How the trip planner works
Collect first, schedule later
Plan a trip the way people really plan one: collect the places you like, see them on a map, then give them days. One button puts each day in its shortest order. Every trip comes with the weather, the visa rule, the daily cost and the travel advisory for where you are going.
- Collect ideas firstSearch for any sight, restaurant or hotel, or pick from the places we have written up. Each one waits in Ideas, with a pin on the map, until you decide when to go. No date needed yet.
- Give them days on the mapSee which places sit close together, then drag them from Ideas into a day, or choose the day from the pin itself. Each day has its own colour, and its places are numbered in order.
- Let the planner order each dayPress Optimize route and the places of that day go in the shortest order, with the distance between them. Choose how you get around and the map draws the real route. You choose the days; the planner does the ordering.
What comes with every trip
The checks most planners leave to you
Every place is a pin: grey while it is an idea, coloured and numbered once it has a day. Optimize route puts a day in its shortest order. This is free here, with no upgrade.
Ten years of daily records turned into one line for the month you travel: day and night temperature and the number of wet days.
Whether you need a visa, an eVisa or an ETA, checked against the official source for each pair of passport and country.
Open the visa checkerWhat the days will costA bed, food, local transport and sights, priced for your number of days and travellers. Add your own costs and the planner shows your total next to it.
Open the trip cost calculatorThe current level from four governments, read daily. A country under a warning shows it in the trip.
The sockets you will find at each destination, and whether one adapter covers the whole trip.
Open the plug checkerStart from an itinerary we wrote
Read the route, then build your own version in the planner
Free, with no account
Is the trip planner really free?
Yes. There is no paid tier, no trial and no feature held back for subscribers: the map, Optimize route and the budget are all included. One browser keeps up to 50 trips.
Why there is nothing to sign up for
Your trip is saved in your own browser, on your own device, each time you change it. We do not ask for an email because we do not need one: the planner never sends your trip to our servers.
How to take a trip to another device
Backup downloads the whole trip as one file. Open the planner on the other device, press Restore and choose that file: the same places, days, notes and costs come back. To show the plan to the people you travel with, send them the image or the printed page.
How we pay for it
Some buttons lead to a booking partner, such as the red room button. If you book through one we may earn a commission, and the price you pay does not change. The planner works the same if you never press one.
- Price
- Free
- Account
- None
- Install
- Nothing. It runs in any browser, on a phone or a laptop
- Map
- Ideas in grey, scheduled places numbered in the colour of their day
- Places without a day
- Kept in Ideas until you schedule them
- Optimize route
- One button for each day, free
- Budget
- Adds up the costs you enter, next to our estimate
- Destinations in one trip
- Up to 12 cities, across as many countries as you like
- Where your trip lives
- In your browser, on your device
- Take-aways
- Print or PDF, image, backup file
- Bookings
- Links to partners, always marked
Popular destinations to plan
Press a destination to start a trip there
Trip planner FAQ
Is the trip planner free?
Yes. Every feature is free and there is no paid version. We earn a commission from some booking links, which are marked.
Do I need an account?
No. There is no sign-up, no email and no password. Open the page and start planning.
Does it show my places on a map?
Yes, the map is the main part of the planner. Ideas show as grey pins; scheduled places get a numbered pin in the colour of their day, joined in the order you set. The map follows what you are working on: one day, one destination or the whole trip.
Do I have to give every place a day?
No. New places go to Ideas, where they wait with a pin on the map. Move them into a day when you are ready, and move them back if plans change.
Can it work out the best order for a day?
Yes. Press Optimize route on a day and its places go in the order with the shortest total distance, and stops at the place you stay keep their position. A day that follows one ending where you stay starts from there. Until you choose a way of travelling, distances are estimates: the straight line plus 30% for the turns of real streets. The planner does not know opening hours, and it also moves places you have given a time, so check those afterwards.
Can it draw the real route between places?
Yes. In front of each distance between two places, choose how you travel that leg: on foot, by car or motorbike, or by public transport. The map then follows the roads, and the leg shows the distance and the time. Times are estimates without traffic. Public transport routes come from OpenStreetMap and are missing in some cities; where there is none, the leg stays a simple curve, and its Directions link opens Google Maps with the same way of travelling.
Can I add restaurants and hotels?
Yes. Search for any place by name and it goes to Ideas with a pin on the map. Mark a hotel as a place to stay and the planner measures each day from there. The search uses OpenStreetMap, so the planner does not show ratings or opening hours.
Can the planner fill a day for me?
Yes. Press Auto-fill day and the planner moves up to five ideas that sit close together into that day, then puts them in the shortest order. If the day already has places, it picks the ideas nearest to them. It works from distance alone: it does not know opening hours or how long a visit takes, so check the result.
Can I plan one trip across several cities or countries?
Yes. Add each city to the route with its number of days; type a country and the planner asks which of its cities you will stay in. Days are numbered through the whole trip, the planner shows the distance from one destination to the next, and the weather, visa rule, daily cost and advisory are shown for each destination.
Can I add flights, trains and transfers to the plan?
Yes. In Your route, the way to your first destination, each gap between two destinations and the way home all take as many entries as you need: flight, train, bus, ferry or car. Each entry holds a departure and an arrival time, a note for the flight number or booking reference, and a cost that goes into the budget. If a flight lands far from the destination it should reach, the planner points out the missing link. It does not search for or sell tickets.
Does it work out a budget?
It adds up what you enter: a cost on any place, each or in total, and any extra line such as a train ticket. Your total sits next to our mid-range estimate for the same days and travellers. It does not guess the costs you have not listed, and it does not split bills between people.
Can I add notes and to-dos?
Yes. Every place takes a note, a time and a cost. Each day takes to-dos you can tick off, such as booking a ticket, and the trip has one note for everything else.
Where is my trip saved?
In your browser, on the device you are using. It is still there when you come back, as long as you use the same browser and have not cleared its site data.
Can I open my trip on another device, or plan with other people?
Press Backup to download the trip as a file, then press Restore on the other device and choose that file. To show the plan to the people you travel with, send them the image or the printed page. A trip lives in one browser, so two people cannot edit the same trip together.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. It is a web page, so there is nothing to install. On a phone the list is the main screen and the Map button opens the map full screen; press a pin there to move that place to a day.
Can I print my itinerary or save it as an image?
Yes. Print gives a clean page for the trip, which you can also save as a PDF. Image downloads the itinerary as one picture, with the days side by side.
Does the planner book hotels or flights?
No. It plans the days. For rooms it links to a booking partner with your dates filled in. It does not search for or book flights.