Wanderlog delivers full-featured trip planning while Google My Maps excels at free custom mapping. Which approach suits your travel style?
"Great app! It was quite handy to use to plan our trip and to share our trip itinerary and travel notes with friends / co-travelers in the group. The app also proactively gives helpful suggestions like travel tips and even tells you when certain restaurants or attractions in your travel list might be closed. I've used the free version and it was still very helpful."
"I was so excited to find this for an upcoming trip with lots of stops. I began adding all my hotels and others places I wanted to check out to discover I have to pay for the map usage. 50 bucks for a once in a lifetime trip is so not worth it. Maybe if you travel multiple times a year, it would be worth it. You really should consider a monthly rate with options to put the account on hold."
Wanderlog offers a robust itinerary creation system that allows you to build detailed day-by-day travel plans. The drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to organize flights, accommodations, activities, and transportation in a visual timeline format. Unlike basic planning tools, Wanderlog automatically populates location details including descriptions, photos, ratings, hours of operation, and contact information when you add destinations.
The platform integrates seamlessly with Google Maps, showing travel times and distances between locations to help you plan realistic daily schedules.
One of Wanderlog's standout features is its Google Docs-style collaborative editing. Multiple travelers can simultaneously edit the same itinerary, making it perfect for group trips where everyone wants input on the plans. Team members can add suggestions, vote on activities, and contribute to different aspects of the trip planning process.
The collaboration extends to expense splitting, where group members can track shared costs and settle bills at the end of the trip, similar to apps like Splitwise.
Every destination you add is automatically plotted on an interactive map powered by Google Maps. The visual representation helps you understand the geographic relationship between locations and optimize your daily routes. For road trips, Wanderlog connects your destinations with route lines, giving you a clear view of your travel path.
The Pro version includes a route optimization feature that automatically rearranges your daily activities in the most efficient order based on location and travel times.
Wanderlog can automatically import your travel reservations by forwarding confirmation emails to a unique trip-specific email address or by connecting your Gmail account. The system recognizes booking confirmations for flights, hotels, rental cars, and activities, automatically adding them to your itinerary with all relevant details.
This eliminates manual data entry and ensures all your important travel information is centralized in one place.
The platform provides personalized recommendations for attractions, restaurants, and activities based on your destination and preferences. These suggestions come from travel guides, user-generated content, and integrations with services like TripAdvisor. You can add recommended places to your itinerary with a single click.
The Pro version includes an AI assistant that provides local tips and suggestions as you plan your trip.
Wanderlog includes comprehensive budgeting tools that let you set trip budgets and track expenses by category (flights, accommodation, food, activities). The expense tracker supports multiple currencies and provides visual breakdowns of your spending patterns.
For group travel, the bill-splitting feature allows you to specify who paid for what and how costs should be divided among travelers, with automatic calculations for settling up.
The mobile app stores your itineraries locally, allowing you to access your plans even without internet connectivity. This is particularly valuable for international travel or when visiting areas with poor cellular coverage. The Pro version enhances this with offline maps and full functionality.
The app syncs seamlessly across devices, so changes made on your phone are instantly available on your computer and vice versa.
Wanderlog integrates deeply with Google Maps, allowing you to export your daily itinerary directly to Google Maps for turn-by-turn navigation. This creates a seamless transition from planning to execution, as you can follow your pre-planned route using the navigation app you're already familiar with.
The system shows estimated travel times between destinations and can factor in different transportation methods.
The platform hosts user-generated travel guides that you can browse for inspiration and practical tips. These guides include detailed itineraries, photos, and recommendations from real travelers who have visited your destination. You can save items from these guides directly to your own trip plan.
This community aspect helps you discover hidden gems and local favorites that might not appear in traditional guidebooks.
Wanderlog serves as a central repository for all your travel documents and notes. You can attach files, add detailed notes to each destination, create packing lists, and store important travel information. The checklist feature helps ensure you don't forget important tasks or items.
The platform also allows you to add custom sections and organize information in whatever way works best for your travel style.
Unlike many travel planners that work best for single-destination trips, Wanderlog excels at complex, multi-city itineraries and road trips. You can add unlimited stops, plan routes between cities, and organize your trip by geographic regions or time periods.
