Disclosure up front: I make one of the apps on this list (GlobePin, free on the App Store, with a paid option). I have tried to write the comparison honestly, and in several cases another app is the better choice. Flighty is far better for flight alerts. Polarsteps records your route for you, which GlobePin does not. Visited and been are quicker for ticking off countries. Wanderlog is the one to use for planning. I did not install or test any of the other apps. Prices, platforms, in-app purchases and privacy labels were read from each app's App Store listing and, where one exists, the vendor's own page on October 4, 2026, and they change. Where a page would not load for me, I say so and write "reported as".
What a travel map app can do, and which job you want
These apps look alike in the App Store but do different jobs. Decide which of these you want before you compare prices:
- A country checklist. Tap the countries you have visited, see a percentage of the world. Visited, been and Skratch live here.
- A map of places. Pins for cities, landmarks and restaurants, with photos, notes, stats and goals. GlobePin and Pin Traveler.
- A flight log. Every flight you have taken, with distance and airports. Flighty, YourFlights, OpenFlights.
- A trip journal with a recorded route. The phone logs where you go and you add photos. Polarsteps and FindPenguins.
- A trip planner. Itineraries for trips you have not taken. Wanderlog, Stippl, TripIt.
Two more questions matter as much as features. How does a place get on the map? By your tap, by a boarding pass, or by the phone watching your location. Where does the data live? On your device and your own iCloud, or on the developer's servers behind an account. Each App Store listing carries a privacy label of what the developer declares it collects, under Apple's headings "Data Used to Track You", "Data Linked to You" and "Data Not Linked to You". I quote them below. They are declarations, and I did not audit them.
The shortlist
- GlobePin: places, flights and a 3D globe, kept in your iCloud. Free; Pro $14.99 once.
- Visited: the big country checklist, with lists and goals. Free with add-ons.
- been: countries and US states, a 3D globe. Free with paid options.
- Pin Traveler: city pins, trips and an optional social layer.
- Polarsteps: records your route automatically. Free, with a Plus subscription.
- Flighty: the best flight tracker, with a lifetime Passport.
- YourFlights: a flight log on a 3D globe.
- Apple Maps and Apple Photos: built in, free, automatic once turned on.
Those eight cover most needs. Six more options and seven shorter entries follow, then a decision matrix.
| App | Best for | Cost | Places get on the map by | Flights | Account |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GlobePin | Places, flights and a globe | Free; Pro $14.99 once | Your pins and boarding passes | Yes | None; iCloud |
| Visited | Country checklist | Free; paid add-ons | Your taps | Not described | For sync |
| been | Quick country list | Free; paid options | Your taps | Not described | Not stated |
| Pin Traveler | City pins and sharing | Free; Premium | Your pins | Not described | Yes |
| Polarsteps | Automatic trip journal | Free; Plus | Background route tracking | Transport mode only | Not confirmed |
| Flighty | Flights and alerts | Free; Pro | Import, email, calendar, entry | Yes | No |
| YourFlights | Flight log on a globe | Free; Premium | Flight number, route, boarding pass | Yes | Not stated |
| Apple Maps, Photos | Automatic memory aid | Free | Your location, photo GPS | No | None beyond iCloud |
GlobePin
Cost: Free to download. GlobePin Pro is a $14.99 one-time purchase, listed as a lifetime purchase and not a subscription, that removes the ads and the watermark. Platform: iPhone and iPad, iOS or iPadOS 17 or later; the listing's compatibility section also shows Macs with Apple silicon and Apple Vision. Status: version 1.2, first released September 3, 2026.
GlobePin is a record you keep by hand. You pin places on a 3D globe or a flat world map, log flights by scanning a boarding pass or entering airports, and log road trips, cruises and train journeys with animated routes. The stats cover countries, continents, nights abroad, furthest point and total miles. Each place can hold photo postcards and a private journal. Travel Goals cover every continent, every country or a list of your own. A trip planner handles destinations you have not visited, and "I Went!" turns a plan into a pin. It also makes Travel Reel videos, a Year in Review, share cards and widgets, and it imports and exports CSV.
The listing says everything stays on your device and in your own private iCloud, with no accounts. Sync is iCloud through CloudKit, not a Purplelink server.
The ads. The free version shows ads, and the listing says so. There is a small banner on some screens, a short ad before Year in Review and Map Collage and when you export a Travel Reel, and a small "Made with GlobePin" mark on shared cards and reels. Pro removes all of it. The privacy label lists Identifiers and Usage Data under "Data Used to Track You", and Diagnostics, Identifiers and Usage Data under "Data Not Linked to You". Our privacy page says the free tier uses Google AdMob, which collects device identifiers, usage data and diagnostics, and that your travel content itself never goes to Purplelink or Google. The listing's own text also says "no tracking", which sits badly beside that label. Go by the label: the free version has an advertising SDK, and your places and photos stay on the phone and in iCloud.
