Here's the thing nobody tells you when you start planning a group trip. You'll end up using two or three apps to do it, and none of them will talk to each other.
One app for the itinerary. Another for splitting the money. A group chat where the actual decisions get lost. By the time the trip happens, the plan lives in four places and the person who organised it is quietly exhausted.
So I looked at the best group trip planning apps people actually reach for in 2026 and ranked them on the criterion that matters most for a group. Not "best maps" or "prettiest interface". Whether the app handles the whole trip in one place: deciding, planning, and paying. Most don't. One thing before the list: we build Trips Together, so we're biased. The criteria are stated below, this is an opinionated take rather than an objective verdict, and every app here gets credit for what it's genuinely good at.
What actually matters in a group trip app
Solo travel apps and group travel apps are solving different problems. A solo planner needs to organise one person's bookings. A group app needs to help several people who don't agree on anything reach a decision, then track who paid for what without it turning into an accounting dispute.
So when I rank these, I'm weighting four things:
- Can the group make decisions together, or does one person drive while everyone else watches?
- Does the itinerary update for everyone in real time?
- Are expenses handled inside the app, or do you need a second one?
- What does it cost, and what's hidden behind the paywall?
That last one matters more than people expect. A lot of these apps are free until the exact moment you need them on the trip.
1. Trips Together: best overall for groups
Full disclosure: this is our app, so take the placement with the appropriate pinch of salt. But the reason it sits at the top is specific. Of the apps here that cover the whole group trip lifecycle in one place, it's the one built around the group actually making decisions, not just sharing a plan.
You plan the trip collaboratively. Everyone can suggest destinations and activities, and the group votes rather than deferring to whoever shouts loudest in the chat. The itinerary is shared and live, so nobody's working off a screenshot from three weeks ago. And expenses are tracked inside the same app, so when someone covers a £240 group dinner, the split is calculated then and there.
Most planning apps send you to Splitwise for money, and most expense apps have no idea what your itinerary is. A couple of all-in-one tools now do both (Stippl is the notable one, more on it below), but the thing that separates Trips Together is the group decision-making: structured voting on where to go and what to do, rather than one person editing a plan everyone else reacts to.
Where it's weaker: it's built for groups. If you're a solo business traveller forwarding flight confirmations to yourself, this isn't the tool for you. Try TripIt for that.
Start a trip free on iOS or on Android, no card needed.
2. Stippl: best all-in-one alternative
Stippl is the closest thing here to a like-for-like rival, and it's worth taking seriously. It's a free travel planner that, unusually, does both sides of the job: a day-by-day itinerary builder and a built-in budget planner with expense tracking and cost splitting, plus packing lists, multi-currency support, a trip journal, and a social layer for discovering other travellers' itineraries. Per its own site it's used by well over a million travellers.
If you want planning and expenses in one app and you like the visual, social, document-your-travels angle, Stippl is genuinely good and it's free, so it's an easy one to try.
The honest difference for groups comes down to how decisions get made. As of 2026, outside reviewers note that Stippl doesn't have group polls or voting, and tends to be described as better suited to solo travellers documenting their trips than to coordinating a group. You can collaborate on the itinerary and split costs, but there's no structured way for the group to actually decide between options. That's the specific thing Trips Together is built around. So the two overlap a lot on planning-plus-expenses, and separate on group decision-making. Check Stippl's current features yourself, as the app keeps adding to them.
3. Wanderlog: best itinerary builder, weak on group decisions
Wanderlog is genuinely good at what it does. The map-based itinerary, the place-saving, the route optimisation between stops. If you want a beautiful day-by-day plan, it's hard to beat.
The problem for groups is twofold. First, the deciding. Wanderlog includes a budget tool that can track and split costs, credit where due, but as far as we can tell there's no structured group voting, so the centre of gravity stays with one planner and the actual decisions still happen in the chat. Second, several of the features people actually want sit behind a paid plan. As of early 2026, that includes things like the AI trip assistant and offline access, and according to Wanderlog's published pricing, the upgrade is sold annually rather than monthly. So you commit for a year to unlock them, or you live with the free limits.
If your group's needs are mostly "build me a pretty itinerary", Wanderlog is a strong pick. For the deciding-together part, it's only half the solution. I went deeper on this in TripsTogether vs Wanderlog.
4. TripIt: best for organising bookings you've already made
TripIt does one job well. You forward your confirmation emails (flights, hotels, car hire) and it assembles them into a clean master itinerary. For frequent solo travellers, especially business ones, it's a quietly brilliant tool.
