Six smartphone apps for budget travel

Whether it's spending hours pouring over airfare, sleeping in noisy hostels or battling through the red-eye squished in coach, traveling on a budget can feel like a hustle. Thankfully there are a handful of travel apps that can help save a few bucks on your dream trip – and help you plan for your next one. These are six of our favorite apps for budget travel.

Tripcoin

The best way to save on travel is to know where your money is going. Tripcoin is an expense-tracking app that works offline, which is great for international travelers who aren't buying a local SIM card. A geo-location feature breaks expenses down by country, and a currency converter automatically converts new expenses into your home currency. Helpful graphs also outline daily expenditures, and you can create unlimited trips to track how much each jaunt costs.

Skiplagged

Skiplagged capitalizes on a loophole airlines hate: hidden-city ticketing. It works like this: sometimes booking a flight beyond your intended destination is cheaper than simply booking a nonstop flight. For example, say you want to fly from San Francisco to Washington, DC. A regular round-trip ticket would cost $340, but a route from San Francisco to New York, with a layover in DC, is $140. You simply walk off the plane in DC. Airlines have gone to great lengths to put a stop to it (United sued Skiplagged in 2018, and lost). Skiplagged advises not tying any purchases to frequent flier accounts, as airlines have been known to invalidate air miles you've accrued with them.

Splitwise

If you're traveling with friends, Splitwise can help keep track of who owes what to whom. The app keeps a running total of IOUs, so everyone gets paid back at once, rather in than a bunch of smaller transactions. Automatic email reminders keep the misers in check, and integration with PayPal and Venmo (US only) makes settling up friendly debts a breeze.

Hopper

There are several apps that analyze historical airfare data to determine whether it's the right time to buy your airfare, but few of them are as cleanly presented and feature-packed as Hopper. Features like notifications when the airfare for a specific route drops, price prediction advice that gives you an idea when it's the right time to buy, and an option for flexible dates give Hopper a leg up on airfare deals. Put in your home city and destination and Hopper displays a calendar for the year ahead, with color-coded dates indicating when prices should be at their lowest.

HotelTonight

HotelTonight allows travelers to arrange last-minute accommodations, often at prices lower than if they'd booked in advance. These last-minute reservations often have deep discounts so hotels can increase occupancy on rooms they weren't able to book in advance. A 'Daily Deal' feature also unlocks a reduced-priced hotel that must be booked within 15 minutes. If you don't mind waiting until the day before or day of to book your hotel, this app can save bundles on accommodation.

AirHelp

Lost luggage and delayed or canceled flights can be a costly experience, but many travelers are eligible for compensation when something goes wrong. Often, however, there are dozens of hoops to jump through – forms to fill out, phone numbers to call and lines to wait in. AirHelp takes care of most of the process: you add your trip details, AirHelp determines if the airline owes you money, and then they send you the money. The catch: AirHelp takes a cut of the compensation as the price for convenience.