Traveling can be wonderful only if you can enjoy every moment of your trip, starting from planning to getting home safe and sound, and not broke of course. This is why it’s really important to think about your travel budget and here it comes some travel budget apps you can use to manage your expenses and enjoy your travels.

Every travel has it’s own budgeting tips, plans and a way of spending. In order to calculate and track travel expenses, I’m suggesting those budget-tracking apps to help you plan your trip, or let’s say plan the way you’re spending your savings.

Budget travelers (frugal travelers) and backpackers don’t travel the same way as those travelers who enjoy luxury hotels and rent a Lamborghini while on a trip. But all of them need a spending plan to track every penny while on the road.

To enjoy the best of your trip, you need to know some basics about managing your spendings, get away from overspending and stop stressing over money. You can do all of this by creating a travel budget.

That’s the beauty of the listed travel budget apps below. You don’t have to make the budget manually, you’ll save time and focus on having fun.

Other features that travel budgeting apps offer is to make it easy packing, navigate your destination, and most of all help you plan your trip by booking good hotels and flights based on your budget to make the vacation stress-free.

Which Travel Budget Apps should I use?

We did check more than 50 travel managing apps before writing this article. The list above contains the best travel budget apps, based on several factors like:

• App size: Some apps need more than 100mb storage space. This list includes only expense apps with less than 10mb size.
• Privacy: All apps respect your privacy when connected to your bank account.
• App score: Every app has at least 4/5 customers and user reviews.
• Functionalities: All apps work offline, and don’t require registration or payment.
• App Price: The best apps aren’t free. Those who provide true help to travelers can be smaller apps with limited features but still provide great results.
• App Compatibility: Some apps don’t work on all devices. We made sure to include those working on major devices and on both iOS and Android systems.

Trabee Pocket

One of the best travel expense apps available in the market; offers great features to help you manage your overall spending habits, you can set a trip budget, share budget reports and organize your expenses by categories.

Trabee Pocket lets you see how much money you spent, and how much you still have in your pocket or bank account. You can also set a budget and make sure not to encounter any financial emergency while abroad.

This app is a true travel budget manager and tracker. It supports multiple currencies and a real-time converter to check the price in your local currency.

With the predefined categories that Trabee Pocket provides. You can make multiple budget reports like how much you spent on public transportation, food & restaurants, souvenirs, museums and much more.

The app offers a great option to export the budget reports into CSV and XML files, an easy way to share and save you reports for a better understanding of your spending habits.

A great option offered by Trabee Pocket is taking pictures, recipes photos, add notes about the spending you made, all of this to easily manage your expenses without blowing your budget.

Pictures can be for a cup of coffee and where you got it from, or even a picture of a souvenir to remind yourself how much you spent on the road.

Get Trabee Pocket on Google Play or App Store.

Spendee

The app isn’t just a travel expense tracker app, it’ also a travel planning app. It includes some features that help you a lot while planning your trip, by making a saving plan or defining your travel budget before hitting the road.

Card payment will be available once you connect the app with your bank/card account. So you don’t have to add the expenses manually every time, even if the manual option is available on the app.

Also, Spendee provides a good feature to help you save money by tracking your income and managing expenses before you go on a trip. It helps a lot when planning your travels.

Another great feature is the option to add multiple users to manage expenses on one account. They call it shared wallets, a great way to track your spending while traveling in groups or with family.

The app has its own currency exchange system. The feature requires an internet connection and you can add expenses in multiple currencies. Suitable for those traveling to a foreign country while using a local credit card.

By using Spendee you can set an overall budget for your entire trip and stick on it, the app will send you notifications if you reach your daily budget.

Get Spendee on Google Play or App Store.

Trip Expense Manager

The app is 100% Travel related, track every penny while traveling solo or in groups. The app developer said, “I searched Google Play and didn’t find any good travel expenses app that fulfills travelers requirements”. So he/she decided to create an app that is perfect for group and solo travelers.

Some of the features making Trip Expense Manager one of the best budget apps; are creating multiple trips and managing expenses on one account.

You can also add places and destinations (sort of a travel bucket list) and write some descriptions or notes for a future visit.

For group travelers, it’s important to have the possibility to split the bill and calculate travel costs. With Trip Expense Manager it’s possible and you can also share the budget reports with other travel companions.

The app also provides categories, charts and a currency converter. While the multiple currencies option requires an internet connection to fully work. It can be a very helpful option when visiting multiple countries.

Get Trip Expense Manager on Google Play.

TripBudget

Another travel-related app is TripBudget, some of the outstanding features are the option to plan a trip based on a fixed budget. You can make trip budget plans before traveling, and track trip expenses when you start your trip.

A great option offered by TripBudget is the possibility to compare the estimated budget on the same trip by making several versions of a single trip. One of the best features I love about TripBudget while planning any trip or multiple trips at once.

After you create your trip budget (Plan Mode) you can switch directly to the Spending Mode once your trip begins. Start tracking expenses in real-time and compare with the Budget Plan you already made.

The app also provides the group travel option, share, split bills and make trip budgets for multiple travels. It can be done on the Plan Mode or while traveling via the Pending Mode by adding other travelers to the group.

TripBudget automatically (requires internet connection) converts expenses into/from your local currency. But a good feature with this app is the possibility to fix currency rates for every trip budget.

Another good feature is that you can add Discounts and Taxes. Those are usually hidden expenses that can ruin your trip budget.

The best features that TripBudget provides is the GPS localization, used to track expenses from specific locations and destinations. A great feature for travel foodies and those travelers who enjoy exploring new places.

The TripBudget is totally Free, doesn’t contain ads, and no in-app purchase is required. Even if it’s a Beta version but the functionalities are above expectations and really a must-have app on any traveler’s phone.

Get TripBudget on Google Play.

