Road tripping and van life can be stressful, Especially if you’re in a new country, or completely new to van life itself, but it doesn’t have to be! Here are 23 of the best apps for road tripping Europe that are guaranteed to save you time, money and reduce your stress while on the road!
We’re covering everything from planning & navigation, to money saving tips, entertainment and where to stay!
Some of the links on this website are affiliate links. This means we may earn a commission if you make a purchase through these links, at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. See my disclosure policy for more information
The Best Apps For Road Tripping Europe (& Beyond!)
Navigation
The biggest stressor when on a road trip is almost always navigating your way around towns and small villages. Europe is notorious for one way roads and small narrow streets so a reliable navigation app is essential – unless you enjoy the drama, of course!
Google Maps
No explanation needed for this one as I imagine we’ve all used this before (probably within the last 24 hours!) and is most people’s go-to for getting from A to B.
It’s the easiest option as it’s free and comes preloaded on most phones these days. However, if you have a large vehicle you’ll want to be cautious with this when going through towns. Many European streets have overhanging balconies and Google Maps won’t realise you’re too tall to go down them.
We have a full guide on how to use Google to plan a road trip if you want to learn how to create custom lists and discover new spots along your route!
Citymapper
We might be road trippers, but that doesn’t mean we won’t occasionally find ourselves in the city looking for the best way to get around, right?
Citymapper is a great app for plotting public transport routes, seeing delays and how long it’ll take for you to get from A to B (or whether you might be better walking)
Here’s an example using London transport. They have maps for pretty much every major city in Europe. Combining it with one of our upcoming apps for finding parking, it’ll make navigating cities really easy.
Waze
Waze is a popular alternative to Google Maps with many saying it’s more reliable. It still doesn’t have the option to add vehicle dimensions, but it’s often more up to date with road closures and traffic.
We’re testing a few options that do allow you to put your vehicle dimensions in, but we haven’t used them enough to recommend them yet. So stay tuned!
Camping/Overnight Spots
The best part of a road trip or van life is finding those hidden camping locations in the middle of nowhere, or at a scenic spot that aren’t advertised as a camping location. Yes, you can stumble upon these yourself but there are apps that can help you with it too!
Note: Freedom camping, or wild camping is a grey area. There are many places where you can park for the night and stay in your vehicle legally but if you put your table and chairs out, use wheel blocks or put your awning out you’re considered camping and that can be frowned upon in many areas. Camping typically = setting up ‘camp’, whereas an overnight stay = just staying in your vehicle. Please bear this in mind when choosing where you stay for the night.
Park4Night
Park4Night is perhaps the most common camping app for Europe and the UK. Not only does it allow you to search for free or paid camping, you can see where other facilities are too such as free water fill up, places to dump your toilet/water waste, places of interest and more!
Within the app you’ll be able to read reviews from other campers to determine if the camping spot is still open (many free places get closed if they’re abused) or if there’s anything worth noting about the area.
Price: Free version, or Park4Night+ for €9.99 a year to access more recommendations
iOverlander
Another of the most popular apps for road tripping Europe & van life in general, iOverlander offers similar features to Park4Night but it’s completely free.
Some sites do lack recent reviews on there but what I like is how you can track your ‘check-ins’, meaning it creates a nice little diary of places you’ve been if you remember to leave a review for others.
You can filter your search to find wild camping, paid or informal camping, places you can’t stay (which is great for making sure you’re not in a no-go zone!) hostels, showers, tourist attractions, wifi and more!
Price: Free!
CampGuru
One of my favourite apps for road tripping Europe is CampGuru. It’s one I found recently but I can’t wait to try it out more!
CampGuru is very much like iOverlander and Park4Night but you can also search for vineyards, cafes and restaurants who will allow you to park on their premises for the night. Sometimes there will be a flat fee for this, sometimes they’ll let you stay for free if you spend money with them.
So with CampGuru you’re not only going to get beautiful camp locations, but a unique experience too.
Oh and you can filter it for dog friendly locations too! It’s a win win for us!
Price: Free with limited filtering options (but enough to be usable) or €29 a year.
