Trial of Wanderlog and Tripit - Inspired by Trip Research Post!

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Finding/Creating/Manipulating

Wanderlog

--everything is either a list, place or note

--list creation, customization and placement/movement is easy and visibly pleasing

--pre-populated list items is great for checklists (planning, packing etc)

--places - seem to need to be "google-able".

--adding places that are not found through the search is not easy

--Itinerary section - specifically for dates input

--auto calculates travel time between places input to itinerary

--"Optimize" button to reorganize the places in the itinerary section by distance/time and you can choose not to accept their optimization.

--Expense tracker; input/verify $ from reservations OR on selected places

--Use whatever currency you wish for the expense tracker, but has to be the same to be included in total (and doesn't do a exchange calculation)

--Can assign costs by person, equally, etc.

TripIt

--everything is a “Plan”

--emailed plans can be cumbersome to assign and edit, but definitely doable

--free form plan input form for activities, lodging and transportation

--template plan input form for many types of actions on a trip

Initial Take Aways

Wanderlog

--fairly intuitive

--not as customizable (adding Places can be frustrating)

--very flexible for moving plans, trying "days" out

--TONS of functionality

Tripit

--not as intuitive, but really customizable and a workhorse once you get to know it.

--not as fancy

--requires more data entry (but also, has more data fields!)

--less functionality

--more for organization of established plans, not for the planning process

SUMMARY

I'd tried Tripit about 5 years ago (and went with Sygic for my trip to Austria, which I liked ok). I hadn't heard of Wanderlog until Pam's post. I planned for Austria using Google Drive - Docs / Sheets and uploading PDFs.

I'm LOVING Wanderlog for the planning piece. It has already replaced my Google Drive approach.
But I may consider duplicating the finalized plans in TripIt for my husband to use on our trip as the no-nonsense details while I handle the adapting plans on the fly Wanderlog.

Thank you melT for your research and comparison.

I don’t think I’m computer literate enough to make either work. For my one trip a year I’ll stick to my basic word docs for planning, email folders for confirmations and web bookmarks in specific folders for information. It’s worked (for me) since I started traveling in retirement.

don't add another post - just answer this one and continue your quest

or maybe you meant a reply. sorry to chime in

Thank you for the kind words! I hope you don't mind but I added a comment and link onto the research organization thread to this post.

Really interesting comparison! I've not jumped either way yet....still just going with Googledocs using a table, but I'm also not doing anything real complicated for my next trip, lol.

I love Wanderlog! I anded up paying for the pro version last year. Even though I have been to Iceland many times, this really helped me fine tune our trip last summer and I am using for our Norway trip this summer and our Christmas Market trip in December.

One other comparison you might want to add is the map feature from both Wanderlog & TripIt. I like the Wanderlog map better.

Another perk of Wanderlog is being able to enter a city, and the options for restaurants pop up on their map with a nice colorful photo of a special dish and review ratings, etc. I just pulled up the small city of Spoleto, Italy, and now I don’t know how I will be able to choose only a couple of restaurants while I am there! Mouthwatering options! : ). As a person who travels solo on some trips, I want to know that my lodging has some restaurant choices near it before I book that one.

I currently have a paid Trip-It version and have recently been playing with the Wanderlog free version. I’ve loaded several trips on Trip-It since 2018. But my “go to” during my trip is still my two printed Excel pages - one with the complete information at a glance & the second with all of my transportation details since I ride a lot of trains.

I do like that my husband can add details in Trip-It when he runs across something or reserves a golf tee time.

I've been using TripIt™ for about 5 years, when my sister-in-law introduced me to it. When there was a sale on the pro version she let me know, so I upgraded. I used to use Google docs for my trips, but with so many these days – I just counted and I have 12 (!) upcoming trips in my TripIt account, including Korea, Scotland, Switzerland, Tennessee ... – I would lose my mind w/o TripIt. Also, when my husband says something like, "When is our flight to such and such a place?" he'll now answer himself and follow up with my usual reply: "Check TripIt" ;-)

It has helped us immensely to know when, say, the rental car doesn't line up with our flight's arrival, or the hotel stays overlap by mistake. Or when we've forgotten to book something we need to.

