Best RV Trip Planners: Recommended Apps and Tools
RV trip planners can save money, save time and take the stress out of RV trip planning. Campgrounds are crowded, more people are traveling by RV and looking for places to stay and go. Trip planning apps and websites not only help find that elusive campsite, but they can also provide a safe, obstacle-free route, calculate miles, costs, and suggest travel adventures.
RV Trip Planner: What is it?
An RV trip planner can plan the trip and the RV route by plugging in a starting point and the ending point. Good planners will then help determine the distance between those two points, the number of days it will take in an RV using RV driving distances, campsites along the way, and points of interest. Most route planners allow the user to determine comfortable driving distance, put in height, weight, and length of RV and intended travel stops. It takes a lot of the hassle out of deciding the best routes whether a short trip or a three-month epic journey.
Many planners are also available as apps and as websites. The apps are usually available both in the Android and iPhone app stores. They can be free with in-app purchases or a more robust version can be purchased without advertising at a nominal fee.
There are also RV trip planners that locate campsites, points of interest along the way but do not actually plan the route on a map. These RV trip planners provide essential guidance to locate and review campsites in the area you will be traveling.
Qualities of an Effective and Efficient App/Tool for Your RV Road Trip
With the variety of RV trip planners available it is important to choose the ones that best fit your needs. Do you want route information only? Do you want to avoid gravel roads and tollways? Are you using the planner to find campsites too? Want high-end RV resorts or boondocking locations? Just need a spot for one night or somewhere to relax for a week or two? A good RV trip planner will meet your specific RVing needs.
Good Trip planners:
- Robust search function
- Easily readable maps
- Locations by address and GPS coordinates
- Printable or sharable electronically
- Detailed campsite information with reviews
The 6 Best RV Road Trip Planner Apps and Tools
We are full-time RVers and we travel at least 8-10 months of the year. The rest of the time I am planning our next adventure! I use several RV trip planners at once, as each planner has different strengths. These are the best RV trip planners I have found and use often.
RV Trip Wizard
RV Trip Wizard. This is my first choice when starting to plan a new trip or when there is a change in trip plans. RV Trip Wizard is website-based and I access it from my computer, iPad, and phone equally well. It is really an RV road trip planner as it provides specific RV-friendly routes as well as campground information.
After setting up the planner for our specific RV info, our driving preferences, gas mileage, and average cost we spend on campsites I plug in a starting point and ending point. The planner then maps out the best route.
RV Trip Wizard has a number of overlay options, including a new beta National Park and Monument overlay.
It has the option of showing all the campsites with info on the way. I can go directly to campground reviews within the planner to check out reviews and photos before I book. While this is a great feature, not all campsites that are available are within the site, which is why I use several trip planners.
I like that I can add and delete custom stops and search for things like National Parks and add them to the route. Since we travel so much it is sometimes difficult to remember which campgrounds we liked and didn’t. With this, trips are saved and I have begun to take notes on the campsites we have stayed at in the past.
They are also amazingly responsive to questions, replying to a submission form within minutes to hours, and always with helpful information.
RV Trip Wizard is subscription-based at $49 a year with a free trial available.
Campendium App
Campendium App is my second favorite trip planner for finding more campsites. While it does not provide a route feature, it has the advantage of showing many boondocking spots, national forests, overnight parking spots, and dump stations.
Campendium uses technology to determine the current location and then searches in the surrounding area. That is particularly helpful when it is getting late and I need to find a campground soon. We found a beautiful boondocking location on a lake in Wyoming last week when all the other campsites on our route were fully booked. We were the only ones there. It was like having a private beach!
Campendium also provides a search function by city, state, or campground name and filters to define the type of campground, hookups, price, ratings, and reviews.
While the app is free there is premium membership available that provides additional information on area cell data carrier signal, public land overlays, and is ad-free. The premium membership is $23.99 a year.
AllStays.com and AllStays App
AllStays.com is my next stop looking for sites. Actually, it is a toss-up between Campendium and AllStays. Each has a vast array of campsites, although AllStays may have a few more. It does not create a route but shows campsites near the current location or with the search function. It is available as a website or as an app. I usually use the app because of the bigger initial map size. The website provides a list of states to click on and the ability to search on a map. Highways are clearly numbered so it is easy to follow a predetermined route. On the website, campgrounds are searchable by name or clicking on the campground on the map.