But it's a passive organiser, not a planning tool. It tidies up decisions you've already made on your own. It won't help a group choose a destination, vote on activities, or split a bill. TripIt Pro adds flight alerts and a few extras for an annual fee, but collaborative editing and expense splitting aren't part of the picture as of early 2026, as far as we can see.
For a group that hasn't decided anything yet, TripIt is the wrong end of the process. It's useful once the bookings exist, not while you're arguing about dates. More on that in TripsTogether vs TripIt.
5. Splitwise: best standalone expense splitter
Splitwise is the default for splitting costs, and for good reason. The core idea is clean and it works: log who paid, see who owes what, settle up.
Two catches for trip use. First, it does nothing for planning. No itinerary, no destination decisions, no voting. It's purely the money layer. Second, at the time of writing the free tier has, in recent years, limited how many expenses you can add per day, which is exactly the wrong constraint for an active trip when costs come in every hour. Removing that cap means going Pro, which according to Splitwise's pricing page is an annual subscription.
So Splitwise is excellent at one third of the job. If you genuinely only need to split money and you're tracking it lightly, it's fine. For a busy group trip, the daily limit tends to bite at the worst moment. I wrote about the workarounds in splitting trip expenses without Splitwise's limits.
6. Tricount: best free expense splitter
Tricount is the one to know if Splitwise's limits annoy you and you only need expense splitting. It's popular across Europe, and as of early 2026 it has reportedly dropped its paid tier, making the expense tracking fully free.
Like Splitwise, though, it's expenses only. No planning, no itinerary, no group decisions. You'd run it alongside a planner like Wanderlog, which again means two apps. If "free and no daily cap" is your priority and you don't care about planning features living in the same place, Tricount is a sensible choice.
The best group trip planning apps compared
| App | Planning | Group decisions | Expense splitting | Pricing notes (early 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trips Together | Live, shared | Voting / polls | Built in, no cap | Free to start |
| Stippl | Strong, visual | No structured voting | Built in | Free |
| Wanderlog | Strong, solo-led | Limited | Budget tool | Free tier; key extras on annual plan |
| TripIt | Import only | None | None | Free tier; Pro is annual |
| Splitwise | None | None | Strong (daily cap on free) | Free tier; Pro is annual |
| Tricount | None | None | Strong | Free |
Pricing and features change often, so check each app's current page before you commit. The old pattern was that planners didn't do money and money apps didn't do planning. That's breaking down: Stippl, Trips Together and (with its budget tool) Wanderlog all mix the two now, and the thing that separates them is whether the group gets to actually vote on decisions.
How to actually choose
If your group is small, financially relaxed, and you genuinely enjoy fiddling with maps, Wanderlog is a good free starting point, with Tricount alongside it if you want a dedicated expense splitter with no caps.
If you're the person who always ends up organising, and you're tired of being the human glue between a chat thread, a doc, and an expense app, an all-in-one will save you the most stress. Both Stippl and Trips Together fit that bill. Pick Stippl if the visual, social, document-your-travels side appeals and your group decides things easily anyway. Pick Trips Together if the hard part is getting everyone to actually agree, because the voting and group decisions are the bit it's built around.
The honest summary: there's no shortage of good travel apps in 2026. There's a shortage of apps that take a group from "where should we go" to "right, you owe me forty quid" with everyone genuinely deciding together along the way.
Try Trips Together free and see how much of that second app you stop needing.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best group trip planning app in 2026?
There's no objective answer, and anyone who gives you one is selling something (including, yes, us). On the criteria in this post, group decision-making, a live shared itinerary, built-in expenses and honest pricing, we'd point you at Trips Together first and Stippl as the strongest all-in-one alternative.
Which apps do both trip planning and expense splitting?
Of the apps in this roundup, Trips Together and Stippl are built around doing both in one place, and Wanderlog includes a budget tool alongside its planner. Splitwise and Tricount are expenses only, so they'd sit alongside a separate planning app.
Are these group travel apps free?
Most have a free tier, but what sits behind the paywall varies and changes often. At the time of writing, Tricount and Stippl are free, while Wanderlog, TripIt and Splitwise keep some features on paid annual plans. Check each app's pricing page before the trip, not during it.
Do I still need a group chat if I use a planning app?
Yes, and that's fine. The chat is where the banter lives. The point of a planning app is that decisions, the itinerary and the money stop getting buried in it, which is the difference we unpack in why group travel is better with an app.