What it's good at: a lifetime record of places, flights and goals in one app, with no account and no social feed. What it lacks: it is new. Version 1.0 shipped in September 2026 and the listing has two ratings, so it has none of the track record that Polarsteps, Visited or Flighty have. Nothing in the listing describes recording your route in the background, so you add places yourself. Our privacy page says location is used on the device to set a home point and calculate distances. It has no social network and no Android version. It does not send delay alerts, so Flighty is better for the flight itself, and it has no deep checklist of 150 world lists like Visited.
Pick GlobePin if you want one private record of places and flights, are fine with banner and short ads or $14.99 once, and will add the entries yourself. Pick something else if you want the route recorded for you (Polarsteps), flight alerts (Flighty), a fast country tick-list (Visited or been), or an Android app. What GlobePin does; there is also a three-way comparison with Polarsteps and Visited.
Visited
Cost: Free. The listing shows in-app purchases for city ($9.99) and region ($3.99) add-ons, itineraries ($7.99), ad removal ($3.99) and a Pro tier ($59.99), plus monthly ($9.99) and yearly ($34.99) options. Platform: iPhone (iOS 17.6 or later), and Android.
Visited is the long-running country checklist, by Arriving In High Heels, first released in 2014. You mark countries, and on paid maps states, regions and cities, and a dashboard shows what share of the world you have covered. It adds more than 150 travel lists (UNESCO sites, national parks, beaches and so on), goals, journal notes by country, itineraries, and a printed poster of your map. The vendor's page says the free tier has country maps, travel lists, stats and friend comparisons.
From a summary of its page, the vendor says it does not track your location or read photo coordinates, and that signing up saves your data on its servers so any of your devices can reach it. Its label lists contact info, identifiers and usage data as linked to you.
What it's good at: the quickest way to get a complete country map, with a large catalog of lists. What it lacks: neither the listing nor the vendor page describes flights, and cities and regions cost extra. Sync needs an account on its servers. Pick Visited if the goal is a country map and lists to work through.
been
Cost: Free. The listing shows a purchase named Premium Features at $2.29 beside a yearly plan at $19.99 and a weekly plan at $4.99. I cannot tell from the listing which one includes which feature. Platform: iPhone, iOS 16.6 or later. Developer: VINCI APPS LTD.
been has been in the store since 2013. It records the countries and US states you have visited, optionally with dates, and shows them as a list with a ratio per continent, a world map and a 3D globe. You can compare maps with friends who have the app. The listing says Premium adds regions in 25 or more countries, cities and airports, more globe filters, a chronological map, separate local profiles for several maps, and a video of your timeline. I could not load the vendor's own site, so everything here is from the App Store listing. Its label lists usage data as used to track you.
What it's good at: a quick, light country and state tracker with a globe. What it lacks: cities and regions sit behind Premium, and no flight log is described. A warning on the name: a search for "been" returns several apps from different developers. The long-running one is from VINCI APPS LTD. Pick been if you want a lighter alternative to Visited.
Pin Traveler
Cost: Free for unlimited pins and trips. Premium, which the listing says adds unlimited photo uploads, custom pins and colors and unlimited saved places, is sold as weekly, monthly, yearly and lifetime plans at many listed prices, from $2.49 to $44.99. I give no single price because I cannot tell which one you will be offered. Platform: iPhone (iOS 17.6 or later) and Android, with a shareable web map.
Pin Traveler is a pin map: search and pin any city, country or US state, color pins by trip or wish list, and see a color-filled map with stats such as most visited place and farthest pin. Trips hold dates, favorite spots, restaurants and photos. It adds an optional social layer: follow friends, share trips and view their maps, or share a link to an interactive web map, and you can go private at any time. The vendor's page says you sign up to create your map, and the listing says data syncs across your devices. Its label lists usage data as used to track you and a long list as linked to you. The same developer makes a simpler app, Travel Pins, free with an ad-removal purchase at $4.99.
What it's good at: city-level pins with trips, and sharing, without paying. What it lacks: flights are not described, an account is needed, and the label is long. Pick Pin Traveler if you want pins and trips with friends who also use it.
Polarsteps
Cost: Free. Polarsteps Plus is $9.99 a month or $34.99 a year in the US App Store listing, and EUR 8.99 or EUR 29.99 on the vendor's page, which says prices vary by region. Platform: iPhone, iOS 17 or later.