WikiCamps
This was our favourite app while travelling around Australia and New Zealand. It’s currently only available for UK locations on this side of the planet, but I wanted to include it in case that expands.
With WikiCamps you can plan your route in advance, as well as filter and review locations in the same way you can with Park4Night and iOverlander. It isn’t as common as them, but it’s a free app that’s really easy to use.
Price: Free
Money Savers
We all want to travel on a budget, right? Well luckily there are a couple of apps we use that have helped us with that along the way too!
Fuel Flash
If you’re in a city or town and looking for fuel, Fuel Flash can help you find the cheapest station within any radius of your location.
We always advise fuelling up before you head to a motorway or main route because the price is always higher on these high traffic roads.
TollGuru
If you plan to drive through France which has a lot of tolls, download this app now.
TollGuru allows you to set your start/end location (and any stops in between) then it will tell you how much each route will cost you in tolls and estimated fuel usage or cost too. This means you can plan the most cost effective route if you’re on a really tight budget, or simply want to reduce your toll costs.
It works for the whole of Europe, but we’ve found France to be the most expensive when it comes to tolls even though Italy has more of them.
Here’s a great image by DiscoverCars for the tolls in Europe!
Wise (was TransferWise)
This is my favourite borderless cash app. When we first started travelling it was used for cheaper money transfers because it offers cheaper currency conversion fees than the highstreet stores or banks.
Now there’s a visa card available, so there’s no need to transfer money back and forth. You can simply top up your account with your home currency, and it’ll automatically convert it to the currency you need.
We’ve used it for New Zealand dollars, Australian Dollars, US purchases and of course Euros but there are many many other currencies available.
If you don’t have an account yet you can get your first currency conversion for free using this link!
First Table
This one is limited to the UK (and New Zealand/Australia) but again, I’m including it in case they open it up to mainland Europe.
First Table is where restaurants list their first few bookings of the day for a discount.
After working in the hospitality industry, I know that that first hour can be super slow, by offering discounts (sometimes up to 50% off!) This App helps restaurants get bookings during a time where they’re usually empty, which in turn can help a restaurant get busier through the night – how many times have you skipped out on a restaurant because there was nobody there?
Bookings through First Table are really limited, but you can still get last minute deals for breakfast and lunch, as well as dinner
Translations
Many people struggle with the language barrier when travelling around Europe, and while we do our best to learn what we can there’s no way we can become fluent as soon as we cross a border (if only, right?)
So here are some of the best language apps for road tripping around Europe that will get you out of a sticky situation!
Google Translate
Let’s start with the most obvious.
Google translate will be most people’s go-to, just like Google maps, and with their new translation earbuds I’m sure that isn’t going to phase out any time soon.
Their voice to text translation works ok (although clunky if you speak too fast) and their basic translations do the job but I do find it to be a bit inaccurate sometimes. Especially with Portuguese where it defaults to Brazilian Portuguese rather than European Portuguese (with no option to change them), and there’s slight variations in the words and phrases they use so it can be quite confusing.
There are more accurate options though:
DeepL
When we moved to Portugal, this quickly became my favourite translation tool because it gives you the option to use Brazilian or European Portuguese.
You can translate text on images (handy for menus and signs!) as well as use voice to text translation if you’re struggling to talk with someone.
Another great feature that I discovered recently is the ‘favourite’ tab, where you can save common words/phrases instead of typing them out repeatedly.
If you’re wanting to learn a language more in depth, we recommend Duolingo and their psychotic owl mascot 😆 (more Duolingo memes here)
Google Lense
Google lens is another good option for translating written text with your camera. It has the same clunkiness as Google Translate, since that’s what it operates on, but it can be quicker to access than DeepL.
You can also use this to identify plants (I use this feature a lot!) and search for things from photos online.
Entertainment & Activities
What are road trips without some awesome on the road entertainment? In this section we’ll look at the best apps for road tripping Europe that will help you stay entertained on the road and give you ideas of things to do when you reach your destination, wherever that might be.
Spotify
The saviour of many long hours spent on the road, spotify is our hub of our favourite podcasts and playlists.
