Driftlog › Compare travel trackers
Disclosure first, so you can weigh the rest. I make Driftlog, one of the apps on this page. I have tried to write the comparison I wanted to read before I started, which means saying plainly where the other apps are better. If you only want the short answer: if you already remember every country you have been to, a manual tracker is cheaper and simpler and you should use one of those.
The same data, cut for one question at a time: trackers with no subscription, trackers with no account and no data collected, Polarsteps alternatives, alternatives to been, and Google Maps Timeline alternatives on iPhone.
Most comparison lists mix these together, which is why they are confusing. They are not competing products. They answer different questions.
You open a list of countries and tap the ones you have been to. The map fills in instantly and looks great. These are the most popular apps in the category by a wide margin, and they are genuinely good at what they do.
The catch is in the premise: the map is only as accurate as your memory. That is fine for countries. It falls apart at city level, and it falls apart for the layover you forgot and the town you passed through on a train.
These read the location already saved in your photo library and turn it into a map of countries and trips. Nothing runs in the background, and the result is only as complete as your photos.
It is the one way to get back trips from before you had any app at all. Mapsake is free, and its store page says it needs no account. You can also do a rough version yourself, which I wrote out in getting your countries out of your own photos.
These are for sharing. You write entries, add photos, and friends follow along. Polarsteps in particular does trip planning and route drawing well and has years of polish behind it.
If what you want is an audience, or a book at the end, stop reading this page and use one of these. Nothing below competes with them on that.
These log where you were minute by minute, at street level, so you can see the exact road you drove. Google's Timeline moved on-device in 2024–2025 and, by default, only the most recent months were migrated, which is why a lot of people went looking for a replacement and found their old history gone.
If you want the route, you want one of these. Be aware of the trade: continuous fine-grained location costs battery, and self-hosted options like Dawarich and OwnTracks cost setup time instead of money.
This is the one I work in, so treat it accordingly. The app is closed. Driftlog uses iOS significant-location-change monitoring, which is a coarse, low-power signal the phone is already computing, and records which country, region and city you were in and on which dates. Not the route. The places.
This kind produces a record of trips you did not think to record. Rond is the other app I found that logs visited places in the background; it keeps them as a timeline and journal on the device. Apple's own version is Visited Places in Apple Maps, in the countries where Apple offers it.
Every cell for an app comes from its own US App Store page, read on 4 October 2026: the description, the list of in-app purchases, the privacy label and the rating. Android means I found a Google Play listing from the same publisher. The two built-in features are described from Apple's and Google's own help pages. Where a page does not say something, the cell says so. Every app name links to its store page, so check before you decide.
| App | How it records | Trips from before you installed it | Listed price (US App Store) | Android | App Store privacy label | US rating (ratings) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record the places, by itself | ||||||
| Driftlog (mine) | Countries, regions, cities and dates, recorded in the background. No routes | Yes, from the location saved in your photos | Free to download. Driftlog Premium $6.99, once | Yes | Data Not Collected | 1 rating, too few to quote |
| Rond | The places you visit, logged in the background and shown as a timeline and journal | Not stated on its store page | Premium $1.99 and $9.99 (the page does not show the period) · Lifetime Premium $24.99–$29.99 | No listing found | Data Not Collected | 4.9 (96) |
| Apple Maps Visited Places | Built into iOS 26 and later. Places you stopped at, such as restaurants and shops. Offered in 32 countries and regions | No. It starts when you turn it on | Free | No | End-to-end encrypted. Apple says it cannot read it | Built in |
| Build the map from your photos | ||||||
| Mapsake | Countries, regions, cities and airports found in your photo library. No background recording | Yes, from photos. It also imports exports from several other apps | Free. No in-app purchases listed | No listing found | Data Not Collected | 5.0 (10) |