Polarsteps is the automatic one. You start a trip and the app records your route in the background. The vendor says it works offline and typically uses less than 4% of battery a day while tracking. You add photos, videos and stories to each step, invite travel buddies, and share a trip with everyone, followers only or only yourself. Afterwards you can make a Trip Reel video or order a printed Travel Book. The listing also describes an AI itinerary planner and travel stats with countries visited and distance covered. The vendor says 22 million or more travelers use it. Plus adds 3D maps, more map styles, a play mode and up to 10 travel buddies instead of 5, and the vendor says planning, tracking, sharing and reliving trips stay free.
Support pages that I could not load (they returned a 403) are reported as saying you can add a past trip by hand, with the steps joined by straight lines, so it can serve as an after-the-fact record. Its privacy label lists location, contacts, purchases and several other types as linked to you.
What it's good at: a trip diary that writes itself, and the printed book. What it lacks: it is built around trips, not a whole-life map. It needs background location for tracking, its label lists contact info as linked to you, which suggests an account that I did not confirm on the vendor's pages, and its flights are limited to a transport mode on a step. Pick Polarsteps if you want the route recorded while you travel and a story to share. The GlobePin vs Polarsteps vs Visited guide goes into the difference at more length.
Flighty
Cost: Free to use, including a personal flight log, map and stats, with no ads. Pro is free on your first flight; the vendor's pricing page shows it at $59.99 a year, and the App Store lists monthly, annual and lifetime options, the lifetime one at $299. Platform: iPhone (iOS 18 or later), iPad, Mac and Apple Watch. The vendor does not mention Android.
Flighty is a flight tracker first: delay alerts that its listing claims arrive 2 to 90 minutes before airline apps' alerts, plus gate and aircraft information and live tracking. For this guide the interesting part is Passport, which builds your personal flight map and lifetime stats: total mileage, where you went, and comparison with friends. The free tier keeps unlimited flights, the flight log and map, annual and all-time stats, and iCloud backup and sync. Adding or importing historical flights is capped to the past 365 days unless you pay. It imports from several older flight logs, and from calendar, TripIt and email. The listing says no account is required. Its label lists contact info, identifiers and usage data as linked to you.
What it's good at: in my judgment the best flight tracker on this list. What it lacks: flights only, no places or countries other than the ones your flights reach, and years of back-history costs money. Pick Flighty if you fly often and want alerts, or want a flight history that imports from older logs. Pair it with a map app for places that are not airports.
YourFlights
Cost: Free, with in-app purchases listed that include Premium at $3.99 a month or $24.99 a year and flight packs of a fixed size up to an unlimited one at $29.99. Platform: iPhone, iOS 16.6 or later.
YourFlights is a personal flight log. You add flights by flight number, route or boarding pass scan, and see them on an interactive 3D globe with statistics for distance, time in the air, countries, airports, airlines and aircraft. You can add ratings, notes and photos, earn badges, and, if you choose, follow friends and see their flights in a feed. It is a small app, with 48 ratings when I looked.
What it's good at: a flight-only log with a globe and boarding pass entry, plus an optional social side. What it lacks: places that are not flights, and the paid flight-pack structure needs reading before you rely on it for a long history. Pick YourFlights if your whole interest is flying and you want friends to see it.
Apple Maps and Apple Photos
Cost: Free, built into iPhone. Platform: iPhone, per Apple's iPhone guide.
Two built-in tools work as a passive record. Apple's guide describes Visited Places in Maps: you turn it on, then open Places and Visited Places to search by name, category, address or notes and filter by date, category or city. Apple says Visited Places are end-to-end encrypted, cannot be read by Apple and appear on all your synced devices, and that you choose how long they are kept. It is not available in all countries or regions. Photos adds a map of your library (Library, then Show Map), but only pictures with embedded location data appear.
What it's good at: it costs nothing, needs no new app and records without you doing anything. What it lacks: it has no country count, stats, goals or flight log, and it only knows about places the phone saw. Pick them if you want a free memory aid, or a source to look things up in when you fill in a proper map afterward.
Six more worth knowing
Each is useful to someone. None made the shortlist because it does a different job or overlaps with one that did.
Wanderlog
Cost: Free, with an optional Pro subscription. Platform: iPhone, Android and the web; an account is needed, according to the vendor's page.
A trip planner: itineraries, a map of planned places, reservations imported by email or Gmail, budgets, offline access and shared editing. Its listing does not describe a map of where you have already been. Pick Wanderlog if the trip is the thing you are mapping, not the lifetime record.
