Road tripping is practically a global pastime. Driving around with some friends (or animals) and seeing the sites can be a great time. As you can imagine, smartphones can make the experience a little easier and better. There are many different ways to go on a road trip. However, we are sure that these apps can be useful for almost everyone. Please make sure your eyes are on the road and not on your phone to avoid any problems. Here are the best road trip apps for Android!
The best road trip apps for Android
Airbnb (or similar apps)
Price: Free/room costs vary.
Airbnb lets you find a place to stay. It boasts more than four million places to stay in 91 countries. Not a typical hotel/motel app. It includes people who rent directly from their house or apartment at different rates. There are hotel/motel apps like Booking.com, HomeAway, Kayak, Agoda, Priceline, Hotels.com, TripAdvisor and many others. All make great road trip apps. They all help you find a place to sleep during your road trip. Airbnb just has the best international support so we chose that for the list.
Android Auto turns your device into a dashboard. It provides quick access to things like browsing, messages, music and more. It works well while driving. This way, you’ll spend less time looking at your phone and more time on the road. It supports a variety of apps including Google Maps, Waze, the most popular music apps, the most popular chat apps and more. You’ll need a phone with Android 5.0 or higher, but most people do these days. Some cars even go as their center console operating system. It is one of the best road trip apps. Drivemode and AutoMate are excellent replacements.
Joe Hindi / Android Authority
GasBuddy is one of the best road trip apps out there. It allows you to compare fuel prices at nearby and nearby gas stations. It contains a community of over 70 million people. The app generates gas prices from them and from you if you want. So, the prices you see are the prices people posted and saw, rather than being pulled from some random database. You can also help and change the price if something goes wrong. Until electric cars become the norm, getting good gas prices will be a valuable road trip skill. GasBuddy does it very well. It is a free app with limited ads.
GPS Speedometer and Odometer
Price: Free / $1.10
Joe Hindi / Android Authority
GPS speedometer and odometer are what the name says. It uses your phone’s GPS to calculate your speed and distance traveled. This is great for many reasons. You can see your total distance traveled, your average speed, and all sorts of other stats. It also works offline for areas with no mobile signal. It won’t do anything your car can’t do. However, sometimes it’s nice to have that information in the palm of your hand for easy reference, especially if you travel for work and need data for tax purposes. The free version of the app contains ads. Pro version for $1.10 will not work. Otherwise, both work the same way.
Lonely Planet Apps
Price: Free / up to $5.99
Lonely Planet has two great travel apps. It is the first guide app. It includes offline maps, curated city guides, tips, a phrasebook for the local dialect, and supports over 100 cities worldwide. The UI is clean and simple. It’s a handy little app for tourists or commuters passing through a big city. The second app is called Journey and is relatively new. That lets you record your experiences to share with your friends. Trips is a completely free app. The guide app may cost a few dollars, but it’s not expensive. Either would make great road trip apps.
Google Maps is probably the best navigation app out there. It provides support for most countries around the world. The app also gives you information about local businesses, traffic updates and transit schedules. That goes beyond the usual stuff like turn-by-turn browsing. Google Maps lets you download maps for temporary offline use. That can be useful for parts of your trip that have no web connectivity. It’s the best of the best for a reason: it basically does everything. Here, WeGo Maps and Waze are other great options for road trip apps.
RV parks and campgrounds
Price: Free / $7.99
Traveling to unfamiliar territory is sometimes difficult. Especially during road trips. Those looking for a place to stay overnight or camp have a great option with this app. Supports North America (Canada, US and Mexico). The app includes privately owned and public parks, US military camps and RV-friendly parking lots. The CampWiki family of apps perform the same function, but are supported in a few more countries. There may also be applications for individual countries. These are must for road trip apps.
in a distributed manner
Price: Free / $0.99
Splitwise is an expense tracking app. Traveling on the road with friends is very good. However, money can destroy bad and good times. An app like Splitwise can keep everyone honest. You can use it to divide any expenses so that everyone gets what they deserve. No need for arguments or paper or pencil or when someone forgets the $15 gas they paid in full at the last gas stop. It looks good, is easy to use, and is relatively cheap.
Waze is another navigation app. It compresses traffic data in real time. So travelers can see where road closures, police, traffic accidents and other obstacles are. This may not be ideal in rural areas where traffic is generally relaxed. However, entering a new city during your road trip can definitely be a challenge. Google Maps and here WeGo may be better for clean navigation and maps in general. However, Waze simply does a better job at things like traffic patterns. We use Google Maps locally, but when we’re cruising into Chicago at 5PM during rush hour, we use Waze.
Your favorite music streaming apps
Price: Free / Normally around $9.99
Entertainment during a road trip is tough. You can play punch boogie, I Spy, or listen to music. Since the two previous options get old quickly, listening to music can be your biggest distraction on the road. Some good options include Spotify, Pandora, Google Play Music, Apple Music, Tidal, and more. You have many options to choose from. Chances are you’re already using it. They offer an unlimited supply of music. You don’t have to lug around CDs or fill up your phone storage with local files. Most include offline playlist downloads when the data isn’t available. They usually go for $9.99 per month.
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