AllStays provides full name, address, GPS coordinates, number of sites, average costs, elevation, when open, nearest campgrounds, and reviews when available.
There is an option to look at a much larger map with a satellite view on the website. As AllStays shows a variety of campsites, this is particularly helpful if going off the beaten path and want to see tree cover and type of roads or even if a campground has an open view for satellite. After using AllStays to find a heavily wooded boondocking site, I now always check out the satellite view before making plans.
AllStays has one of the most robust camping location sites, particularly boondocking and national forest locations. The camp and RV app show the distance from where I am to any campground I click on. I can also access the weather, and images, and can even share them. AllStays has a huge variety of apps available: Camp and RV, Camp and Tent, Truck and Travel, Overnight Parking Walmart, Military Camp and RV, Rest Stops Plus, and RV dumps.
The one disadvantage I find is that not every campsite has a review. My workaround has been to type the campground name into a different RV trip planner and see if there are any reviews there.
AllStays is available as a free website and also as an app for purchase at $2.99.
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Roadtrippers.com and App
Roadtrippers has both a website and an app. It is widely used to plan RV routes, things to do, places to eat and what to see. It is very versatile and good for both RV and car trips. They have a number of featured pre-planned trips and will even use your location to provide trip guides in the area. They provide navigation and maps. I don’t find it very intuitive but after a hunt-and-peek I can usually find what I want.
While a number of campsites are featured I usually need to access additional sites for more campgrounds. What I really like is being able to see in detail things to do in the area and where we are traveling.
KOA Camping App
The KOA Camping App takes a lot of the guesswork out of searching for a spot to stop for a night or for a week. As campsites are getting harder to book, I can usually find a spot in a KOA along our route. The app has a map feature to find upcoming KOAs near my route. Clicking on the KOA icon provides the specific campground location, amenities, recreation, upcoming events, photos, local attractions, and information. It also shows how many miles from my current location. The app is designed to book directly through the app.
KOAs can all vary as they are owned by individual campground owners. They are now categorized by type of camping – those that are marked “Journey” are mainly for travelers and may be only good for a night or two. Ones marked “Holidays” are destination campgrounds – usually close to destination locations. They may have more amenities and people may stay longer.
Some Holiday KOAs have patio sites that are spacious, hard-surfaced, with a grill, table, chairs, fire pit, and a glider. Although pricey, sometimes the extra space and amenities are so worth it.
KOAs have a reward program that offers a 10 percent discount when becoming a member at $33 a year.
RV Life’s Campground Reviews
RV Life’s Campground Reviews are a great tool to search for campgrounds in locations across the country. The website is easy to use. Simply click on a state to view and the campsites are shown on a map. They are also listed by name and counties or cities can be searched to narrow down results.
The site can also narrow the search with filters for park types, features, hookups, recreation, ratings, price, and connectivity.
A huge advantage of the website is the ability to read actual campers’ reviews and see photos of the different campsites. The campgrounds are rated based on user reviews and can help determine to camp or not camp there.
RV Life’s Campground Reviews is available online for free or through the RV Trip Wizard website subscription.
Utilizing an RV travel planner can make the trip so much more enjoyable and less stressful. No matter what route you take, having the right tools always makes it better. Happy Trails!
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RVParky does it all. It’s free for PC, Mac, android and ios. Nothing else needed.
Several good ones missed unfortunately. Agree RVPARKY is excellent. Other notable ones: togorv/roadtrippers & Hammer
You neglected to note that Allstays is not available for Android.
I think you forgot RV Parky. Like Trip Planner but free.
I still use Good Sam. If I subscribe to all these I will have no money left to go camping. LOL
RV Life has a good review section and I did sign up on the app for that.
We used Good Sam for a few years until they changed it. All I got from them was they will finish updating in the future so we were forced to change to RV TripWizard. Great move! Not only is the tool easy to use, they respond to questions, suggestions and improvements. Twice I’ve sent them a suggestion and both were implemented in the next release. They link to campgrounds, reviews and hints for surrounding areas. The routing is pretty darn good, they warn you about hazards, and it doesn’t take a lot of time to learn how to use it. Though a member of Good Sam, won’t be returning to use their planner.
I notice the author’s link to RV Trip Wizard looks like it gives him a referral credit.