Stippl
Cost: Free, with Stippl Pro listed at $3.99, $24.99 and $34.99. Platform: iPhone, Android and the web; an account is needed to save itineraries.
A planner that also has a scratch map: the listing says you can pin every country you have visited and see statistics, and that the country maps for the USA, Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia and the UK are Pro. It also has a day planner, budget tracker, journal, reels and an eSIM store. Pick Stippl if you want the planner and a simple country map in one app.
Journi
Cost: Free, with Premium at several price points; photo books are priced separately, starting at EUR 22.99 in the listing text. Platform: iPhone and Android.
Journi is a journal that ends in a printed book. The App Store app is "Journi Blog - Travel tracker". It builds timelines from photos, notes and maps, with four privacy levels per journal, offline use and backup to Dropbox and Google Drive. The vendor's current home page leads with photo books and does not describe the app as a tracker. Pick Journi if the end product is a book.
Google Maps Timeline
Cost: Free. Platform: the Google Maps app, on iPhone and elsewhere.
Timeline is a location history, and Google's help page says it is off by default. Turning it on in the iPhone app needs Location Services set to Always. You can export it from the phone as location-history.json, back it up as an encrypted copy on Google's servers, and set it to auto-delete after 3, 18 or 36 months. It is a source, not a map of countries: it counts nothing and draws no globe, and the JSON needs converting before another app can use it, as far as I can tell. Use it if you already have years of it and want to reconstruct a trip history. Turning it on only for this is a bigger privacy trade than the manual apps.
A spreadsheet or Notion
Cost: Free. Platform: anything.
One row per trip: country, city, dates, who with, a note. It is the most portable record there is, it is yours, and it will outlive any app. It will not draw you a globe. GlobePin's listing says it imports and exports CSV, so a sheet can act as a backup of a tracker or a starting point for one, though I have not tested which columns it expects. Pick this if you care most about owning the data and are happy with a table.
A scratch-off map
Cost: Reported as roughly $12 for a small poster to about $25 for a large one, depending on the retailer. Platform: a wall.
Luckies' Scratch Map, which its seller says was conceived in 2009, is a poster with a foil layer you scratch off country by country. It has no data, no sync and no privacy question, and it only knows countries. Visited sells a printed poster of your digital map. Pick a scratch-off map if you want an object on the wall.
More tools
Live in October 2026. One short entry each, because they overlap with the ones above.
TripIt
An itinerary organizer: forward booking emails to plans@tripit.com and it builds the schedule. TripIt Pro is $48.99 a year in the App Store and $49 on the vendor's page. Its listing does not describe a lifetime map or stats. News reports say App in the Air's shutdown notice recommended TripIt Pro and Flighty to its users. Pick TripIt if you want bookings in one place.
FindPenguins
Automatic route tracking that the listing calls battery-friendly and offline, with 3D flyover videos and a printed travel book. The vendor says the core app is free and that an account is needed, and the listing shows no in-app purchases. iPhone and Android.
Skratch
A scratch map of countries, cities and regions, with a bucket list and an eSIM store. Free, with add-ons such as Cities and Regions at $9.99. Its label lists identifiers and usage data as used to track you.
Places Been
Tag cities, UNESCO sites, national parks and 8,000 or more airports, and it fills in countries and regions from the cities you tag. Free, with many paid add-ons listed from $1.99 to $19.99.
Mark O'Travel
Countries and regions, Travelers' Century Club and World Heritage lists, and sync through iCloud and Dropbox. Free, with a $9.99 Traveler Pro and $0.99 map packs listed. Its label lists diagnostics only, not linked to you.
myFlights
A flight diary that stores data locally on the device, imports .pkpass and PDF boarding passes and, per its listing, bulk imports from Flightradar24 and App in the Air. Optional account for cloud backup. Pro is $1.99 a month, $17.99 a year or $39.99 for life. It has 13 ratings.
OpenFlights and myFlightradar24
OpenFlights is a free, open-source website for logging flights, mapping them and generating statistics, with import and export. It needs an account and JavaScript, is not an iPhone app, and posted a news line dated September 2026. FlightDiary.net now redirects to my.flightradar24.com, which describes a flight diary. That page returned a 403 to my fetches, so I cannot say what it costs, and I give no price. Flighty's listing names it as an import source.
Narrower: Tripsy (an itinerary planner), Stampie (a passport-style country tracker, released in late 2025) and Swarm (Foursquare's check-in app and location history, which declares location as linked to you). App in the Air is gone: news reports say it left the stores on September 19, 2024 and ended support on October 19, 2024, so ignore articles that still recommend it. Several newer look-alike apps by solo developers exist and I did not review them.
