Disclosure: I'm building one of these apps (GlobePin). I've tried to write the comparison honestly. Polarsteps is the right pick if you want narrative travel journaling; Visited is the right pick if you want a quick "places I've been" list. GlobePin is for the third use case — a personal travel record that emphasizes the map and the flight log over the journal.
The three approaches
Polarsteps — the travel journal
Polarsteps is the most popular of the three (~10M+ installs globally as of 2025). The core experience is: you go on a trip, the app records your route via background location, you add photos and notes day-by-day, and the result is a sharable trip "story" with a printed photo book as an upsell.
Strengths: automatic route tracking, polished story format, the printed book is genuinely well-made.
Limitations: requires background-location permission (battery and privacy implications), strongly trip-oriented (less useful for "places I've been over my whole life"), the social feed is opt-in but visibly present.
Visited — the country/city checklist
Visited is the lightest of the three. The mental model: a list of countries (and optionally cities) you've been to, expressed as percentages of the world map filled in. Quick to use, gamified, very Instagram-friendly stats screens.
Strengths: low friction (mark a country as visited and you're done), good for travel braggability stats ("I've been to 47 countries").
Limitations: doesn't track specific places within a country, no flight log, no map detail.
GlobePin — the personal travel record
GlobePin is what I'd call the "Letterboxd model" for travel: a private record of every individual place you've been (a city, a landmark, a specific restaurant), every flight you've taken, and every destination you're planning. The map is the primary view; a 3D globe rotates to show all your pins; a flight stats page tallies miles, longest flight, busiest airport, and so on.
Strengths: works for a complete life travel record, not just one trip. iCloud sync without a separate account. No social feed, no algorithm. Visualization-first (the 3D globe is the most-used screen for power users).
Limitations: no automatic location tracking — you add pins manually. (Deliberate: it's a record-keeping tool, not a tracking tool.)
Quick comparison
| Feature | Polarsteps | Visited | GlobePin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Granularity | Per-trip | Per-country | Per-place + per-flight |
| Data entry | Automatic GPS | Manual checklist | Manual pin / flight log |
| Map view | 2D, per-trip | 2D world map | 3D globe + 2D |
| Flight log | No | No | Yes (with stats) |
| Account required | Yes | Optional | No (iCloud) |
| Social feed | Yes | Light | No |
| Cloud architecture | Polarsteps servers | Visited servers | User's own iCloud |
| Best for | Trip storytelling | Country bragging | Lifetime record |
Privacy posture
This is where the three apps diverge most sharply:
- Polarsteps sends your GPS trail to its own servers. The privacy policy is reasonable and they don't sell data, but the architecture is "trust us."
- Visited stores your country list on its own servers. Lower-stakes data than full GPS.
- GlobePin uses Apple's CloudKit (iCloud) for sync. Your travel data lives in your own iCloud, not on Purplelink's servers. There is no Purplelink account, so there's nothing for us to leak.
For most users this difference is invisible. For users in security-sensitive professions (journalists, lawyers, government, certain executives), where your travel pattern is itself sensitive, the architectural difference is meaningful.
How to choose
- Pick Polarsteps if you want to journal individual trips and you're comfortable with background GPS and a Polarsteps account.
- Pick Visited if you mostly want a country/city checklist and quick percentage stats.
- Pick GlobePin if you want a complete lifetime travel record with both places and flights, you prefer no separate account, and the 3D globe view appeals.
Status of each
Polarsteps and Visited are both live on the App Store today. GlobePin is in development with a 2026 release (TestFlight builds at #79+ as of writing). If you want to be notified at launch: