Is Wanderlog free?

Yes. Wanderlog is free for planning a trip, for as many trips and friends as you like. Places, live group editing, bookings imported by forwarded email, budgets and bill splitting cost nothing. Pro starts at $39.99 a year on its website and adds Gmail scanning, Google Maps export, route optimizing and unlimited AI, and Wanderlog's own pages can't agree on whether offline needs it.

Highlights is our app, and it competes with Wanderlog. Nobody paid for this page, there are no affiliate links, and further down we list what Wanderlog's free plan gives you that ours doesn't.

Wanderlog's own pages disagree about offline

On November 10, 2026, we read the pages where Wanderlog describes its plans side by side. On the feature most likely to make someone pay, they give two answers.

The Pro page lists "Offline access on mobile" as a paid feature, and a help article says "Pro members can save their trip plans". The Google Play listing agrees, with a line reading "Access your trip plans offline (Pro)", then a few lines lower says "All your holiday plans are automatically stored offline" without mentioning paying. The App Store description never ties offline to Pro at all, and an undated FAQ on Wanderlog's blog says the app "stores your trip plan so you can access it offline".

We didn't create an account for this page, so we can't say what the app does on your phone today. We'd plan as if offline is paid, because the two pages written about Pro both say so. If a trip depends on it, open your plan in airplane mode before you leave. If it won't load, print it to a PDF from the website, which Wanderlog's help pages describe without mentioning Pro.

What Pro actually costs

The Pro page says "Starting at $39.99/year" and shows no monthly option. The US App Store lists ten Pro prices. Seven are annual, at $31.99, $39.99, $49.99 or $59.99. Two are monthly, at $5.99 and $16.99, and the tenth is $39.99 with the label "20% discount". That one is exactly 20% off $49.99, so we suspect $49.99 is the full annual price, but Wanderlog doesn't say.

So the fair answer to how much Wanderlog costs is about $40 a year, and your checkout screen may show something else. The Pro page offers a free trial without saying how long it lasts, and two reviewers on Trustpilot describe it as one week. Wanderlog's terms say a trial can ask for billing details and charges you on its last day unless you've canceled, that subscriptions renew automatically, and that paid fees are non-refundable unless the law says otherwise. One reviewer wrote in April 2026, "I was charged for the whole year". To cancel, use the website's settings if you subscribed there, or Apple or Google if you subscribed in the app.

Free and Pro, line by line

Everything here comes from Wanderlog's own pages. "Not published" means Pro is called unlimited and the pages we read don't give the free allowance.

What you want	On the free plan	With Pro
Trips, tripmates and places	No limit on any of them	The same
Planning with friends	Live editing, with view-only or edit access	The same
A day-by-day list beside the map	Included, with travel times by car, on foot or by transit	The same
Place suggestions	Included	The same
Flights, hotels and rental cars	Forward each confirmation email	Also scans Gmail for you
Budget and shared costs	Set a budget, log expenses in any currency, split bills	The same
Putting a day's stops in order	Drag them yourself	Optimize route, one day and up to 15 places at a time
Getting to Google Maps	Directions to one place or the next stop	All your places, kept up to date
Your plan with no signal	Wanderlog's pages disagree	Listed as included
File attachments	Not published	Unlimited
The AI Assistant	Not published	Unlimited
Flight and car rental deals, dark mode, offline travel guides, adding places from anywhere on the web	Not included	Included

Is paying for Wanderlog worth it?

We think most people should stay on the free plan, and pay only for a long road trip or a trip somewhere the signal really does disappear.

Gmail scanning is the easiest to skip. It saves forwarding a handful of emails and asks the most in return. Wanderlog's privacy policy says it gets a notification for each new email and parses it "with the help of OpenAI" to see whether it's a travel receipt, deleting the temporary data if it isn't. Forwarding shows Wanderlog only what you choose to send, so the free way is also the more private one.

Route optimizing pays off on a day of driving with many stops. On a city day with four stops you can sort them by eye with the map open.

Offline is the strongest reason to pay, if it really is paid. A free Google Maps download covers part of the gap, though Google says walking, transit and cycling directions don't work offline and some countries are excluded. A hiker, a rural driver or someone abroad with no data plan has a real case. Someone with roaming for a week in Lisbon doesn't.

A year at $39.99 is $13.33 a trip if you take three trips and $39.99 if you take one. If you're offered the $5.99 monthly price, one month for one trip is the better deal, as long as you cancel before it renews.

Two other reviews land in the same place. A reviewer back from 15 days in Japan in June 2024 said they "just cannot for a second recommend premium", and a family travel site says, "Don't buy Pro for a single trip." If the other option on your mind is a shared spreadsheet, we wrote up how we'd choose between the two.

What Wanderlog gives away that we don't

Highlights, our app, is free to plan on too, and Wanderlog's free plan still does three things ours doesn't do at any price. Friends can edit a Wanderlog plan with you, while on Highlights they open a link and tap Going, Maybe or Can't go. Wanderlog files your flights and hotels from forwarded emails, and we don't import bookings. Wanderlog keeps a budget and splits the bills, and we don't. If your group argues over the itinerary and settles up afterward, Wanderlog's free plan is the better home for that trip.

Ours differs in who does the writing. You tell Sally, the balloon guide inside Highlights, where you're going and who's coming, and she lays out every day on a map, with real places and the walk between them, in about a minute. Trips are saved offline in our app without paying. If building the plan yourself is the fun part, stay where you are.

Four more questions about Wanderlog

Can Wanderlog be trusted?

For planning a trip, we think so. Its terms name Travelchime Inc., and about 36,000 people have rated it on the App Store and 37,900 on Google Play, with high averages. Watch the billing, though. Its 52 Trustpilot reviews are a small, self-selected group, but several describe charges they didn't expect. Its help center says it never shows ads, although its privacy policy has a section on third-party ad networks.

How does Wanderlog make money if it's free?

From Pro subscriptions and, in its own words, "a small percentage from bookings made through the app." Highlights, our app, may also earn a commission on flight and hotel links, and sells a Pro plan.

Is Wanderlog better than Google Maps?

They do different jobs, and Wanderlog's map is built on Google Maps anyway. Google Maps gets you there, free. Wanderlog is for deciding what happens on which day, with a shared itinerary, bookings and a budget around the map, and it opens directions in Google or Apple Maps.

Is there an app better than Wanderlog?

For building a trip by hand with friends on a free plan, we think it's hard to beat. If you'd rather have the days written for you, that's a different kind of app, and Highlights, ours, is one.

Where this came from

Published by Winding AI, Inc., the company that makes Highlights. We read Wanderlog's pages and both app store listings on November 10, 2026, signed out and without installing anything. So all of this is what Wanderlog says about itself, and what the free plan does on a real phone is the part to test for yourself. If we've got something wrong, write to support@winding.ai.

We also read Wanderlog's note on staying free, how it makes money, AI planner page and budget page, and the Highlights Pro page and comparison with Wanderlog.

Wanderlog is one of nine travel planning apps we compared by the way people plan.