We all have that anxiety when traveling that maybe we should be including another stop on our road trip or hitting up that town you just drove through for some cool local stores and insider knowledge on the hidden gems only the locals know about. There’s also that thought in the back of your head that maybe you could have gotten this tour a little cheaper if you searched a bit harder for a discount code.

For travelling around New Zealand, we have you covered with the below apps and websites to make the absolute most out of your tip and make sure you don’t miss a thing! We’ve also listed all the discount apps we use to ensure we are making the most out of every dollar we spend. The more you save, the longer you can keep on traveling, so make sure you utilise these apps when you are on the road in Aotearoa.

Be sure to check out our Instagram to see all our adventures throughout Aotearoa!
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Freedom Camping

New Zealand Travel Apps Freedom Camping

CamperMate, Rankers, WikiCamps, NZMCA. We use these apps to find the best freedom camping spots. If there aren’t any freedom camping options near us, then they are good at finding the cheapest campsites too. You do have to be a member of NZMCA to use their app and campsites, but if you are here for a year or more, then we highly recommend joining. They often have campgrounds in areas with no freedom camps and you only pay $5 per person per night to stay there. Needless to say, you get your membership fees back pretty quickly!

Check our blog post on these apps for a more in-depth look at why we use all of these apps.

Discounts

New Zealand Travel Apps - Discount Apps

BookMe and GrabOne. We don‘t book or pay for anything without first looking to see if it’s cheaper on BookMe or GrabOne. Sometimes it’s not cheaper, but a lot of the time it is. We often use BookMe as a way of deciding what to do once we get to a certain area. If it’s on the app and well priced, then we add it to the list or even book it right away. As a rule of thumb, now we won’t go to the hot pools in Taupō or Rotorua without the BookMe discount. It’s not just activities you’ll find discounted on these sites either. We’ve had dinners, food boxes and more off GrabOne.

Top 10

New Zealand Travel Apps - Top10

Even if you aren’t traveling around Aotearoa in a van, having a Top10 membership or just using their individual park websites to plan your tip is a great idea. They have a lot of accommodation options and will offer tips on what to do around their parks. If you like staying at campgrounds and plan on staying in a few of their sites, we recommend joining their membership program. You get discounts on stays, better Wi-Fi in the parks and discounts on nearby restaurants and attractions.

Roady

New Zealand Travel Apps - Roady

Lots of inspiration for spots to visit as well as cool photography locations. They are very active on social media so are great for your trip inspiration. If we ever find ourselves in an area with not much planned, we’ll open the roady app and see what’s nearby to do! It’s never failed us yet and their map style app makes it a lot easier to see what is close to you than a quick google search. If you don’t want to miss a thing on your New Zealand travels, then plan your itinerary using this app. They have everything on here!

Gaspy

New Zealand Travel Apps - Gaspy

A community driven fuel app. We use this every time we need to fuel up. It shows the best fuel prices in a city/area. You can sort by price or distance and select your preferred fuel type. Any discounts you might have for Z, Caltex, Waitomo etc can be applied too, so you know exactly what price you’re going to pay before you get there. Fuel is expensive in Aotearoa, so it makes a huge difference if you are getting it as cheap as you possibly can.

Bonus Apps and Money Saving Tricks

Aurora

New Zealand Travel Apps - Aurora
If you are traveling to the South Island of New Zealand, you’ll want to have these apps on your phone so you don’t miss any incredible lights displays put on by the Aurora Australis. Sure, you might not get any, but you’d hate to wake up one morning and see Instagram exploding with Aurora photos that you could have seen for yourself!
Trust us when we say it’s not a fun feeling to miss out on seeing the Aurora when it seems like everyone around you got to see it. We missed out on it when it was especially strong a couple months ago because Tiff was working and we didn’t have any apps to let us know it was worth driving a bit out of town to see it.
Since there are so many variables when aurora hunting, it’s useful to have a wide variety of apps. Our top choice is probably the Glendale App (Left), which gives a simple likely hood of activity and a map of your country/area where others can log if they have or haven’t seen anything.
Aurora Alerts (Right) is another favourite. It has a simple design, especially if you don’t understand the metrics, with an easy percentage system for the probability of visible activity both overhead and on the horizon. As well as other important factors like cloud cover and moon phase.

Loyalty Cards

New Zealand Travel Apps - Loyalty Cards
You are no doubt going to be shopping for food on your travels. Whilst we always recommend going to independent shops, there are times when that’s not practical or they just don’t stock everything you need. We make good use of the loyalty cards for the two main supermarkets here to save us money when shopping.
Woolworths (formally Countdown) and New World are the main shops we use when we can’t find a local fruit and veg shop, however we only use New World when there is no other option as it is more expensive. (Some towns only have one supermarket so it does pay to have cards for both) Pak’nSave can be good but that store gives us anxiety.
Both Woolworths and New World have member cards that give you added discounts on items as well as accumulating points to get money off your shops. There are a lot of sale items that are only on sale to people holding these cards, so even if you aren’t using it long enough to get money off your shop, they are worth having to get the extra discounts on everyday items. You can sign up to both in-store.


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