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Must-Have Budget Travel Apps for Planning & Savings
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items Discover our Must-Have Budget Travel Apps for Planning & Savings! These are the top apps we use regularly to make bookings, find our way, and stay safe and organized as we travel the world full-time on a budget. Check them out!
Sections
7
Our favorite Apps for Flight & Accommodation Bookings
Tours & Tickets
Navigation
Money
Stay organized
Language & Translation
Our favorite Apps for Flight & Accommodation Bookings
Explore our Favorite Apps for Flight & Accommodation Bookings! These top tools help us score the best deals on flights and stays for global adventures.
This is our new favorite flight booking app. Very user friendly, great deals, awesome notifications and follow-up on flights, and efficient customer service when needed. I've just started to use them for accommodation too as some of their deals are e...
Trip.com Official Site | Travel Deals and Promotions
As one of the more popular flight aggregators, we usually check prices on Skyscanner before booking. Recently, however, Trip.com has had better deals. But it's always worth checking just in case.
Skyscanner
Our “Go-To” site for finding great deals on accommodation. Once you reach Genius III level (which isn't that difficult) some of the deals on offer are amazing
Excellent Value on Accommodation Worldwide
This used to be our favorite platform for flights and accommodation when they had the cashback program. Now that it's finished, I still use it to check the best routes and prices before booking and occasionally WayAway still comes up as the best opti...
WayAway
Yet another platform in our arsenal to find the best deals. We've yet to make a booking with them, but we do use their alert function to catch potential price drops.
Hopper
Tours & Tickets
Dive into our Tours & Tickets section! These top apps help us book unforgettable global experiences, from city tours to must-see attractions. Explore now!
We typically use Get Your Guide to book day/short tours, as you typically pay no more than you would if you lined up and bought directly. A good example was my recent purchase of the Lisboa Card. It was super easy to walk in and exchange the voucher ...
GetYourGuide
This is hands down the biggest and best platform for extended tours. Excellent customer service, great prices and a bunch of benefits over booking directly through a tour company. We did a full review of the platform here: catchourtravelbug.com/tourradar-reviewed-a-one-stop-shop-to-save-time-cash-on-multi-day-tours
TourRadar
The best platform to find Pay-As-You-Wish Walking tours. We've done about 5 of them in various cities (Skopje, Shanghai,) and they are an excellent way to get your bearings. All the guides have been excellent and it really is pay as you wish. (Althou...
Free Walking Tour s Worldwide
Navigation
Check out our Navigation Apps section! These essential tools keep us on track, guiding our global adventures with ease. Find the best apps to explore now!
8 times out of 10, Google Maps is our “Go-To” navigation app. It seems to get better and better every year with accurate public transport options, radar warnings, and more. But Beware, it doesn't work in China (There are no Google or MEta apps allowed.) without a VPN that works (and there are only a couple of them - LetsVPN being one of them.)
Google Maps
If you're not likely to have data, then Maps.me is a good option to access offline maps.
MAPS.ME (MapsWithMe), detailed offline maps of the world ...
Komoot is much less likely to lead you up the side of a cliff on a bicycle tour than Google Maps. We always like to check both to ensure a trouble-free ride. It's also good for hiking.
Komoot
Alltrails is a premium navigation app for those who like to hike and bike outdoors. The cost of the premium option is minimal compared to the benefits of getting off track in nature.
AllTrails
Money
Discover our Money section! These apps for tracking expenses, debit cards, and currency exchange help us manage finances on global adventures. Check it now!
This is our “Go-To” debit card for payments, transfers, and cash withdrawals worldwide. Low fees, excellent rates and lightening fast transactions. I love the fact that we can be paid and spend in so many different currencies. For full-time travelers...
Wise: The international account | Money without borders | Wise United States
XE Currency is a great tool to track exchange rates (and transfer) money worldwide. If we can't use Wise for some reason, this is our fall bacck.
Xe Currency Converter - Live Exchange Rates Today
We use Trabee to track and analyze all our expenses. It really does help us to understand where our money is going and stay on budget.
TRABEE POCKET
If you're traveling in a group and need to split costs, this app makes it simple. Log each expense as it occurs and square up at the end. It's especially helpful when your trip incorporates multiple currencies. We used it when traveling with family i...
Splitwise
Stay organized
Explore our Stay Organized section! Apps like TripIt keep our global travels seamless, managing itineraries with ease. Discover top tools to stay on track!
This app makes it so easy to collate all your travel plans from different booking apps. Just send each confirmation email to the app and it does the rest.
TripIt
We use Dropbox to back up our files on my laptop, pictures and important documents so we can access from anywhere.
Dropbox.com
Language & Translation
Uncover our Language & Translation Apps section! These tools help us communicate worldwide, making global travel smoother.
I'm not sure what we'd do without this app. Especially since it can now use your camera to read road signs and menus and the microphone to translate speech.
Google Translate
The perfect partner to Google Translate, this app can identify what objects and places are from a picture. Amazingly accurate!
Google Lens
Online Security
Dashlane is one of our essential tools for maintaining our online security. We could never remember all the different unique passwords for the many apps and accounts we have. Dashlane makes it easy to store them securely along with important secure n...
Dashlane
We use Norton 360 to protect our online activities and devices. There are various packages and levels of protection. We maintain a 5 device licences that covers phones, laptops and tablet.
Norton 360 with LifeLock Identity Theft Protection
NordVPN is one of the top VPN's for protecting your inline identity and accessing “banned” accounts and sites in various locations.
NordVPN