The visual map interface makes it particularly useful for planning driving routes and understanding the spatial relationships between destinations.
Plan group trips like working on a Google Doc—everyone can edit simultaneously, add suggestions, and contribute to the itinerary in real-time.
See all your destinations plotted on an interactive map with travel times and distances, making it easy to plan logical daily routes.
Get full itinerary building, collaboration, budgeting, and recommendation features without paying a subscription fee.
Export your daily plans directly to Google Maps for navigation, creating a smooth transition from planning to exploring.
Handle everything from detailed itineraries and expense tracking to document storage and packing lists in a single platform.
Unlike TripIt's automatic email scanning, you often need to manually input reservation details and lesser-known attraction information.
Wanderlog doesn't provide flight delay notifications or gate changes like specialized travel management apps—you'll need airline apps for that.
At $39.99/year, some users find the Pro subscription costly for features like offline access and route optimization that could be essential.
If you prefer spontaneous travel or just need basic planning, Wanderlog's comprehensive feature set might feel like overkill.
While you can research flights and hotels, you can't book them directly through the app—you'll need to use separate booking sites.
Google My Maps enables travelers to create up to 10 distinct layers per map, each containing up to 2,000 locations. This powerful system allows you to separate hotels, restaurants, activities, and daily itineraries into organized, color-coded layers that can be toggled on and off for clarity during planning.
This organizational approach transforms complex multi-destination trips into manageable visual segments, making it easy to focus on specific aspects of your journey without overwhelming clutter.
The platform mirrors Google Docs functionality, allowing multiple travelers to simultaneously plan trips together. Changes appear instantly across all users, making group travel planning seamless. You can share maps with view-only or full editing permissions, and integrate with Google Groups for team access.
This collaborative feature eliminates the back-and-forth emails and conflicting spreadsheets that often plague group travel planning.
Google My Maps accepts CSV files, Excel spreadsheets, Google Sheets, and KML/KMZ files up to 2,000 rows each. This feature transforms existing travel research into visual maps instantly, whether importing restaurant lists from spreadsheets or GPX tracks from previous adventures.
The import process includes options to color-code and style markers based on data categories, making it easy to convert research into actionable travel maps.
Each location marker can embed photos, videos, detailed notes, website links, and contact information. Maps can store comprehensive trip documentation, from restaurant hours and reservation notes to photo galleries and YouTube videos showcasing destinations.
This multimedia approach creates living travel guides that serve as both planning tools and lasting trip memories.
The platform offers extensive personalization through custom icons, colors, and marker styles. You can upload your own icons, choose from hundreds of built-in options, and create color-coded systems that make complex itineraries instantly understandable at a glance.
Advanced users can create highly sophisticated visual hierarchies that communicate travel priorities and logistics effectively.
Maps support KML/KMZ formats for universal compatibility with other mapping applications and GPS devices. Maps can be embedded in websites, exported for offline reference, or shared through direct links with customizable permissions.
This flexibility ensures your travel planning work can be used across different platforms and shared with various audiences.
The system integrates driving, walking, cycling, and public transit directions directly into custom maps. While not as sophisticated as dedicated route planners, it provides essential navigation between locations with turn-by-turn directions accessible through the Google Maps mobile app.
Routes automatically update when you modify destination sequences, helping optimize travel logistics.
Built-in rulers calculate point-to-point distances, multi-point path measurements, and polygon area calculations. These features prove invaluable for understanding spatial relationships between destinations and estimating travel times.
The measurement tools help identify realistic daily itineraries and prevent over-ambitious scheduling.
Maps automatically save to Google Drive without using storage quota, connect with Google Photos for image embedding, and sync across all devices where you're signed into your Google account. This seamless integration eliminates file management concerns.
The ecosystem integration ensures your travel planning work is always backed up and accessible across devices.
There are no account restrictions on map quantity, meaning you can create separate maps for different trips, maintain ongoing collections of favorite places, or build comprehensive regional guides without storage or quantity limitations.
This freedom allows for detailed organization strategies that suit individual travel planning styles.
The platform leverages Google's comprehensive location database, making it easy to find and add destinations through powerful search functionality. You can discover nearby attractions, restaurants, and services while building your itinerary.
