Most travel apps ask which countries you have been to or which U.S. states you have visited. Far fewer ask which cities, and the ones that do split into two groups that have almost nothing to do with each other.

The first group maps cities as travel history — a permanent record of the urban destinations you have passed through. The second maps venues inside a city — the bakery, the bar, the viewpoint you want to find again. Both get called "city trackers" and they solve completely different problems.

This list covers both, clearly labelled, because the search results mix them and it wastes a lot of people's time.

Quick comparison

Checked September 2026 on the US App Store. Pricing varies by region — confirm in your own store.

1. Pin Traveler

What it is: a lifetime map built from pinned destinations, where the city is the primary unit rather than an upgrade.

You pin the cities you have been to and they stay on the map permanently. Countries and U.S. states sit alongside as broader layers, but the city is what the product is organised around, and it is included from the start rather than sold as a tier.

Why city-level is the point. A country map compresses your travel into a yes or no. Italy is coloured in whether you spent three weeks working down from Milan to Palermo or connected through Fiumicino for ninety minutes. Pinning cities keeps the resolution: you can see which parts of a country you have actually covered, domestic travel finally shows up, and the map stops flattering you — which, if you want an accurate record, is the whole idea.

Free tier: unlimited city pins, plus countries and U.S. states, the colour-coded map, and travel statistics — most-visited destination, furthest distance travelled, continent breakdowns. Nothing is capped.

Premium adds: photo uploads on your destinations, custom pin colours and styles, and saved locations. Payable monthly, yearly, or once via Pin Traveler Premium or directly in the Pin Traveler app.

What it does not do: venue-level saving. It records that you were in Lisbon, not which restaurant you liked in Alfama — for that, see Mapstr further down. There is also no automatic GPS tracking; you add the city yourself, which takes seconds and works for travel from decades ago.

Rating: 4.73 from 8,453 US App Store ratings.

2. Visited

Cities are supported, but the product is built around curated lists — countries, U.S. states, regional maps for 20+ countries, and more than 150 categories to tick through, from heritage sites to national parks.

If you are a completionist, that structure will hold your attention far longer than a plain map. If you came for a city map specifically, expect to navigate past a lot of machinery you did not ask for before you get to it. We broke down the feature-by-feature differences in our Pin Traveler vs Visited comparison.

Rating: 4.65 from 13,762 ratings — the largest user base here.

3. Been

Worth being precise about, because it is the app people most often assume covers cities and then discover does not, at least not for free.

The free version is country-level: countries, U.S. states, a world map, a percentage, continent ratios. Cities and airports sit behind Premium Mode, along with regions in 25+ countries, extra globe filters, a chronological map and a shareable timeline video.

So Been answers "which countries" beautifully and quickly. If you specifically want a map of cities, that is the paid tier, and it is worth knowing before you install it rather than after. For an in-depth look between the two approaches, see Pin Traveler vs Been: A Practical Comparison.

Rating: 4.7 from 9,042 ratings.

4. Skratch

A scratch-map product covering countries, cities, states, regions and attractions, with bucket-list features, curated destination inspiration and — unusually for this category — travel eSIMs.

Cities are in there, but the design points at the visual: this is built to produce a map worth sharing rather than a precise personal archive. Choose it if the artefact matters more to you than the resolution.

Rating: 4.6 from 2,106 ratings.

5. Places Been

A straightforward tracker for countries and U.S. states without the list apparatus of Visited. City coverage is thinner than the apps above it here, so it is a better fit if your interest really does stop at the country layer and you want something light.

Rating: 4.57 from 1,190 ratings.

6. Polarsteps

Cities are not something you mark in Polarsteps — they are implied by the GPS route it records while you travel. The trip is the unit, and the map you get is a beautiful record of that journey.

That is genuinely excellent for a long trip, and it captures the road between cities in a way manual pinning cannot. Two things to know: it only knows about travel it was running for, so everywhere you went before installing does not exist, and short domestic trips rarely get created as "trips" at all, so they quietly go missing.