What an app can know about where you have been
A travel map records where you are not, as well as where you are. Three things are worth checking:
- Automatic tracking costs location permission. Polarsteps and FindPenguins record your route in the background, and both declare location data as linked to you. Manual apps such as Visited, been and GlobePin avoid that, at the price of typing the places in.
- An account usually means a server. Visited, Pin Traveler, Wanderlog and Stippl use accounts, and Visited says plainly that signing up saves your data on its servers. GlobePin says its data stays in your own iCloud.
- Check that you can get the data out. I did not test export in each app. GlobePin's listing mentions CSV, Flighty imports from several flight logs, and Google Timeline exports JSON. Look before you invest years of entries.
Decision matrix
- One private record of places and flights, no account? GlobePin.
- Just tick off countries quickly, with lists and goals? Visited, or been for a lighter app.
- City pins, trips and friends? Pin Traveler.
- Route recorded for you, and a story or a book at the end? Polarsteps, or FindPenguins.
- You fly a lot and want alerts and a lifetime flight log? Flighty. A flight log on a globe, with friends: YourFlights.
- Planning the next trip? Wanderlog, Stippl or TripIt.
- A printed photo book? Journi or Polarsteps.
- Nothing new to install? Apple Maps Visited Places and the Photos map.
- Own the data above all? A spreadsheet.
- A thing on the wall? A scratch-off map.
How to choose
- Decide how much typing you will accept. If none, choose Polarsteps or FindPenguins and accept the location permission. If a minute per trip is fine, the manual apps are simpler and more private.
- Decide what the unit is. Country, city, place or flight. A country checklist cannot show a restaurant, and a place map takes longer to fill.
- Decide where the data lives, in your iCloud or on the developer's servers, and read the privacy label.
- Enter ten places in the free tier. Several of these put cities, regions or long flight histories behind a purchase. If you fly a lot, Flighty for flights plus a separate map app is a reasonable split.
Frequently asked
What is the best travel map app for iPhone?
It depends on the job. For a country checklist, Visited or been. For a private record of places and flights with no account, GlobePin, which Purplelink makes. For a route recorded automatically, Polarsteps. For flight alerts and a flight log, Flighty. For planning, Wanderlog. I tested none of the others, so this is a reading of listings, not a ranking by use.
Is there a free app to track the countries I have visited?
Yes. Visited, been, Pin Traveler, GlobePin, Skratch and Stippl are free to download, and each puts some features behind a purchase or subscription. Visited's free tier covers country maps and stats, with cities and regions as paid add-ons. GlobePin's free version shows ads, and a $14.99 one-time Pro removes them. A spreadsheet is free with no catch.
Which app logs flights on a map?
Flighty has a free personal flight log and map, though history and import beyond 365 days need Pro. YourFlights and myFlights are flight diaries, and OpenFlights is a free website. GlobePin logs flights by boarding pass scan or by airports, alongside places, but sends no delay alerts.
Do travel map apps need an account?
Many do. Pin Traveler, Wanderlog and Stippl use accounts, and Visited needs one to sync across devices. Polarsteps' privacy label lists contact info as linked to you, and I did not confirm its account rules. Flighty's listing says no account is required. GlobePin says it has no accounts and syncs through your own iCloud. Check each app's privacy label.
Can an app track my travels automatically?
Polarsteps and FindPenguins record your route in the background, which needs location permission. Apple Maps Visited Places and Google Maps Timeline are off until you turn them on. GlobePin's listing does not describe automatic tracking, so you add places yourself.
Does GlobePin have ads or a paid version?
Yes to both. The free version shows a small banner on some screens, a short ad before Year in Review and Map Collage and when you export a Travel Reel, and a small watermark on shared cards. GlobePin Pro costs $14.99 once, is not a subscription, and removes them. Its privacy label lists Identifiers and Usage Data under data used to track you. It is also new, with two App Store ratings so far.
Can I move my travel data between apps?
Sometimes. GlobePin's listing mentions CSV import and export. Flighty imports from myFlightradar24, App in the Air, OpenFlights, FlightMemory, Logmyflight and JetLovers. Google Maps Timeline exports a JSON file. I did not test export in the others, so check before you invest years of entries.
Related guides
- GlobePin vs Polarsteps vs Visited: a three-way comparison of a place and flight record, a trip journal and a country checklist.
- GlobePin: what the app does, with a video tour, and why we built it.
- Best on-device health apps for iPhone: the same privacy question, for health data.
- Purplelink's privacy page, all products and all guides.