Jean--You just made me realize something. For our trip next week to Amsterdam, we have done very little planning. Mostly just winging it as that is all I can do right now. So I wasn't even going to use Wanderlog for it, but you reminded me about the restaurant tip there. So guess what I will be doing today;) It wont' take long since not much is planned, but it will be fun to poke around on it while on the plane this week.

I've learned more about both apps from this thread, thanks! I'll add replies as I continue to work through this and also have promised another member I'll include the on the ground (i.e. on our trip) reflections about them too!

Thanks for the breakdown. I need to find one that will easily work for me (Tripit, Wonderlog, Monday.com). I've had a Tripit account for years, just never used it. Word & Excel has been my go to. March 2026 I will begin my Slow Travel of visiting multiple countries in a 5 - 6 month blocks prior to returning to the U.S. for a few weeks to a month. Will be bouncing from country to country after a 28 - 30 night stay.

Jean--Thank goodness I put all our plans on Wanderlog yesterday. I realized I had a couple restaurant reservations messed up. One I had written down, but could not find in emails etc, so emailed them to double check. All was good, but I had a few others written down for wrong days etc. So this got me squared away! I still need to use it for making the most of sense of what to visit on what days, lumping things near each other. And the day trips that we know we are going, but have zero plans, or even train times etc.

Update!

I've left Trip it behind, at least for now and with my crazy brain in the planning stage.

Wanderlog let's you set up Sections and then items under each section, so for my Iceland trip, in trying to figure out how long in each region, I created a section for each region of Iceland and then put the places and notes in each, then I could use the map to see the pins (all the same color in each section) to get a sense of how close and how much in each region.

Now that I've finalize the dates for each region, I've moved those places/notes to the Itinerary dates and those that were left (things we may want to see if we have time etc), I've moved all of those to a Things to See section and deleted the Region Sections.

For Paris, I have added a section of Restaurants and am putting all those I find that look good or were recommended and then they show up on the map around the sights we'll be visiting so I can see what's close by when we're ready to eat!

Incidentally, although we are on one long trip, I separated the trip into Segments (Iceland, Barcelona, Paris and Colmar/Belgium) so I could focus better.

Will keep adding commentary as I work through this.

What a great thread! I have not used either app, but would like to find something better than my Word doc printed out. In 2025, we ramp up our travel with a 5-6 week trip to Japan and I need something better than Word. I look forward to others adding to this post.

I will give Wanderlog a try but can’t give up TripIt as I have used it so long, all over the world.

Even though I know Iceland so well after multiple trips, I still found Wanderlog so helpful for our latest trip last summer! It was really good as far as drive times etc.

MelT, thank you for continuing with updates and ideas as you’re using Wanderlog! I’m using TripIt on this trip, but have some ideas of using Wanderlog for restaurants when we want ideas. I may switch over for the May trip, and I like your idea of separate “trips” since I will have three major sections in Italy over the month.

Mikliz97, you’ve certainly had a stressful year. Be kind to yourself and allow this trip to be one that feeds your soul with relaxing beauty and slow dinners.

Very interesting thread, thanks melT, but I'm wondering if I want to deal with the frustration of adding another app to my travels! This was an EXCELLENT thread and so well researched, have bookmarked it for the future!
Question about the restaurant feature -

Another perk of Wanderlog is being able to enter a city, and the
options for restaurants pop up on their map with a nice colorful photo
of a special dish and review ratings, etc.

How is this any different from Google maps? I guess Wanderlog adds a photo of fav dishes, but if I click on a restaurant in Google I can look at something similar, or am I missing something?

Sandancisco - I'm not sure how it's going to be "on the ground", I haven't used it on a trip yet, but what I'm doing is adding all the recommended restaurants in the areas I'm going to be on our trip into the app, so yes, I could google, but this way, I already have pre-screened restaurants I know are recommended and a bit about them. When we're ready to eat, I open the app, see what I input that's near and off we go!

I'll report back - not leaving until June.

Hi All!

Update on my trials with both Wanderlog and Tripit.

This last weekend I made a spontaneous trip to LA to meet a friend from Japan who was visiting the US (ironically missing the Wanderlog and Tripit demonstrations that I had planned for originally).

I loaded both apps with my flight, hotel and transportation. I didn't plan any specific "sites" in advance as we tagged along with my friend (they did the planning!).