The author also fails to mention that both Allstays and RoadTrippers have annual memberships around $30 for the upgraded version. They might compare better if he was comparing upgraded versions across the board.
I have been using Allstays Pro for a while, and agree that a routing feature could be fabulous (especially since they already have low clearances marked which could help with routing tall vehicles in cities). It is also worth noting that Allstays Pro, which unfortunately is currently web only tool, offers an offline feature. There is a button to download the data for the area you want, before you get out of range. It is a bit difficult to work with, however better than nothing.
Sure would like to know how the Good Sam and the CoPilot trip planners would compare with these that were chosen by the writer. I have been trying to find the best and it seems that these 2 have very large followings. I agree that Roadtrippers can be a challenge.
“Highway Weather” (http://www.weatherroute.io) is a great app for finding routes that avoid bad weather. Available on Apple iOS and Android, as both free and subscription (more complete info) services.
I have been using RV Trip Wizard for four years, 36,000 miles, 21 states including Alaska and really like it. Use it extensively for route planning, campsites including reviews, prices, photos. I like printing it and using the hard copy for notes as we travel.
I have mourned the loss of the mapping planners Street Atlas and Streets and Trips, and I will until there are no places that we might go that have poor cell coverage. Both the above were great planners and then the came along for the ride as real time navigators. The beauty of this was that if your plans got changed during the driving day, these would catch up with it. These packages could lay out a complete excursion months in advance. You would know then where to expect to buy fuel or find a place for ONP. If you were longer in that attraction (museum) than you had planned and now it will be midnight when you get to the planned ONP, that would just wrinkle through the plan. These days, we usually have wire, that can be a laptop tethered to a smartphone or something else. This is why I am so aware that there are still areas that don’t have usable coverage.
We really miss a good map with a “You Are Here” marker. Preloading maps requires that you know where you will be next.
A correction: The RV Life subscription is $49/yr.
I’ve used the Roadtrippers app for years and have been satisfied with. Like Nanci says it can be non-intuitive at times but also has a rich data set. One of the bigger problems I’ve had is that there will sometimes be multiple entries for the same place in different locations. It will be interesting to see if how Roadtrippers, now owned by Togo RV, integrates with the Overnight RV Parking app, also owned by Togo RV.
Happy Camping!
Great comprehensive list, Nanci. I’ve always wanted a list like this explaining the features and costs of these helpful planning tools. Thanks for a wonderful article!
Sure would like to know how the Good Sam and the CoPilot trip planners would compare with these that were chosen by the writer. I have been trying to find the best and it seems that these 2 have very large followings. I agree that Roadtrippers can be a challenge.
I really like RV Parky for planning trips. It’s easy to make changes en route, and I can put in the address of a boondocking site, Harvest Host Site, or Boondockers Welcome Site and it adds it to my trip plan. I can view my trip plan as a map or as a list that shows distance from stop to stop. The app also saves all my previous trips so I have a record of them, and I can share the trip plan with my husband so he can see it on his phone as well.
We use RV Parky and really like its routing and campground reviews. Good all-round app!
I, too, use and like RV Parky. It’s not always a comprehensive list of available campgrounds, so I use Campendium and recreation.gov for other locations and reviews. I like the fact my trip is saved every time I make a change and can make notes on a particular site even after the trip is over.
I’ve used the Good Sam’s travel planners for years. Can be a challenge getting it set up but has a variety of set ups for campgrounds only, ie., Good Sam rated, private and government campgrounds. Also does a decent job on mapping out a route. I think its important in any of these campsite search apps is to see if reviews are available for individual campgrounds. And how current are those reviews?
Nanci hit my top 3. I’ve been using the RV Life campground reviews since it was campgroundreviews.com. Another of the great features in RV Trip Wizard is the ability to set a distance or time for the travel day. Trip Wizard will draw a circle at that radius around your current location of show you a spider of that distance on the roadway system. Simply go to the edge of the circle and look at the available campgrounds.
I also use freecampsites.net to find overnights.
Tip: Don’t stay at a CG if the rating is less than 7.5. Don’t ask…
Any trip planning app or website should have the ability to save and export the trip so it can be imported into my Garmin RV GPS. While driving I don’t need any more devices to watch besides the road and GPS. If it can’t export I’m left with duplicating the trip in my GPS.
RV Trip Wizard will export to a Garmin GPS. You will need a computer and it can be a bit tricky but once you get used to it it works well.