The search integration provides access to business hours, contact information, and user reviews directly within the mapping interface.
Transform abstract itineraries into clear geographical understanding that reveals logical routing opportunities and helps identify unrealistic schedules—preventing common travel planning mistakes.
Get sophisticated mapping capabilities, unlimited maps, collaborative editing, and data import/export functionality completely free, while competitors charge $35-60 annually.
Enjoy unmatched detail and precision for pre-trip research with full-screen interface, comprehensive toolsets, and ability to import research data from spreadsheets.
Enable seamless group planning where participants don't need premium accounts or app downloads—sharing works through familiar Google Drive permissions.
Preserve travel memories and research indefinitely through Google Drive integration, creating living documents that provide lasting value beyond initial trip planning.
You can only create and edit maps on desktop browsers, forcing travelers to return to computers for any trip modifications—severely hampering spontaneous adjustments during travel.
The platform requires constant internet connection for viewing custom content, creating problems in remote locations or when managing data costs abroad.
No flight tracking, reservation management, automatic itinerary creation, or intelligent recommendations—everything requires entirely manual data entry and research.
Only 10 layers per map, 10,000 total items maximum, and 2,000 features per layer force awkward workarounds for complex trips or comprehensive regional guides.
No budget tracking, expense management, route optimization, or travel-specific integrations compared to dedicated platforms like Wanderlog or TripIt.
The choice between Wanderlog and Google My Maps ultimately comes down to whether you want a dedicated travel planning experience or flexible custom mapping. Wanderlog offers the more comprehensive travel-focused experience with collaborative itinerary planning, budget tracking, and reservation management that make it particularly appealing for detailed trip planners and group travelers. Its travel-centric approach consolidates route planning, expense tracking, and collaborative editing in ways that Google My Maps doesn't match.
However, Wanderlog's travel-specific features come at the cost of customization flexibility and long-term reliability. The subscription requirement for advanced features, more complex learning curve, and dependence on a specialized platform make it feel more like a commitment than a flexible tool. For travelers who want complete control over their map organization or don't need travel-specific features, Wanderlog's structured approach may feel limiting.
Google My Maps prioritizes unlimited customization and proven reliability over travel-specific features. Its completely free platform offers extensive visual organization with 10 custom layers, unlimited global coverage, and seamless Google ecosystem integration. While it lacks Wanderlog's automated travel features and requires manual research, it delivers unlimited mapping flexibility without subscription fees or travel-specific constraints.
The verdict: Choose Wanderlog if you want comprehensive travel planning with collaborative features and can justify the subscription for integrated budgeting, reservation management, and group coordination tools. Choose Google My Maps if you prefer complete customization control, want a free reliable tool, or need flexible mapping that works for any type of trip planning without travel app limitations.
Wanderlog is a dedicated travel planning app with built-in features for itineraries, budgets, reservations, and group collaboration. It's designed specifically for travel planning.
Google My Maps is a flexible custom mapping tool where you manually create visual maps with pins, layers, and custom organization. It's not travel-specific but highly customizable.
Wanderlog excels at group travel with real-time collaborative editing, shared budgets, expense splitting, and the ability for multiple people to add and edit the same itinerary.
Google My Maps allows sharing and collaborative editing, but lacks travel-specific group features like shared budgets, expense tracking, or reservation management that traveling groups often need.
Wanderlog offers a free version with basic features, but advanced features like offline access, unlimited trips, and enhanced collaboration require Wanderlog Pro at around $40-60/year.
Google My Maps is completely free forever with no premium tiers, subscription fees, or feature limitations. You get full access to all mapping and customization features.
Wanderlog has full-featured mobile apps for both iOS and Android that work well for planning and accessing your itinerary while traveling.
Google My Maps is primarily designed for desktop creation. While you can view your maps on mobile, editing capabilities are very limited, making it mainly a desktop planning tool.
Wanderlog streamlines trip planning with features like automatic reservation importing, suggested activities, budget templates, and guided itinerary creation that reduce manual work.
Google My Maps requires completely manual setup - you research attractions yourself, manually add every pin, create your own organizational system, and input all information from scratch. It offers more control but requires significantly more effort.