Tripit alerted me, before the airlines that my flight had been delayed. Tripit also alerted me more frequently than the airlines with the updated departure time (ultimately a 3 hour delay). Wanderlog did not. I'm not sure if that's a setting that I had not enabled, but I suspect given the way Wanderlog ingests the flight emails, it's just not their "thing".

But once in LA, I found myself using Wanderlog more often due to its google integration. It was super easy to find and add sites on the fly. And the directions option between the hotel and a site (once I added it), were extremely helpful for walking distances.

Tripit once again alerted (reminded) me to check in to Southwest, which was really helpful, I totally had forgotten to do that.

I had suspected I'd like to use both apps on our big trip this summer - and this short demonstration confirmed that it would be great to have my husband use Tripit for the important details of flights, hotels and booked-in-advance transportation while I manage the sites, transportation/direction between sites, details and changes in the daily itineraries in Wanderlog.

I am just catching up with this now, and after attending the Zoom demo on Saturday, this is a helpful reference for their uses. Coming back to explain how you used it on the ground this weekend is also helpful. Thanks.

In the past, I used Excel, Word and Dropbox to prepare for a trip and then typed in my itinerary into my phone. During the actual trip, I would amend the calendar each day adding notes to show what I actually did and use it as a form of diary.

I downloaded both Wanderlog and Tripit to test them out. I also found many articles comparing the two apps. I plan on using one of these apps for our upcoming trip to Japan in October.

Both apps can be used for free. If you want the pro features, you have to pay an annual subscription. The price can vary depending on the offers. Expect to pay about $30-60 per year. There's enough functionality in the free versions to make them useful.

I'm already a bit wary that both apps storing all of my inputted itinerary information. I draw the line at forwarding my travel related emails to the app. I'm concerned of a possible security breach and that there may be access to my other personal emails.

I do not care for notifications from either app and have turned them off. Some people have complain that Tripit will inundate you with repetitive notifications. I would prefer to rely on the dedicated airline or hotel apps for notifications. Usually, you get the best discounts by booking direct through the dedicated apps.

IMO, Tripit strikes me as more of a business travel app. The itinerary looks boringly simple. However, within each event, you can input a lot of your customized data, like how much time you plan to spend at the event, the attendees, notes, photos etc. However, all of this requires a lot of time and input on the part of the user.

You can fill in an attraction like "Tokyo Tower" and Tripit will automatically fill in the address location and add it to the map and directions. However, there is no other useful information like website, photo, telephone or days and hours of operation unless you input it yourself. To make changes, you have to click the event and re-type the new date, time, etc.

One nice feature of Tripit is that you can transfer your itinerary into your Google calendar. However, it is not a sync (perhaps that is only available in the paid version). Changes in Google calendar do not sync back to Tripit. Changes in Tripit require you to retransfer the itinerary. You then end up with multiple calendar events. ithin There is also a lot of cluttered info from Tripit in the calendar events. Nice idea, but my calendar is more important to me.

Wanderlog strikes me as more of a vacation travel app. The user interface is more pleasing to the eye and easier and more fun to use.

Once you type in "Tokyo Tower" you can select and add it to your things to do list which can be broken up into different groups or categories. Wanderlog will automatically add a photo, address, telephone number, website link, days and hours of operation and a concise description. The app also has a map, directions and AI Assistant and guides to help planning..

Once you compile a list of attractions, you can easily move or drag and drop the individual attractions into a particular day to prepare a detailed itinerary.

Within each day, you can group the attractions that you want to do and wanderlog can create the best route for you to follow including travel times.

Wanderlog cannot transfer events into the calendar. I have to manually do that.

I have decided to use Wanderlog. It is already preferred by my adult kids who will accompany us on the Japan trip.

I will use Wanderlog to plan and create an itinerary of what I expect to do. Other than my flights and hotels, I will leave my calendar blank before the trip. During the trip, I will fill in the actual things that I do in the calendar. That way I will preserve a permanent record or diary of my final itinerary and notes for the trip.

Eventually, I will delete the trip from the app and hopefully Wanderlog will not keep a record of my personal information.

Trip-It has saved me from grief with its timely notifications of cancelled or changed flights. For example, I was flying from Seattle to Slovenia for a tour. I was notified at 2 am the day of flight that a strike was causing the leg from Frankfurt on to be cancelled. The airline app still had the flight going strong! I called the airline right away and because I had been notified so early, I was able to get rerouted for an arrival near my original arrival time. My departure time had to be moved up by 4 hours! I was at the airport checking in for my new rerouted flight when the airline app finally notified me that my other flight had been cancelled......... I arrived on time and ready for my tour.

