Wanderlog review: the good, the bad, and who it's for

Wanderlog is a good free trip planner if you build your days on a map and plan with friends. The App Store gives it 4.9 stars from about 36,000 ratings, and most of them are from people doing exactly that. Its weak spots are bookings that arrive by email and billing, and that is where nearly all of its 1.8-star Trustpilot reviews come from.

Both scores are real. This review explains why they are so far apart, so you can tell which kind of user you are.

What Wanderlog is good at

Wanderlog is a planner first. You add places to a map, drag them into days, and see the route between them. Its App Store description lists the parts that are free:

• Unlimited stops on the map, day by day.
• Live collaboration. Invite friends by email or link and everyone edits the same plan at the same time, like a shared document.
• Plans that sync across your devices and are readable offline.
• A budget, expense tracking, and bill splitting for the group.
• Forwarding flight and hotel confirmations into the trip.

That set is hard to beat for free. If you are planning a road trip, a city break with friends, or a family holiday where the hard part is deciding what to do each day, Wanderlog does it well. The positive reviews we read, in Reddit threads and family travel blogs, praise the same thing: the map and the shared plan.

What the complaints are about

Wanderlog's Trustpilot page tells a different story: a TrustScore of 1.8 from 52 reviews, 69% of them one star and 19% five stars. Two things to know before you take that at face value. The profile is unclaimed, and Wanderlog does not invite customers to review there, so the page mostly collects people who went looking for somewhere to complain. And 52 reviews, 17 of them from the last year, against 36,000 App Store ratings is a small, unhappy sample.

Even so, the complaints cluster, and the clusters are worth knowing:

• Billing. The most common theme. Reviewers say they expected a free app and hit a paywall or a trial that turned into a charge, and some say they could not get a refund.
• Forwarded bookings. Several say a forwarded confirmation never appeared in the trip, or appeared twice.
• Support. Reviewers describe slow or no replies, especially about refunds.
• Place details. A few say a venue was placed in the wrong city, or a museum was listed as free when it charges.

Notice what is not on the list: the map, the day planning, and planning with friends. The complaints come from where a planner meets bookings and money. If you plan on the map and stay on the free plan, you are in the 4.9-star group. If you are paying, or relying on email import to keep the trip complete, read the complaints carefully.

Is Wanderlog free?

Yes, for the planner. Everything in the list above is free. Wanderlog Pro, according to the App Store listing, adds exporting your trip to Google Maps and linking your Gmail account so bookings import on their own. Reviewers also credit Pro with route optimization and offline maps.

Pro shows up in the US App Store at $39.99 a year or $5.99 a month, alongside other annual prices from $31.99 to $59.99. Is Wanderlog Pro worth it? goes through every price, what Pro really adds, and who should pay.

Is Wanderlog safe?

The real question is usually "is it safe to link my Gmail?" Wanderlog's privacy policy answers it directly. It says Wanderlog will "solely parse travel receipts" from a linked Gmail account, that it parses them with help from OpenAI, that it deletes temporary data about any email that is not a travel receipt, and that it will never "use Gmail data for ad targeting or serving". It also says its use complies with the "Google API Services: User Data Policy", Google's rules for apps that read Gmail.

Three things in the policy are worth knowing too. It has no effective or last-updated date. It says it may change "in some cases with limited or no notice". And it lets third-party advertisers set their own cookies, which Wanderlog says it has no control over. The App Store privacy label lists contact info, identifiers, usage data, and user content as data linked to you, with "Developer's Advertising or Marketing" among the purposes.

None of that makes Wanderlog unsafe. It is a normal privacy policy for a free consumer app. If you would rather share less, forward the confirmations you want imported instead of linking your whole inbox, which is free anyway.

Policy and App Store listing checked on November 4, 2026.

Who Wanderlog is for, and who should use something else

Use Wanderlog if you plan by deciding where to go each day, you are traveling with friends who want to add ideas, or you are doing a road trip with a lot of stops. Stay on the free plan until a Pro feature is the thing you are missing.

Use something else if your trip is mostly bookings arriving by email: flights, hotels, trains, dinner reservations. That is the part of Wanderlog people complain about most, and it is the part other apps are built around. TripIt files forwarded confirmations into one itinerary, with flight alerts in its paid plan (Wanderlog vs TripIt compares the two). Tripsy does the same on Apple devices. If you fly often and mostly want delay and gate alerts, a flight tracker is the right tool (Is Flighty Pro worth it?).

Whimbrel is the option for people who want the bookings and the people in one place. Forward a confirmation to your private address, or connect Gmail, Outlook, Fastmail, or any inbox over IMAP, and an assistant files every booking on the right day and shows you which email added what. Share the trip with co-planners who can add their own bookings, or with watchers who only need to see it. Flights get live status, with a push to everyone on that flight when it is delayed or the gate changes. Turn on expenses and everyone logs what they paid, with a receipt photo filling in the amount.

Whimbrel has no map route planner and does not split bills, so if those are why you use Wanderlog, keep using it. Whimbrel is free today. Whimbrel Pro is coming for people with many trips a year or many people per trip, and everything you build now comes with you. The features page lists what it does now, and How to plan a group trip covers the planning side for groups.

The verdict

Wanderlog earns its 4.9 stars as a free, shared, map-first trip planner. The 1.8 stars are real too, and they are about billing, refunds, and bookings from email, not the planner. Use it for what it is good at, check that every forwarded booking landed, and read the price screen before you start a trial.