one of the best apps to communicate with people back home without paying high fees. It runs through data so you won’t get caught paying fees to your phone service provider for international text messages or phone calls. I used the WhatsApp app exclusively to call my parents in the United States and never had any problems with it working.

If you have an iPhone calling through FaceTime audio also runs through data. That is another option to call people back home without paying international fees.

3. Google Docs / Google Sheets

Google Docs and Google Sheets are both really good programs to stay organized while traveling as a couple or with friends. You can share documents so that everyone you’re traveling with has access. We used a couple different Google Docs to keep our travel itinerary organized as well as a list of places we wanted to visit in each place whether from recommendations from people we met or research we had done.

We put all of our travel expenses in a Google Spreadsheet (very similar to Excel) so we again both had access to it. Our entire travel budget is organized there with everything we spent money on. It can be filtered by country or type of expense to see where we spent our money.

Google Docs and Google Sheets are both apps that you can download to your phone. You can access your documents offline which is another great feature!

4. Netflix

You are bound to have a long flight or bus or train ride at some point while traveling. Make sure to download the Netflix app to keep yourself occupied during those long travel days. You can download tv episodes and movies offline by clicking the download button. That way you can watch whatever you want when you’re in flight or have no service.

Using a VPN from your home country can allow you to watch tv shows you’re used to watching but might not be available in the country where you currently are.

Travel Truth: We have noticed that only two users can have downloaded content per Netflix account. So if you share a Netflix account with family you might get a message saying you can’t download anything if two users already have downloaded content.