Polarsteps Review: Is Polarsteps the Best Travel Tracking App?
I first used the Polarsteps app towards the end of 2019 to track my travels while backpacking through Southeast Asia. If I’m honest, stumbling across the app was a complete coincidence! I was in the back of a songthaew in Chiang Mai when Polarsteps came up in conversation and I was immediately intrigued by the idea of tracking my trip. I downloaded it there and then, and now nearly five years later, I’m still hooked!
With over 5 years of using Polarsteps, from Southeast Asia to Central America, here’s my honest Polarsteps review. This covers everything I like and dislike about the app as well as my predictions for the future of Polarsteps!
What is Polarsteps?
First and foremost, Polarsteps is a travel tracking app that helps you map out your trips – past, present and future. By automatically recording your route and locations, Polarsteps allows you to create a comprehensive travel log with minimal effort. Much like a digital scrapbook, you can personalise with photos and journal entries to help you relive your favourite experiences.
Besides tracking your travels, Polarsteps can also be used to plan and research future trips.
How does Polarsteps work?
Polarsteps works by leveraging your device’s GPS to track your movements in real time, creating a detailed and interactive map of your journey. The app records your location data continuously and stores it even when you’re offline, syncing it with the cloud once you’re back online. This ensures comprehensive travel documentation without interruption.
Additionally, Polarsteps allows you to manually add photos, videos, and notes to each location, enriching your travel log with personal memories and insights. The app’s user-friendly interface and automatic updates make it easy to share your adventures with friends and family, providing an engaging and seamless travel tracking experience.
All of the data from your trips forms part of your personal profile which is a great way to keep track of your movements around the world! This includes counting the countries visited, the number of days travelled, and even the furthest point from your hometown!
Is Polarsteps free?
Polarsteps is free to use. It can be used online (once you’ve made an account) or as an app from the Google Play or Apple App Store.
Of course, there is the option to spend money in the form of printed travel books, which make a unique souvenir from your adventures. Travel book prices range from €36.00 – €150 depending on the number of pages (24 minimum) and the type of book (Premium vs Lay-Flat Premium).
What’s good about Polarsteps?
Easy and intuitive interface: Polarsteps’ user-friendly interface makes it easy to navigate and therefore compile and share your travel memories.
Convenient and Accurate Route Tracking: The GPS feature in Polarsteps means that you don’t need to input location data yourself, it should automatically track, even when you are offline. You can adjust accuracy settings, but I’ve been pleasantly impressed by how closely it can track my route!
Flexibility to Document and Share Memories: You can create a digital scrapbook of your adventures which you can revisit and share with others. With maps, photos and notes, you can easily personalise your steps to tell the story of your journey!
Simple Sharing: As a solo traveller, my friends and family want to make sure I’m safe. Polarsteps is a great way to keep people I care about updated, without constantly messaging everyone! They can either follow me on the app, or I can share a link directly to a particular trip.
Research and Discovery: The app allows you to explore new destinations by discovering trips from other travellers. It’s also creating a worldwide map with places to eat, drink, stay and things to do around the world!
Authentic Community: Another aspect of Polarsteps that I love is that I feel people are (or can be) more authentic on it because there isn’t the societal pressure that comes with social media apps like Instagram. One day, I’d love to see Polarsteps travellers swap Polarsteps usernames rather than Instagram!
Constantly Improving: The developers at Polarsteps have done a great job over the years of updating and improving the app. Over the years it has transformed, fixing issues (e.g. GPS inaccuracies, freezing, or losing steps) and creating larger changes like its destination guides. I’m sure they’ll continue to improve the app as the user base grows.
Efficient: The app itself is quick and has minimal loading times. Upload speeds depend on service, but have always seemed fast. Even with Polarsteps running in the background, data and battery usage appear minimal (I’ve never had issues).
Printed Travel Books: You can turn your memories into physical form with a unique photo book of your trips. These make great souvenirs or gifts for a fellow traveller.
What are the drawbacks of Polarsteps?
This list is much shorter than it would’ve been five years ago, and I’m honestly struggling for negative things to say about the app! (No I’m not sponsored).
Glitches: I’ve personally not experienced any issues since I switched to iPhone, however the main complaints from users of Polarsteps relate to inaccuracies and glitches with tracking. This could mean anything from distances being recorded wrong or saying you’ve been somewhere you haven’t.
Route Lines: Aside from flight routes which appear automatically, you’re not able to input the type of transport used. Similarly, when plotting old trips, there’s no way to input your exact route meaning you will have straight lines between steps which aren’t as aesthetic.
Not Enough Time: From a user’s perspective, I sometimes find it difficult to keep up to speed with Polarsteps. When travelling you don’t always have the time (or energy) to post your most recent steps. I’m always grateful when I do, but it’s easy to get stuck behind and then forget about it.
