TripSlap vs Wanderlog vs TripIt vs Roam Around: the trip-planner roundup
Four ways to plan a trip in 2026 — a collaborative organizer, a booking wrangler, an AI generator, and a warm day-by-day companion. Here's which travel planning app fits how you actually travel.
Travel planning splintered into a dozen apps, each quietly convinced it has solved “the trip.” The truth, darling, is that they solve different trips — and different phases of the same trip. Here’s an honest look at the big four, one paragraph each with the good and the bad, then the table.
Wanderlog
Wanderlog is the feature-rich collaborative organizer — maps, shared lists, reservations, budget, and true cross-platform support (iOS, Android, web). The good: for a group trip with a lot of moving parts and several cooks in the kitchen, it’s powerful and flexible, and being on every platform matters when your crew is split. The bad: all that capability comes with weight — more fields, more options, more of a “database to fill in” feeling. Its AI and personality are light; it organizes brilliantly but rarely feels like a companion.
TripIt
TripIt is the booking wrangler — forward your confirmations and it stitches them into a tidy, chronological itinerary with flight tracking. The good: for frequent flyers and logistics-heavy travel, it’s a genuine lifesaver, keeping gates, times, and confirmation numbers in one clean place. The bad: it’s reactive by design — it organizes the trip you’ve already booked and does almost nothing for the creative part, deciding what the trip should be. No real day-by-day planning, no budget to speak of, no companion.
Roam Around
Roam Around is the AI generator — type a prompt, get an instant itinerary. The good: it’s a fun, fast cure for blank-page paralysis; “four days in Lisbon” becomes a plan in seconds, great for inspiration. The bad: it tends to generate and stop. You get a wall of text that’s mostly static, hard to edit, and often web-dependent — exactly wrong for travel, where signal disappears and plans always change. Novelty-strong, workflow-thin.
TripSlap
TripSlap is the warm companion — day-by-day planning on iOS, a home-currency budget, a map, and Marco, an AI travel companion who drafts and lets you edit by hand. The good: it feels like texting a well-traveled friend — quick, opinionated about pace and budget (not taste), AI when you want a head start, manual when you want control, and a one-time $14.99 price with plans that live on your phone offline. The bad: it’s iOS-only, so a split-platform group is a problem, and it’s personal-first rather than a heavy multi-editor collaboration tool — and it won’t track your flights the way TripIt does.
Side by side
| TripSlap | Wanderlog | TripIt | Roam Around | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Main job | Plan + companion | Collaborate | Organize bookings | Generate itinerary |
| AI planning | Marco drafts + edits | Limited | No | Prompt-only |
| Editable day-by-day | Full | Full | Basic | Static |
| Budget | Home-currency | Yes | Limited | No |
| Platform | iOS | iOS/Android/web | All | Web |
| Personality | Warm, opinionated | Neutral, powerful | Utilitarian | Novelty |
| Price | $14.99 once | Free + sub | Free + Pro | Free/limited |
The verdict
Big group, cross-platform, endless options? Wanderlog. Mostly booked, need it tracked? TripIt. Want a rough spark from a prompt? Roam Around. But if you want the planning itself to feel less like spreadsheet admin and more like a friend drafting your days, watching your budget, and saying “five museums? bold” — that’s TripSlap. Pay once, plan forever, go pack. 🧳