5 Best Apps for Travel to Canada
Welcome to Canada! It’s one of the best countries to travel for nature lovers, skiers, hikers, wildlife, and all things camping! It’s an outdoor paradise from summer to the freezing cold winters. Traveling inside Canada can be easy and difficult due to the distance between destinations which is why road trips and camping are the most popular ways to explore the land. With that in mind, we put together a list of the best apps we could find for travel in Canada.
Apps for camping, hiking, roadtrpping, geocaching, finding cheap accommodations, couchsurfing and viewing the Aurora Borealis, Aka “Northern Lights”. To get the most of these apps, consider picking up a prepaid SIM Card. A lot of apps like Maps.me and Canada Topo Maps are offline compatible but staying connected on the go is far more convenient with data. With the apps in hand, refer to our Basic Travel Guide for Canada to start planning what you need for your next trip to the land of maple syrup, beavers and bears.
1. Parks Canada
Parks Canada is the Federal Government Agency responsible for all the National Parks in Canada. They have released an app for Android and iOS that shows all the National Park (Green), National Historic Sites (Red) and National Marine Conservation Areas (Blue) across Canada.
For each site, you can find the address, quick facts, a list of things to do, and a recommended packing list. Plus, the app includes a list of unique events, so you won’t miss the really good stuff!
You can even build your own itinerary to plan your trip, packing list then upload photos of your stay.
Most importantly, the app includes links to the web pages you need to camp in the amazing National Park Campgrounds. Like booking campgrounds (they go fast in peak season).
- Price: Free
- Alternatives: None
Canada Topo Maps
Canada Topo Maps is a nice addition to the Parks Canada App since most of the popular trails are inside or nearby the National Parks.
The map is specifically for Canadian trails and popular hikes. You can download sections of the map and track your hike from start to finish, including the elevation gain and distance.
Downloading the map sections allows the app to work perfectly even without cell service in the Canadian wilderness. All you need is a GPS signal from the satellites.
It’s a simple app, but reliable and free!
- Price: Free
- Alternatives: MyTrails, AllTrails, ViewRanger, Hiking Project
2. WikiCamps App
Wikicamps Canada is the ultimate camping trip app. Traveling Canada is all about the camping experience inside the great endless wilderness. So this app is perfect for those of us that prefer to plan on the fly.
This app includes thousands of pins on an interactive map of camp grounds, RV parks, hotels, info centers, toilets, showers, swimming areas, restaurants, clean drinking water… You name it! This app has it.
The app also has a handy compass feature and a customization packing list for pre-trip planning. The app isn’t free but it’s cheap enough to make the convenience of having all this info on hand worth it!
- Price: $2.79
- Alternatives: iOverlander
iOverlander
iOverlander is similar to WikiCamps Canada except the pins are open sourced which is either better or worse depending on who contributed the info.
iOverlander is a map based app with lots of pins of essentials like campgrounds, RV parks, shops, services and tourist attractions.
Sometime you’ll see quirky pins like “Good spot to pull off” (of road), or “Free Shower, lady let me use the shower at their community gym”, while other pins are super informative with a list of amenities, websites and reviews by other users who have been there recently.
The app is easy enough to use and worth downloading since it’s made with the input of fellow travelers. You might find surprisingly useful info!
- Price: Free
- Alternative: Maps.me
Roadtrippers Trip Planner
Travel in Canada is all about that good old fashion road trip. Pile into a car or RV with friends and family and hit the open road. It’s the best way to see the endless wilderness and often the cheapest way to travel across the large distances between destinations.
North Americans love to drive for holidays, sometimes for seemingly insane amounts of time. 16 hours of driving, that’s just day 1! try five or six days straight across the country! So naturally having the ultimate road trip app will help a lot. Roadtrippers isn’t a GPS or like the apps above, it’s a travel planner where you can add sights you’d like to visit to your route.
The app include details, reviews and photos of all the sights, campgrounds, restaurants and hotels. The app even makes suggestions for additional places to see nearby and along your route.
If you don’t know where to start for your next road trip, the app has a short list of popular trips pre-planned out.
- Price: Free
- Alternatives: None
3. Geocaching
Geocaching is our fun addition to this list. If you haven’t heard of geocaching before, it’s essentially treasure hunting for little hidden caches of stuff.