Limited Reach: Even though the app has over 10 million downloads, I get the impression that not many people use the app regularly. Since most people don’t travel all the time, it’s tough to build a user base that regularly interacts on the app. This is fine if you’re using the app for personal use only, but difficult to get any reach beyond this.
Not a travel planner: Whilst you can plot out your route in advance and do a good amount of research, the planning capabilities of Polarsteps are limited. You can’t store flight details or accommodation bookings, nor does the app allow you to properly research a location. Maybe it’s best to look to other travel apps or travel blogs for your trip planning.
Blanket Privacy Controls: Polarsteps already has controls that allow you to make some trips public, for friends, or just yourself. However, it would be good to have further control of this. Something similar to the close-friends list feature on Instagram, where different people have different access (e.g. only close friends being able to see your notes/photos). That would be a handy way way to share your photos with your family and friends, whilst keeping your family oblivious of the photos of you blackout drunk! 🤣
Is Polarsteps worth it?
In short – yes, Polarsteps is worth it. I’m a massive advocate of this app and think it’s the most complete travel tracking app to document your trips. Once you’ve got your head around how to use Polarsteps, there’s a high chance it’ll become one of your must-have travel apps!
One of the best things about Polarsteps is that it’s (currently) free and has no adverts! So even if you’re uncertain, I recommend giving it a try.
Alternatives to Polarsteps App
I’m still yet to find an app that directly competes with everything that Polarsteps does. With over 10 million downloads, it’s one of the biggest and best travel apps out there. But here are a couple of similar apps that you might like to consider, which cover aspects of what Polarsteps covers:
Been: If you’re looking for a simpler way to visualise your travels, ‘been’ is one of the top apps. Much like Polarsteps, been will show you where you have been on the global map. Instead of pinning exactly your route, you are limited to simply saying yes or no to visiting a place. In this scenario, you are limited to blocking out whole countries or states. In addition, been also has an explore page and information on countries to visit.
Wanderlog: This app focuses more on the travel planning aspect of your trip. It allows you to note your itineraries, flights, accommodation, transport, costs and more.
FAQs
How to download Polarsteps?
If you have an Apple phone, go onto the App Store to download. Alternatively, if you have an Android, go onto the Google Play store. It’s free on both.
You can read my full guide on how to use Polarsteps here.
Does Polarsteps work offline?
Yes, Polarsteps works offline and can be used without data to track. However, you won’t be able to upload your steps offline.
Does Polarsteps drain your battery?
Given that Polarsteps is constantly tracking your location in the background as you move from place to place, you might be concerned about battery usage.
Of course, an app that constantly checks your GPS will use some battery. However, it’s surprisingly efficient and has never drained my battery completely!
If you are worried, you can turn off Polarsteps working in the background or change your trip settings. However, I think this is an extra reason to invest in a good travel battery pack.
Is Polarsteps safe?
Yes, Polarsteps is generally considered safe to use.
The app has several features to protect your privacy and security while allowing you to document and share your travels. You can control who sees your trips by setting privacy levels—public, private, or visible only to selected friends and family. Plus Polarsteps allows you to manage location-sharing settings, so you can decide when and how your location is shared with others – so only people you give access to can see.
Additionally, the app uses secure servers to store your data.
As with any app, you should review and adjust the privacy settings to match your comfort level.
What’s next for Polarsteps?
I’m not completely sure about this one, so this is pure speculation…
More Destination Guides: Firstly, I’m sure that Polarsteps will continue to fill out their destination guides around the globe, as currently not all countries are accounted for. Along with more town and city guides appearing, I imagine that the current guides will become more detailed. Polarsteps already links with TripAdvisor, Viator and AirBnB to suggest things to see and do. We’ll see if more accommodation services and restaurants can get their businesses added as a geo-location on the map.
Real-time Travel Tracking: You can already follow fellow travellers on Polarsteps to receive updates on their travel steps. However, there is no real-time feature to view where your fellow travellers are in the world. An option similar to Snap Maps, where you can pin fellow travellers on your globe could be an interesting way to make the app more social.
Monetising: I don’t see this happening for the moment given other income sources from their photobooks. However, I’m always wary of apps switching to some sort of subscription service, so make the most out of Polarsteps whilst it’s free!
Video: Polarsteps recently allowed videos to be uploaded to your steps, and since most social media platforms are also heavily pushing this type of content, I wouldn’t be surprised if it played a bigger part in the future of Polarsteps.
Before you go
Thank you for reading my complete Polarsteps review. If guides, itineraries, and travel content like this interest you, head over to my blog page to find out more.
If you are new to Matt’s Next Steps, check out the About Me page to find out a bit more about who I am, my travel adventures, and why I wanted to become a travel writer.
Please comment below and let me know your thoughts and experiences, or if there is anything else you want information on.
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