This is one I’m loving right now. It’s perfect for while I’m working, but also a good mix of tunes for on the road too!
If you love podcasts as much as I do, here’s a round up of my favourite podcasts for road trips!
Google Maps
Yep ok this was included before but in this section I want to highlight the map ‘list’ feature which has helped us plot out to-do lists and bucket list activities so that we don’t forget about them when putting in our route (this happened a lot in Australia)
So whenever I see something on Pinterest, a Facebook group or Instagram that I want to do, I’ll put it into my list and add it, then it’ll show up on the map like this below. I’ll also do this when I’m planning a specific country.
The map soon fills up, but it really helps you visualise which areas to focus on, how long you might need in each area etc. There’s nothing worse than planning a couple of days in a spot, then realising that you could really do with a week because of how many things you want to do nearby.
AllTrails
This is a great app for any sort of travelling you might do, but we like to use it to see if we’re nearby any cool walks to take Lilly on.
With AllTrails you can read reviews for local hikes, discover ones in upcoming destinations and with the AllTrails+ app you can even download them to use offline.
Price: Free to browse & navigate on maps, €19.99 a year to use them offline and get more features like notifications of wrong turns
The Fork
If you’re a food, this one (and the next few) are for you!
The Fork app lets you search your area for the best restaurants and exclusive deals. Book through the app to access up to 50% off your meal,
Search by occasion, cuisine, exclusivity, last minute availability, best discounts or keep it broad, you can read reviews and book in-app and know you’re in for a good culinary experience.
You’ll earn points for each booking you make through The Fork too, which can be used as a further discount in the future.
Eat With
Similarly to The Fork, Eat With lets you book dining experiences with a twist.
Their focus is very much around the community of food so when you book an experience through Eat With, more often than not you’re going to get a local experience.
Whether that’s being joined by a local as they guide you through their favourite eateries, taking a local cooking class or booking a seat at a small local owned restaurant, Eat With will help you really experience the food of the country you’re in.
Miscellaneous
To finish off the list of best apps for road tripping Europe, let’s take a look at those random but helpful apps you might not think you need, but they’ll come in handy at some point:
OpenSignal
OpenSignal gives you accurate and up to date feedback about your internet speed. This is ideal if you work on the road and need to know that your park up location is going to have enough signal for the work you need to do. Especially important if you’re dealing with videos which are notoriously hard to upload with bad signal!
If you track the data you get, eventually you’ll be able to determine if your current network is the best option for you as you travel, or if you need to look for an alternative.
Tip: Dec & I try to have different networks because more often than not, if one doesn’t have signal the other will. This was particularly true in Australia but as of yet we haven’t been able to test this theory in Europe.
Wifi Finder
If you don’t want to eat through all of your phone data, Wifi Finder is a great option for finding, you guessed it, places with Wifi.
iOverlander and Park4Night also do this, but Wifi Finder often has different options like shopping centres and cafes.
WeatherPro
I don’t know about you but I’ve found my phone weather to be really hit and miss recently. I know it can’t be 100% accurate all of the time, but it’s often not even close (like when it predicted low 20’s and it actually reached mid 30’s…)
WeatherPro seems to be much more reliable which is handy for letting us plan if/when to take Lilly for a walk, if we can take her for a full day out of if we need to head for somewhere cooler for the afternoon.
If you’re travelling somewhere with extreme weather risks, like snow in the mountains, you really need something reliable so we always have a second weather app available to double check predictions.
GeoSure
This is something that I admittedly have never felt like I’ve needed, but that’s not to say you won’t find it a valuable resource.
GeoSure is an app dedicated to providing up to date safety information about your location. This is how they describe themselves “Our app expresses your relative safety in an easy-to-understand way that matters to you: based on who you are, your perceptions of safety, and your exact location, right down to the time of day.”
So if you’re travelling on your own, this App might give you a little piece of mind about the locations you’re exploring.
How many of these Apps for road tripping Europe have you downloaded? Are there any you would recommend that aren’t on this list? Join in the conversation over on our Facebook Community Road Tripping Europe And Beyond!