It’s very popular in Canada because it relies on reciprocation. Using the app, you find a cache hidden nearby and either take the treasure inside, replacing it with something you brought, or leave it for the next person. Often there is a little notebook to write a message for the next person to find it.
It’s a really fun activity, especially on hiking trails where getting to the cache is hard, and the rewards can be pretty awesome. Oh, did I mention the hints to find the caches are often riddles, rhymes or poems? All written by your fellow geocachers!
Canada welcomes travelers come from all around the world, so trails in popular parks like Banff National Parks can have little caches filled with treasure from anywhere around the world. Pretty cool right?
- Price: Free, Premium Upgrade Available
- Alternatives: None
4. Couchsurfing
Hotels, Hostels and Airbnbs in Canada are expensive. It’s hard to travel for cheap when the barest of hostel beds costs $30/night. Beijing and Tokyo aren’t even that expensive!
Luckily Canada is a great country to try out couchsurfing. Canadians love to travel but get very little vacation time, so hosting another traveler is la great way to feel like your back on the road, out for an adventure. Make a profile and find a host to reach out to. You’ll get a couch, inflatable bed or spare bedroom for a night or two at no cost.
The etiquette is to bring a small gift or treat the host to diner (drinks, cook them diner) one night. Couchsurfing is a social experience, so be prepared to share some awesome travel stories. If you are lucky, your host will show you around the city, giving you the local’s experience.
Create a profile for free, the premium version is basically a verification making it easier to find hosts.
- Price: Free, Premium Verification Available
- Alternatives: None
Hostelworld
Hostelworld is the solo traveler’s best way to book hostels. Hostelworld is very popular in Canada, so most of the hostels and cheap hotels will have a listing on the app.
The hostels in Banff, Canmore & Jasper are really beautiful and great places to meet other travelers. The best ones are authentic log cabins with wood fireplaces (for the winter ski season). Hostels are the best way to socialize on your trip. They often have bars on site too!
Hostelworld has a policy, should the hostel not honor the booking you receive $50 in credit and a refund. I’ve had this happen, it was no hassle sorting it out.
- Price: In App Bookings
- Alternatives: Booking.com, Agoda
5. iSki Canada
It’s winter in Canada like 6 months a year. This comes with a heavy price of shoveling snow, -20 to -60 degree weather, having to bundle up in dozens of layers of clothing and ice-picking the driveway and sidewalks…Which is like shoveling but worse.
But the flip side is having one of the best Ski seasons in the world! iSKi Canada is your essential skiiing app for all of the most popular skiiing resorts. From Whistler Black-Comb to Apex and Kicking Horse!
The app tracks your distance, duration, altitude and max speed. But most importantly, it shows you the weather and snow forecasts for each mountain!
You can also check out the live cams of each resort. They aren’t videos but continuously updating photos. A pretty cool feature!
- Price: free
- Alternatives: OnTheSnow Ski & Snow Report
My Aurora Forecast Alerts
One of the biggest tourist attractions in Canada is the Northern Lights, also known as Aurora Borealis. The stunning green lights shimmering in the sky in the North. But anyone who has tried star gazing will know weather conditions can be a challenge. Even more so for the Aurora.
My Aurora is your sidekick for viewing the Northern Lights. The app includes a detailed forecast of cloud coverage, viewing probability, and potential KP for the upcoming week. KP is the scale from 0 to 9. A higher KP value is better for viewing the Aurora phenomenon.
- Price: Free
- Alternatives: Aurora Alerts
Disclaimer: Hostelworld and Couchsurfing are an affiliated partners, we make a small commission from bookings or upgrading to a premium account at no cost to you. It helps us publish more useful travel guides.
More Info for Canada
If you are still planning your trip to Canada, check out our Basic Travel Guide for Canada. We put together a quick list on all the essentials like cost, currency, transportation, geography and weather. Plus we included some links to Facebook groups and rideshare sites you might find useful to find a ride between cities for cheap.
For your pre-trip downtime, check out our list of recommended books, movies and podcasts all featuring Canada! We are always adding more good stuff you might like.
Lastly, to make use of these apps in Canada, I recommend picking up a Prepaid SIM Card you can order in advance and have delivered to your hotel upon your arrival!
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