Toshl Finance

The app isn’t just a Travel budget app, Toshl Finance is a complete Financial app with a lot of features. Some of them are travel-related and those are the options I’m going to cover regarding this app.

A great option in Toshl Finance is the possibility to import past transactions, from different financial services (Banks, Cards, Digital Currency). A good feature to check your past trip’s expenses and make sure to prepare an even better budget plan for the next trip.

With Toshl Finance you’ll be able to access your expenses reports from various platforms using the Toshl web app. As I already said, it’s a complete financial app with various options to choose from.

The option to connect multiple bank accounts, credit cards, and other financial services is a good feature too. But the best thing is the possibility to connect PayPal and Crypto-Currencies as well.

The Toshl Finance app is free, but not totally, you’ll get only 2 financial accounts and 2 budgets with the free version, also no photos if you’re not paying for a subscription.

The app offers two subscriptions to get unlimited budgets and accounts, also to take pictures (receipts, locations…) and to import transactions from your banking accounts. (Check if your country is supported before downloading the app)

What makes Toshl Finance the last app on my list, it requires an internet connection for every task, some of the features doesn’t load at all if you’re working offline, not the best feature for travelers.

Get Toshl Finance on Google Play or App Store.

Other Travel Expense Apps you may consider:

I already picked the best travel expense apps I feel more comfortable with, I do travel in Europe and Asia mostly, so for those traveling in the USA and other destinations you can check the above list.

Those apps aren’t free, contains ads and some of them get very bad reviews when it comes to Privacy Policy (especially when connecting bank accounts) so be careful before using or purchasing any of those travel-related apps:

Goodbudget

In order to manage funds, the Goodbudget app is using the envelopes’ concept. First, you’ll have to create a category (envelope) and assign a budget, the category can be for flight tickets, hotel booking or even a package.

The app is free and gives only 20 envelopes without the subscription, for more, you’ll need to pay for it.

Goodbudget is available for iOS and Android.

Travel Budget Tracker

The best thing about Travel Budget Tracker is the option to work offline in all conditions, very useful for those travelers willing to enjoy a trip without the internet; and only looking to spend their savings without blowing the budget in one day.

With Travel Budget Tracker you can also create categories, assign a budget and export budgeting reports.

Travel Budget Tracker is available for iOS and Android.

Spent

Spent is an ordinary expense-tracking and budgeting tool. It comes with many features like receipts’ scanning, multiple categories, banking features, and the best feature is the easy interface.

Another great feature is the cashback program when you make purchases. Still, this option is limited to some countries and a small list of companies to use with.

Spent is available for iOS and Android.

Mint

This app works as a money management tool, can be sync with your bank account to track your income and expenses as well. The manual option is also available in the Mint app.

Mint app is free, but you’ll have to watch ads, a lot of ads. Also, keep in mind that Mint App works only in the US and Canada.

Mint is available for iOS and Android.

Wally

The Wally app doesn’t have the option to connect to your bank account, so you’ll have to perform all actions manually and enter every single transaction.

Other good features that come with Wally are location tracking, taking pictures, and of course the currency exchange.

Wally is available on iOS and Android.

What’s the best travel app for Business Travelers?

If you’re traveling for business and you need to justify the business expenses I’d recommend using Toshl Finance, but better using the paid subscription and connecting your bank accounts with the app to get the best of it.

By using Toshl Finance you’ll be able to take receipts’ pictures, extracting financial data from the bank into the app, and also making spending reports for your business trip.

Travel budget apps for Group Travel

When traveling in groups, it’s mandatory to check your budget and the group’s budget, split bills and make sure every member of the team is paying. For this kind of trip, I’d recommend either TripBudget or Trip Expense Manager.

The first one is more suitable when traveling in groups and planning the trip ahead, the second app will be more helpful if you’re making a one-time group journey between friends or family.

The most reliable travel app for Currency Exchange

Any travel budget apps list can’t be complete without talking about the most used and reliable app for currency exchange, I’ll have to add XE to the list because it’s a focused app that gives exact exchange rates in real-time.

The XE Currency Converter & Exchange Rate Calculator is a free and very trusted app, it provides accurate foreign exchange rates (requires internet connection) in charts and graphs, with options to monitor currencies and get rate alerts.

XE Currency apps are available on iOS devices, iPad, Android, and even on BlackBerry.

When using XE it’s better to create an account (Free or Paid) to monitor currencies and get the best mid-market rate when planning your budget trip, you can also use the app offline (saves the last exchange rate) or create a widget on your phone for fast access and live view.

Bonus: XE provides a Travel App called XE Travel it works like other travel budget apps, but some of the features are missing, I didn’t try it myself on any of my trips.

What is your favorite travel budget app?

Travel is about freedom, but it can’t be if you’re spending too much on things that don’t bring so much fun to the trip.

Also, you don’t have to sacrifice freedom and fun by avoiding things and activities that you’ll enjoy, use one of those apps as expenses tracker to stay on track and make sure every activity has a priority.

We’d like to know which expenses tracker you like, head over to the comment and share your experience or ask questions and will try our best to help you.

RESOURCES:

1. https://smartlemur.com/best/apps/budgeting
2. https://www.wanderingeducators.com/best/traveling/7-travel-budget-apps-keep-spending-in-check.html
3. https://bemusedbackpacker.com/2016/02/02/top-budget-apps-for-travelling/
4. https://matadornetwork.com/read/9-best-budgeting-apps-travelers/
5. https://toomanyadapters.com/best-budgeting-expense-tracking-apps-travel/
6. https://www.translateshark.com/blog/top-travel-budget-apps/
7. https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/my-money/articles/2017-05-31/5-best-travel-budget-apps-to-download-for-your-next-vacation
8. https://www.guidingtech.com/travel-expense-apps-android/