Kintinery vs. Polarsteps
Polarsteps is a beautiful way to record a journey and share it with your followers as you travel. Kintinery is a private, shared space for a group's trip: no followers, no public profiles, nothing to discover, just a link that only the people you choose can open.
Side by side
Polarsteps is a strong travel journal. Here's where each app fits, including where Polarsteps wins.
Details on both apps verified July 2026. Prices in USD and can vary by region or promotion.
Where Kintinery pulls ahead
A trip, not a profile
This is the real difference. Polarsteps is built around a social account. People follow you, and once you accept a follower they can see every trip on your account except the ones you mark "Only me." You get a public profile at polarsteps.com/your-name with your travel stats and a followers list, and trips set to public can turn up in the app's discovery and even in Google.
Polarsteps can be private. You can set a trip to "Only me," or hand out a secret link. Fair enough. But privacy there is a setting you manage on top of a social network.
Kintinery has no social network underneath. No followers, no profiles, no discovery, no public mode. A trip is a private link, and the only people who ever see it are the ones you send it to. Nothing is tied to a public identity. That's the whole idea behind family media, not social media.
Everything the group needs in one place
Polarsteps is mostly about the map and the timeline. Kintinery is about running the trip together:
- ›Group chat. One thread for the whole trip. Polarsteps has no group chat; the only comments are public ones on a step, and even those need a Polarsteps account.
- ›A shared packing list. Claim an item so nobody double-packs. Polarsteps has no packing list or checklist, just free-text notes.
- ›Your bookings, organized. Forward any confirmation, flights and hotels alike, or upload a PDF, and AI lays the trip out day by day. Polarsteps forwards accommodation emails and has an AI planner for choosing destinations, but it doesn't handle flights or documents.
To be fair, both apps let a group add photos to a trip, and both let people open a trip in a browser without an account. Where they part ways is everything around the photos: the chat, the packing, and the booking logistics that turn a pile of reservations into one shared plan.
Contributors, not followers
Polarsteps is a personal travel journal. Even with Travel Buddies added, it's your trip, on your account, with your travel stats and, at the end, your printed book. The people watching are your followers.
Kintinery starts from the group. Everyone on the trip is a contributor, not a follower. And the people who just want to look, the grandparents, the friend who won't install anything, open one link in a browser and see the same living trip the group sees. There's no audience and no profile in the picture, just the people on the trip and the people they invited along.
When Polarsteps is the better choice
Often. Polarsteps is one of the most loved travel apps out there, with more than 20 million travelers, and it does several things Kintinery simply doesn't. Choose it if:
You want your route recorded automatically
Polarsteps' signature is automatic route tracking: it logs where you go in the background, even offline, and draws it on a beautiful map. Kintinery has a trip map but no auto-tracking. For a long or spontaneous trip where you don't want to log stops by hand, Polarsteps is the tool.
You want a printed keepsake book
Polarsteps turns your trip into a genuinely beautiful printed photo book, laid out automatically with the map and dates baked in, and reviewers rave about the quality. Kintinery exports your photos as a ZIP; it doesn't make books.
You're still figuring out where to go
Polarsteps has a free AI trip planner and curated destination guides to help you build a route from scratch. Kintinery assumes you mostly have your plans already and want to organize and share them, not decide where to travel.
You like sharing a journey with followers
Polarsteps is built for friends, family, and followers to follow along as a trip unfolds, and to look back through your travel history on your profile. If you like that your travels live in one ongoing place with an audience, that's a feature, not a flaw.
You're on Android, or you travel solo
Polarsteps has a polished Android app and is designed to shine for a solo traveler documenting a journey. Kintinery is on iPhone and the web today, with Android coming, and it's at its best with a group.
Kintinery is the better fit when the trip is a group thing you want to keep private: the bookings, the packing, the chat, and one link for everyone, with no followers and no profile attached.
Common questions
Is Kintinery a good Polarsteps alternative?
What's the real difference in privacy?
Does Polarsteps do things Kintinery doesn't?
Can people see the trip without the app or an account?
Can Kintinery build my itinerary from bookings?
How much does each one cost?
A private place for your whole trip
Bring the group, the bookings, and the photos into one private space, and share it with a single link. No followers, no public profile. Free to start.