Planning a trip through Europe—whether by plane, car or camper van—can be overwhelming without the right tools. After years of exploring the continent, we’ve narrowed down our go-to travel apps that help us navigate, book, park, camp, and stay organised on the road, and let’s face is there is a mobile phone app for everything these days.
This guide includes the best general Europe travel apps, motorhome and camper van-specific apps for finding overnight stops and services, and a few personal organisation tools we rely on while traveling long-term. If you’re planning a European adventure, these apps will save you time, stress, and money.
General Travel Apps
Google Translate – A must-have for navigating language barriers — we use it for translating menus, signs, and even conversations with the instant camera and voice features.
Windy – with detailed wind and temperature maps this keeps us up to date with the weather in an area to help us plan where we stay and what we want to do, see or experience in the area. We can keep an eye on any weather events of concern too.
ViaMichelin – Great for planning road trips — it helps us estimate fuel costs, tolls, and the best driving routes across Europe.
TripIt – Automatically build a master itinerary from your travel booking emails — flights, hotels, activities — easy to have everything in one easy-to-access place, even offline.
All Trails – Our go-to for hiking — it’s packed with detailed trail maps, reviews, and difficulty ratings to help us find great walks wherever we are. You can also create an account and track your hikes for some great detailed statistics. (Get the app here – https://alltrails.pxf.io/6yxNPN)
VoiceMap – This GPS-guided audio tour app gives us local stories and insights as we explore — it’s like having a personal tour guide in our pocket. (Use my code for a free tour: lgrsib).
1-2-3 Fuel – we use 1-2-3 Fuel (or FuelFinder) to check the price of fuel. We look for the cheapest fuel in real time in our area or along the route we are going to find the best place to refill while saving some cash.
YouTube, Instagram and Facebook – Yes, we use all three of these for ideas of places to go and visit. We follow a lot of council pages and tourist info pages that share exciting events, places, attractions and either save the posts or save the location in Google Maps. We also watch other travellers YouTube videos of areas we wish to travel to get more ideas of where to go, or tips about the areas. Which is of course, why you should follow our profiles and channel for heaps of inspiration, hints & tips.
Here’s ours:
Facebook
YouTube
Instagram
Google Maps, including satellite and street view – we use it for navigation, saving key locations, offline maps, and even reading local reviews. We also use Street View for analysing parking options in our Motorhome.
Expedia – Helpful for booking accommodation on the go, often with great deals and an easy comparison system.
(Here’s the direct link – https://bit.ly/3XdUxcW)
PolarSteps – We use this to automatically track our journey and create a visual travel diary — it can even build a travel book from our adventures.
SurfShark VPN – Keeps our data safe when using public Wi-Fi — especially important for banking, work, and streaming while travelling.
(Here’s the link – https://fxo.co/IxJe)
WhatsApp – Crucial for staying connected — we use it for messaging, voice and video calls with friends, family, and even accommodation hosts.
SpeedTest – This helps us quickly check internet speed — super handy if you’re needing to work on the road or make important calls over WIFI.
EasyPark – we use it to find, pay for, and extend street parking without needing local coins or parking machines.
Toilet Finder – This app finds the nearest public toilets — surprisingly helpful when you’re exploring unfamiliar cities or on long road trips.
Bounce – This app allows you to find places to safely store luggage for a few hours or a day — great for layovers or Airbnb gaps. We haven’t had to use this ourselves yet, but know many who have and have found it helpful. Their biggest tips was to make sure you read the reviews first!
Motorhome / Camper Specific Travel Apps
Park 4 Night – this is our go to for finding where we will camp or stay in an area, day parking for attractions, plus water fill up, black & grey water dumping etc. There are reviews, photos, pricing guides. ($15/yr). We have a couple of back-up apps that we can use if we get stuck for finding somewhere but in a year of travelling in our Motorhome, we’ve only used these once (Search4Sites, iOverlander & StellPlatz)
Camper Leveller – this simple app helps us level the Motorhome once we arrive at camp. We place it on the floor of the van and can adjust our position and place the ramps to suit. (Free)
MyLPG – Vital for finding LPG refill stations for our Motorhome across Europe — especially important in countries with different gas connector types. It also gives you up to date pricing so you can look at your options and even save a few cents!
SkyView – we love sitting outside camp, by the campfire looking up at the stars. SkyView is our go to, to learn more about our night sky and our solar system. (Free)
There is one other website we use in our planning, which is Ferries Direct. This is for us to plan when and where we will catch ferries with our Motorhome, such as England to France or Germany to Sweden. There are a lot of ferry options to get around Europe, we always like to make the most economical choice, rather than just the most convenient (although convenience does play a part), and we are quite flexible so this website helps us weigh up the options.
General Organisation Apps for Longer Term Travellers
Trello – this keeps us in order and organised. We create lists and lots of lists – to do/chores lists when in the next town e.g. Gas bottle refills, maintenance and repair lists. We also write our shopping list here too. We also save links to blogs, or YT channels we want to refer back to in here under different cards for the different areas. (Free)
Google Sheets – this is where we save our itinerary or plan. We record our booking details if we have made them, with dates, booking number, etc. Daniel and I share this Spreadsheet so we can both see, edit and use it. We also record our spending into categories, keep track of our Schengen dates, and even uses new spreadsheets to plan out options such as Ferry costs options, or flights etc. (Free)
💬 What travel apps can’t you live without?
We’d love to hear what tools you rely on during your adventures! Drop your favorites in the comments or tag us on social media — we’re always on the lookout for new apps to try.
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