| Photo Map | Scans your photo library and groups the photos into trips | Yes, from photos | Explorer Pack $3.99–$7.99. Last updated February 2024 | No listing found | Data Not Collected | 4.7 (1,865) |
| You tick the countries yourself | ||||||
| been | You tick countries and US states | By hand | Weekly $4.99 · Yearly $19.99 · Premium Features $2.29 | Yes | Data Used to Track You · Data Linked to You | 4.7 (9,640) |
| Visited | You mark countries, regions and cities. Also lists, notes and itineraries | By hand | Monthly $9.99 · Yearly $34.99 · Visited Pro $59.99 · single unlocks $3.99–$9.99 | Yes | Data Linked to You | 4.6 (13,879) |
| Pin Traveler | You search for and pin cities, countries and states | By hand | Weekly $2.99 · Monthly $2.49–$9.99 · Yearly $24.99–$34.99 · Lifetime $39.99–$44.99 | Yes | Data Used to Track You · Data Linked to You | 4.7 (8,564) |
| Stampie | You add a stamp for each country and region, with dates, notes and photos | By hand | Stampie Pro $79.99 · Monthly $6.99 · Yearly $34.99 | Yes | Data Not Linked to You | 4.8 (27) |
| Mark O'Travel | You mark countries and regions | By hand | Traveler Pro $9.99 · extra map packs $0.99 each | Yes | Data Not Linked to You | 4.7 (2,312) |
| Skratch | You mark countries, cities and regions. Photos you add are placed by their location | By hand, plus the photos you add | Packs $4.99–$11.99. No subscription listed | Yes | Data Used to Track You · Data Linked to You | 4.6 (2,125) |
| Places Been | You tag cities, and the countries and regions are worked out from them | By hand. It also imports a TripAdvisor travel map | PRO $4.99 · PRO PLUS $6.99 · TRAVELER Edition $19.99 · packs $1.99–$4.99 | Yes | Data Used to Track You · Data Not Linked to You | 4.6 (1,219) |
| Countries Been | You mark countries, states and cities as Been, Lived or Want | By hand | Remove Ads $1.99 | Yes | Data Used to Track You · Data Linked to You | 3.7 (29) |
| Trip journals that follow your route | ||||||
| Polarsteps | Automatic route tracking, a journal with photos, and trip planning | Not stated on its store page | Plus Monthly $9.99 · Plus Yearly $34.99 | Yes | Data Linked to You | 4.9 (9,691) |
| FindPenguins | Automatic route tracking, posts about the places you visit, and trip planning | Not stated on its store page | No in-app purchases listed | Yes | Data Linked to You | 4.8 (2,011) |
| Journi Blog | A journal built from your photos, grouped by time and place | Yes, from photos | Journi Premium Membership, several plans from $4.99 to $53.99 | Yes | Data Linked to You | 4.8 (5,164) |
| Route recorders | ||||||
| Google Maps Timeline | Built into Google Maps. Visits and routes, saved on the phone once you turn it on | Only what it saved while it was on | Free | Yes | Kept on each device, with an optional encrypted backup at Google | Built in |
| Arc Timeline 4 | Where you go, how you get there and how long you stay, recorded in the background | Not stated on its store page | Monthly $4.99 · Yearly $44.99 · Lifetime $179.99 | No listing found | Data Not Linked to You | 3.9 (23); the older Arc Timeline app: 4.2 (425) |
| Fog of World | Your tracks, recorded in the background, clear the fog from a world map | Imports GPX and KML track files | $30.00 to buy. No in-app purchases | Yes | Data Not Collected | 4.8 (3,082) |
| Dawarich | Logs your position in the background to a server you host, or to its cloud | Photo import added in version 2.7, on the paid plans | Cloud Pro Monthly $17.99 · Cloud Pro Annual $129.99 · Cloud Lite $49.99 · Selfhoster Pro $29.99 | Yes | Data Linked to You | 4.6 (15) |
| OwnTracks | An open-source location logger. Its own documentation says you provide the server it reports to | Not stated on its store page | Free. No in-app purchases listed | Yes | Data Not Collected | 4.2 (33) |
| Track My Journey | Records your routes in real time and keeps a route history | Not stated on its store page | Offline Lifetime Access $29.99 · Cloud $9.99 monthly or $59.99 yearly | Yes | Data Used to Track You · Data Linked to You | 4.6 (1,088) |
The table scrolls sideways on a phone.
About the privacy column: it is the heading shown under App Privacy on each App Store page. Developers declare it themselves, and it says what kind of data an app may collect, not how well it is looked after. In Apple's wording, tracking means linking data from the app with data from other companies for advertising, or sharing it with data brokers. Apps with accounts, feeds and sharing need to collect more than apps without them.
Left out on purpose: Wanderlog is a trip planner, Day One is a general diary, and Swarm records a place only when you check in. Travel Mapper is on Android only. The free edition of World Uncovered was last updated in 2020.