We compared the two models in detail in Pin Traveler vs Polarsteps. If you are looking for automatic logging alternatives, check our guide to the best Polarsteps alternatives in 2026.

Rating: 4.88 from 9,321 ratings.

7. Mapstr for saving venues

This is the venue group, and it is a good example of why the category confuses people.

Mapstr saves individual spots — the bakery, the jazz bar, the viewpoint — with tags and colour coding, and layers in recommendations from friends and people you follow. It solves the problem of screenshots piling up and never finding that restaurant again.

What it does not give you is a travel history. There is no map of cities visited, no count, no record of the trip as a whole. If what you actually want is "everywhere I have been", this is the wrong tool, and vice versa — the two pair well and compete badly.

Rating: 4.73 from 2,571 ratings.

8. Swarm

Check-in based: you check in at venues, and over time that accumulates into a history with stats and a map. It comes from the Foursquare lineage and still has the strongest habit loop in this list — coins, streaks, mayorships.

It records cities as a by-product of venue check-ins, which means the data is only as complete as your discipline. Miss a week and the map has a hole in it. It is also the most public-leaning option here.

Rating: 4.16 from 7,588 ratings.

9. Google Maps Timeline

The automatic option, and the one whose situation changed most.

Timeline logs where your phone has been without you doing anything, which is powerful raw material. But it is location history rather than a city map: no "142 cities" count, no coloured map of urban destinations, and nothing for travel you did before you carried the phone.

It is also no longer the reliable archive people assumed. The web version was retired, history moved to on-device storage with a default retention window that discarded older data, and a March 2025 fault deleted years of history for users without a backup — which Google acknowledged. Treat it as a live feed, not an archive.

Read the full explanation in Google Maps Timeline is gone.

Choose between city history and venue saving

Before comparing features, answer this: do you want a record of the cities you have been to, or a way to find spots inside them again?

If it is the first, you want a travel-history app, and the thing to check is whether city tracking is included or sold as an upgrade — that is the single biggest practical difference between the options above. If you are looking strictly for no-cost setups, read our guide to the best free travel tracker apps in 2026.

If it is the second, a venue-saver like Mapstr will make you happier than any tracker, and you will probably end up running one of each. They do not overlap enough to choose between.

Which city tracker fits your needs

• Cities as the core of a permanent map, free — Pin Traveler

• Cities alongside lists to complete — Visited

• Countries free, cities as a paid upgrade — Been

• A map built to be shared — Skratch

• The route between cities, on long trips — Polarsteps

• Saving venues to find again — Mapstr

• Check-in habit with stats — Swarm

• Automatic history, with caveats — Timeline

Frequently asked questions

What is the best app to track cities you've visited?

For cities as the foundation of a permanent travel map, Pin Traveler includes unlimited city pins on the free tier alongside countries and U.S. states. Visited covers cities within a broader checklist system, and Been offers them as part of Premium.

Is there a free app to track cities visited?

Pin Traveler's free tier includes unlimited city pins with no cap. Most other trackers in this list either treat cities as a paid feature or focus on the country layer for free users — worth checking before you commit.

Why track cities instead of countries?

Country maps flatten everything: a long trip and an airport connection look identical, and domestic travel does not register at all. Cities preserve the actual shape of where you have been, which matters more the more you travel within a country.

Can any app track cities automatically?

Google Maps Timeline records location automatically, and Polarsteps logs a GPS route during a trip. Neither produces a city map you can browse, and both only cover travel that happened while they were running. Manual pinning covers your whole history, including everything before you installed anything.

What is the difference between a city tracker and an app like Mapstr?

A city tracker records which cities you have been to as travel history. Mapstr and similar tools save individual venues within a city so you can find them again. Different jobs — many people use one of each.

Can I add cities I visited years ago?

In the manual apps, yes — Pin Traveler, Visited, Been and Skratch all let you fill in past travel from memory. Automatic tools cannot reconstruct history from before they were installed.