Best offline GPS apps for hiking

Updated 5 August 2026

Most «best offline maps» lists are affiliate rankings. This one is written by people who make one of the apps on it, which is a conflict of interest we would rather state plainly than hide — so we have written down where our own app loses, too.

First, what "offline" has to mean

Every app on this list claims to work offline. They mean different things by it. Before you trust one in a forest, check all four:

• Map tiles downloaded in advance — not just cached from wherever you happened to scroll last week.
• Positioning without a connection. Universal, in fact: GPS needs no internet. But some apps refuse to show you a map at all when they cannot phone home.
• Recording that survives the screen going off, which on Android means surviving the battery optimiser too.
• No login wall at the trailhead. An app that wants to re-authenticate with no signal is a brick.

Organic Maps — the one to install if you install only one

Free, open source, no ads, no accounts, no tracking, built on OpenStreetMap and funded by donations. Downloads are unlimited, it records tracks, and it imports and exports GPX. For a person who wants a real offline map of the woods and does not want to think about subscriptions, this is the answer.

Where it is weaker: trail coverage is only as good as OpenStreetMap in your particular forest — excellent in the Alps, patchy in places nobody has mapped. There are no layered satellite or topo overlays like Gaia's. And the project says plainly that donations fall short of its costs, which is worth knowing about anything you plan to depend on for years.

OsmAnd — the power tool

The most configurable of the lot: contour lines, custom routing profiles, plugins, offline search, track recording with fine-grained intervals. Also OpenStreetMap-based.

Where it is weaker: the free tier limits you to a handful of map downloads (around seven), so a serious user ends up subscribing. And the interface is dense — genuinely powerful, genuinely fiddly. If you are setting a phone up for a parent who picks mushrooms, this is not the app.

Gaia GPS — for people who read topo maps

The best map layering in this list: topo, satellite, slope-angle shading, public-land boundaries, and a good route planner. If you plan routes on contours, Gaia is a pleasure.

Where it is weaker: offline is paywalled. Viewing maps online is free, but downloading them for offline use needs Premium, around $39.99 a year (14-day trial; roughly $3.99 monthly). Its map catalogue is also heavily North-America-centric.

AllTrails — for finding trails, not for leaving them

An enormous catalogue of trails with photos, reviews and recent conditions — the best answer to "where should I walk on Sunday". Navigation along a chosen trail is straightforward.

Where it is weaker: offline maps require AllTrails+, around $35.99 a year (frequently discounted to about half that). It is a trail database first and a navigation tool second: step off the marked route to follow a good patch of chanterelles and the app has much less to say.

Google Maps and Apple Maps — better than nothing, worse than you assume

Both let you download an area, and for roads and towns that is genuinely useful. Two limits matter in a forest:

• Google's offline areas only give driving directions. Walking, cycling and transit directions are unavailable offline — a fact most people discover at the worst moment.
• Neither shows trails, contours or forest tracks in any useful detail. A green polygon labelled "forest" is not navigation.

Download the area anyway. It costs nothing and it shows you where the roads are — which is what you are aiming for when you walk out.

MushTrail — ours, and deliberately narrow

We make MushTrail, so treat this paragraph accordingly. It does one job: it marks the point where you entered the forest, records the path you walked, and shows a single arrow back to that point — no internet, no signal. Navigation home is free; iPhone today, Android later.

Where it is weaker: it is not a topo map, not a trail catalogue and not a route planner. You cannot browse trails in it or plan a hike on contour lines. If what you want is a map to read, install Organic Maps. MushTrail is for the specific situation where you did not follow a route at all — you wandered after mushrooms and now need the car.

So which one

• You want one free app that just works: Organic Maps.
• You want to find new trails and read what others said: AllTrails, and pay for Plus if you will actually be offline.
• You plan routes on topo lines: Gaia GPS, or OsmAnd if you would rather tinker than subscribe.
• You leave the path and only need the way back: a breadcrumb-style app — ours, or the track recorder in Organic Maps or OsmAnd, which does the same job with more steps.
• Whatever you choose: also download the plain road map of the area in Google or Apple Maps. Belt and braces cost nothing.

For most people who read this, the honest answer is: Organic Maps, downloaded the night before, plus the habit of saving where you parked. That combination is free and it solves the actual problem.

Prices and tiers checked in August 2026, in US pricing, and they change — verify in the store before subscribing. We have no affiliate arrangement with any app here; nobody paid to appear or to be left out.