It also does a great job with gate changes, etc. I do pay for the pro version and find it worth every penny. I love being able to go back and see where I stayed 3 years ago or look up info from past trips. I love being to access and organize multiple trips at once. I just checked and I have 8 (gulp) trips that I am currently in the midst of planning. Having them all in one spot is great. I also upload scanned copies of documents as well.

Tripit strikes me as more of a business travel app

Excellent observation. I used TripIt while I was working as part of our "Concur" suite of expense management program. It was highly efficient at helping me to track my more-than-weekly business trips, with flights, hotels and car rentals.

Your comment caused me to dig further and find this ownership:

"SAP Concur is an American SaaS company providing travel and expense management services to businesses."
Note: SAP Concur owns TripIt.

After many years of using TripIt, I had forgotten about it after 2020 and have just picked it up again. I'm using it in conjunction with OneNote, where I enter all my, well, notes about my travels.

I haven't quite settled on how I will use the two together, but the features I am immediately finding the most helpful are:

The calendar view in Google (the free version does synch, it's just not immediate, usually a matter of hours) which I can click on or off at will.

Not having to manually enter any calendar information (nor does my Dad, who picks me up at airports and my Mom who "needs" to know where I am during my solo travels.)

Leaving the details of reservations to TripIt: reservation numbers, etc.

Letting TripIt manage itinerary changes, such as flight updates (I'll comment further on this in a separate post)

*One nice feature of Tripit is that you can transfer your itinerary into your Google calendar. However, it is not a sync (perhaps that is only available in the paid version).

There are multiple ways that you can use TripIt with your calendar.

One method is a one time feed that writes into your calendar. That version does not synch with any future changes in TripIt.

Another method is a link to a read-only version of a calendar that only has the info from TripIt. This would be great for someone who just wants to view your itinerary.

A third method is an ongoing (but not real-time, not immediate) synch feature with the email address that you provide to TripIt. You set this up in your calendar, using the link that Tripit provides. Each time the synch refreshes (usually every few hours) the latest information from TripIt is displayed. It's just not immediate. If you want to see "the latest" you can do that in TripIt. For some, this may be confusing and may seem like it's "not working." But when you look again "after a while" everything will have been updated to the calendar. (I think this is more a function of the way calendars process feeds, than a function of TripIt. But that's me guessing.)

Example: when I changed a dining reservation from 5:30 to 6pm in OpenTable, the email went to the address I had given to Tripit. Soon thereafter (but not immediately) the time change was reflected in my TripIt calendar feed.

Each of these methods is available in the free version that I use.

"Changes in Google calendar do not sync back to Tripit.*
Correct, TripIt provides a one-way feed to calendars, whichever method you use.

CWSocial, thanks for explanation about calendar sync in tripit.

Here is an example of one sample Tripit event as it appears in my calendar after syncing:

***Activity
Wednesday, October 9th, 2024
12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (3 hrs)

Tokyo Tower; 4-chōme-2-8
Shibakōen, Minato City, Tokyo 105
0011, Japan

View and/or edit details in TripIt
https://www.tripit.com/trip/xxxxxxx

12:00 PM JST
[Activity] Activity
4-chōme-2-8 Shibakōen, Minato City,
Tokyo 105-0011 (SMS), Japan
12:00pm to 3:00pm

TripIt - organize your travel a
https://www.tripit.com***

That is a lot of clutter and repetition. And there is an unwanted promotional link to tripit in every synced Tripit event.

If I were to use this, I would delete most of the clutter and then replace it with my own personal notes and comments during my trip and drag and drop the timed calendar event on the fly (if I run late or early). Then I would have a permanent diary or journal of my trip. If I were to do another sync transfer, Tripit would create a multiple events mess in my calendar or possibly delete my amended calendar events.

One work around would be for me to make my personal notes within Tripit and sync it one-way into my calendar, but I would still have to deal with the clutter in every single event when I sync. Plus, I am opposed to sharing my private and personal comments in the tripit app. It took me a long time to trust Google calendar (no choice). I try to limit the sharing of private information with other apps and sites as much as possible.