Almost all of these are free to download; the number that matters is what unlocking them costs. The prices in the table are the in-app purchases listed on each app’s own US App Store page on 4 October 2026, read from the store and not from another comparison article. A store page shows at most ten in-app purchases, so a long list may be cut short. Prices change.
They do change. Between my reading on 21 September and this one, Stampie Pro went from $29.99 to $79.99 and its yearly plan from $29.99 to $34.99. Pin Traveler's page now also lists monthly plans at $4.99 and $9.99 and a second lifetime price at $44.99.
The reason I am showing prices is not that cheap is better. It is that the category has quietly moved to subscriptions, and a lot of people do not notice until the renewal. If you are going to keep an app like this for a decade, and that is the whole point of a travel map, the subscription is the number that matters, not the first month.
Three public App Store reviews of other apps, quoted short and dated:
None of these people are describing my app, and two of them are describing an app I recommend above.
Since I have spent this page recommending other people's apps, here is the honest version of mine.
On Android: Google Play · What is Driftlog?
It depends on how you want the record made. If you remember your countries and want a map quickly, a manual tracker such as been or Visited is the simplest. If you want it recorded for you, Driftlog logs countries, regions and cities in the background. If you want old trips rebuilt from your photos, Mapsake is free and Driftlog does it too. If you want friends to follow the trip, use Polarsteps.
Yes, three kinds. Place loggers such as Driftlog and Rond record the places you visit while the app is closed. Journals such as Polarsteps and FindPenguins track your route during a trip. Route recorders such as Google Maps Timeline, Arc Timeline and Fog of World keep the whole path.
On their US App Store pages on 4 October 2026: Driftlog is a one-time $6.99, Mark O'Travel sells Traveler Pro for $9.99 once, and Fog of World costs $30.00 to buy. Mapsake, FindPenguins and OwnTracks list no in-app purchases. Countries Been lists only Remove Ads at $1.99, and Skratch and Places Been list one-time packs and upgrades. been, Visited, Pin Traveler, Stampie and Polarsteps all list subscriptions, some of them next to a one-time option.
Five say so in their App Store descriptions: Driftlog, Mapsake, Rond, Fog of World and Arc Timeline 4. Countries Been lets you continue as a guest. Most of the other descriptions do not say either way.
Yes, if the photos carry a location. Mapsake and Photo Map build the map from your photo library. Driftlog rebuilds earlier trips from it and then keeps recording. Journi groups photos into a journal by time and place. The free Driftlog Counter does a rough count in the browser, with nothing uploaded.
For the route itself: Arc Timeline, Fog of World, or a logger you host yourself such as Dawarich or OwnTracks. If what you miss is the list of countries and cities and not the path, a place logger such as Driftlog keeps that without recording a route. No store description in this table names Google Maps Timeline as something the app can import. The free Driftlog Counter reads a Timeline export and counts the countries in it.
FindPenguins is the closest in kind: automatic route tracking, a journal and printed books, and its US App Store page lists no in-app purchases. Journi builds a journal from your photos. If you do not want a route or a feed at all, a place logger such as Driftlog or a manual map such as been is a different kind of app, not a replacement.
I found Google Play listings for been, Visited, Pin Traveler, Stampie, Mark O'Travel, Skratch, Places Been, Countries Been, Polarsteps, FindPenguins, Journi, Fog of World, Dawarich, OwnTracks, Track My Journey and Driftlog. I found none for Mapsake, Rond, Photo Map or Arc Timeline.
Six carry the App Store privacy label Data Not Collected: Driftlog, Rond, Mapsake, Photo Map, Fog of World and OwnTracks. The label is declared by each developer and is not an audit.
Related pages on this site. If you came here because Apple Maps never showed you Visited Places, the country list and the workarounds are on Visited Places availability. If you want to rebuild the past rather than record the future, getting your countries out of your own photos is the free method, command line included. If you want the built-in iPhone methods compared, see keeping a travel log automatically on iPhone. If you are not sure what counts as a country, see how to count the countries you've visited.
How this page was made. Descriptions, prices, privacy labels and ratings come from each app's own US App Store listing, and Android availability from Google Play, read directly from the stores and not from another comparison article. I have not tested every app here; what I say about other people's apps is what their store pages say. First written 20 August 2026; prices re-read on 21 September 2026; the whole table rebuilt on 4 October 2026. Nobody paid to be on this page and nobody paid to be left off it. If something here is wrong or out of date, email me at shiori.sutudio@gmail.com and I will fix it.