I do see the TripIt links when I click on any of the feed events on my calendar.

I don't see the type of duplication that you're displaying. That looks like multiple events to me, as they each have different times - one is a single time, the other is a 3 hour window. Is it possible they are duplicates in TripIt?

I agree that if you wanted a permanent record of your trip, with no further synchs, an export from TripIt could be the way to go.

CW, it is just a single event. When Tripit transfers the event to my calendar app, it automatically fills in the title, date, time and location fields. And it also repeats most of this information along with the links in the Notes field.

I've been using my Calengoo calendar app (which syncs with Google calendar) for almost 14 years. Calengoo is a very powerful and reliable app. I'm not going to change it now.

Anyways, If I'm going to switch from my old way, I'm only going to use one trip planning app. Wanderlog is so much more fun to use.

My TripIt details for my upcoming trip are fresh in my mind since I have been working on aspects of the trip almost everyday. Sometimes it’s just anticipating it! ; ). Anyway, I saw this is a comment:

”You can fill in an attraction like "Tokyo Tower" and Tripit will automatically fill in the address location and add it to the map and directions. However, there is no other useful information like website, photo, telephone or days and hours of operation unless you input it yourself.”

I never bother filling in websites, etc. on my listings. I only care about the address at this point in my planning and whether I made or paid for a reservation. I just rechecked because I remember seeing them, and yes, I have many websites for both activities and restaurants that TripIt auto-populated. There are some obscure B&B’s with no website - something I would expect.

I certainly agree with you “Carol now retired”! That was my favorite feature of TripIt I highlighted in the demonstration, and it has saved us frustration by not driving to the airport at the expected time because a flight is delayed several hours. I have both the Delta app and the paid TripIt app. I receive the notice from TripIt much sooner than Delta everytime!

My old way was to search for the attraction website, address etc. I would have to manually copy the link and other information into my spreadsheet or calendar. Having this useful information instantly available when you click an attraction in Wanderlog is very convenient.

The little photo and brief description may not sound like much. However, as I am compiling my list of temples to visit in Japan, the Japanese names are starting to blur in my mind and it helps to see the photo and description.

The days and hours of operation for an attraction seem like overkill. However, when I drag and drop it, wanderlog will warn me if the attraction is closed on that particular day.

I'm still playing with the app. When I drag and drop five attractions into one day in the itinerary, wanderlog will provide me with the estimated time to travel between each one according to the order that I arranged them. It really helps me to figure out whether I can reasonably fit all that stuff in even before I start estimating how much time I need to spend in each attraction. If you pay for the subscription, I think that wanderlog will re-arrange the order of the attractions so that the route is optimized. Nifty, but I'm not convinced that I will pay for this, yet.

Wanderlog has an AI Assistant, travel guides and information, including suggested itineraries from others. This makes it very easy to research hotels, attractions, restaurants, etc and add them to your list. It is a nice complement to other tools like Google, TripAdvisor, booking.com and Expedia.

I don't work for Wanderlog. I have not paid for the pro version of the app and I probably never will. Right now, I just find the app a lot of fun to use. On the other hand, when I use Tripit, the experience is about as fun as filling in my old spreadsheet, only I have to do a bit more clicking to find the correct field to fill in the data.

One thing Ive taken note of about Wanderlog is the need to actually use the website of the sight , when you are planning, for the days and hours of operation.

It seems like a no brainer, but I’ve gotten tripped up more than once when one of the sights I put in the daily itinerary indicates it is closed. I was planning in winter for a trip to Iceland in the summer!

So the feature is nice, but not reliable in the planning stage. NOW, when Im actually there this summer, I expect the hours to be extremely useful for restaurants etc! We’ll see!

The best and most useful post of the year to date. From a guy that uses Excell and a cloud storage. Thank you

I continue to discover new features in Wanderlog as I test and use it for our Japan trip.

I had mentioned that when I added a thing to my list of things to do or itinerary, Wanderlog generated a photo and brief description associated with that thing.

It turns out when I click the picture and swipe, I can view multiple photos of the thing.

And when I scroll down, there are dedicated buttons for TripAdvisor, Google, Google Maps and directions. And if available, wanderlog will also often include the website for that thing. It is so convenient to just tap the button which instantly takes you to the applicable web page for that thing/place/attraction/restaurant/location, etc without having to repeatedly re-type the name to do different types of searches on the different sites.

There are five of us going to Japan and we are all sharing the same wanderlog trip. We have set up four sections for Tokyo, Kyoto, Kinosaki and Osaka.

Each of us can easily add things and type in our notes about the thing. Everything is shared. It is very easy to rearrange the order of the things by drag and drop; I focus on priority and vicinity.

I can then select multiple things and move, copy or delete them into or within a particular day in the itinerary.

Based on the order that I arranged, wanderlog will then draw the route and calculate the travel time between each thing and the total travel time. The paid version will also optimize the route by rearranging the order of your things. I usually limit the number of things that I do in a day, so it is easy enough for me to arrange the route that suits me without the need for the paid version.

Cons/wish list:

1. I have not yet figured out a way to search my itinerary. For example, I unable to search for Mount Fuji in my list or itinerary. I just have to scroll and look for it manually. Perhaps a search function is in the pro version.

2. When you first start using the app, there are lots of tips pop-ups every time you try something new which is really annoying. There is already a help link if you need assistance. The app is so intuitive to use that I find the tips are unnecessary and get in the way. There's no way to turn off these tips. However, once you have completed a new task and as you become more proficient, all the tips will eventually stop.

3. I'm being a bit picky, but it would be nice to be able to rearrange the days in the itinerary. EDIT: Never mind, I figured it out.

4. It would be nice to have the option to export Wanderlog into a calendar, spreadsheet, Word or pdf.

5. Wonderlog has an expense splitting function. However, it is very basic and does not seem to handle changes in currency very well. I will continue to use Splid (also free).

Funpig, I like your wish list for Wanderlog!

I have another few:

While I absolutely love the map to the right, especially for planning based on vicinity (did you know you can pick which lists you want to show?), sometimes i want to hide it so I can see the lists sections wider.

And also the location details from google pop up so large it obscures the map!

Yes to both of your Wanderlog wish lists! I've decided to try it for my November trip to Spain.

I wish that Google Map panel could go away.

I'm also wishing that I could see a summary version of my activities by day. Just a bullet list without all the details. As a hack, I'm adding my top sight for that day into the subheading, but that's clunky.

ETA: the "compact view" sort of gives me what a want .... I guess I just wish it was even more compact.

It would be nice to have the option to export Wanderlog into a calendar, spreadsheet, Word or pdf.

funpig, I thought I remembered seeing this. In the upper right of the activity panel (very near to the panel with the map) are three dots. One option if you click on that menu is to "Print this trip." You can print to a pdf file, assuming you have one installed on your laptop.

Within that same menu is a "Collapse all sections" and "Expand all sections" menu item. Your printed/pdf version will match that setting.

There's no way to turn off these tips.

Aha, I found it!

The next time you are seeing a tip, click on the "settings" (gear icon) in the upper right within the tip window and click on "Don't show any tips."

Regarding top versus secondary sights - I first tried adding them to the day as places with a note about it being tentative. But they still figured into the timing and optimization. Which was ok, for the first pass so I could see the slow day and the high energy day. But it started to feel like a maximizer exercise.

So then I figured out to create a New List (Secondary Priority) that houses all the secondary sights that I'd like to prioritize (and moved the those from the Places to Visit list), and only have the top sights in my daily itinerary. I have added a note before my first top sight of the day with some general notes and the additional sights that were in the vicinity should we have extra time and energy.

Then, when I'm doing the final day checks, I use the Map Layers to select the Itinerary day I'm reviewing and the Secondary Priority sights, and even the Places to Visit lists. Just make sure the colors and symbol of the icons are unique so you can tell which are your priority. I even added in all the recommended restraurants so I can turn that layer on. And, also I've added train stations/bus stops too. I might have overdone it (maximizer at heart).

I imagine (we'll see!) that this work will make the actual day of travel super easy, I just make sure I manage the Map Layers accordingly.

CWSocial, thanks. The print to PDF function is only found in the web browser version of Wanderlog. After I generated the PDF, I used Adobe Acrobat and was able to convert the PDF to both an Word document and an xl spreadsheet. Not too shabby. It would still be nice to be able to export directly into Calendar. I'm being particularly picky considering I haven't even paid for the pro version yet.