Best app to track national parks visited: 64 parks, compared

The best app to track national parks visited is a free checklist paired with the paper passport book. The app keeps your count. The book keeps the ink stamps you'll still want in twenty years. Skip the book only if a count is all you want.

But the list just changed. Chiricahua became the 64th national park in October 2026, and some trackers still say 63. We checked which ones caught up.

How many national parks are there, and what counts

The National Park Service lists 64 national parks inside a system of 434 units. The other 370 units are monuments, historic sites, seashores, battlefields and similar areas with their own names.

That gap is why "I've done the national parks" means different things to different people. The same NPS page says the units carry at least 19 naming designations, and most of them are not parks. We'd count the 64 named national parks as the headline goal and keep everything else as a bonus list.

Watch one trap. The NPS page also lists 64 national historical parks, a completely different category. A tracker that says "64 parks" should be built on the national park list, not that one.

Chiricahua in Arizona is the newest national park, signed into law as the Chiricahua National Park Act. Listings lag behind laws. As of November 2026, the App Store descriptions for National Parks Journal and Park'd still say 63 parks. Journal calls itself a companion for "all 63 US national parks", while National Parks Checklist promises "All 64 national parks".

Which app fits which reader

Which app fits which reader depends on what you do with the list, not on feature count. This table gives our pick for each kind of park collector, based on the store listings and official pages we read in November 2026.

The free USA map, for a quick count with no install

The free USA map sits outside the app stores. TripProf's version runs in your browser with no account. You paint the states you've visited, then tick things you've done across several short rounds, and national park tiles are among them. It ends with a shareable card and a travel archetype, and the Park Ranger archetype is captioned with how many of the 63 national parks you marked.

Mind that number. The "63" is the pre-Chiricahua count: the page has no Chiricahua tile yet, and the NPS now lists 64. We checked the live page on 4 November 2026, and we'd rather tell you than let you add it up wrong.

Know what else it isn't. It's a map tool, not an app, and it doesn't give every park its own checkbox. Yellowstone, Zion and Acadia have tiles, but Pinnacles, Voyageurs and Katmai don't. Your map lives in your browser, so clearing site data erases it unless you kept the share link.

We built it, so weigh our view accordingly. Use it for a ten-minute scorecard and a card to post, and keep a checklist app for the real count.

Round 1 of 5 on a phone, with only Arizona painted. Food, sights and outdoors share the screen and the Grand Canyon is one tile among them, which is why this is a scorecard and not a park checklist. The number of rounds grows with the states you paint.

The paper passport and the apps compared

The official ink stamps live in the paper book, and only one app we found scans them. Everything else on the grid below is a checklist, a map or a trail guide. Prices and ratings are as of November 2026, from each listing.

Photo: GlacierNPS · Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The paper passport book

The paper passport is where the ink stamps live. The program page says passports record visits with a rubber cancellation stamp that lists the site and the date. Eastern National's program page says visitors have collected ink cancellations since 1986, and it now points to a new home for the program at America's National Parks.

The same park page credits the Eastern National Park & Monument Association with producing the passport, not the NPS itself. The downside is plain: a book can be lost, and it won't tell you how many parks are left. We'd buy it on park number one, not park number ten.

The official NPS app

The NPS app is free on iOS and Android, and it lets you download content from entire parks for offline use. Its Google Play listing shows a 4.9 rating and more than a million downloads, and it describes a Visits feature that scans your photos to map the parks you've been to.

The App Store listing doesn't mention that feature. It covers 420+ sites, so the national parks are a small slice, and we couldn't confirm a dedicated 64-park checklist. A park with no photo on your phone presumably won't appear. We'd treat it as the offline map and a cross-check, not the master list.

National Parks Checklist

National Parks Checklist is the cleanest free tracker we found. Its App Store listing promises all 64 national parks grouped by state, a map colored by visited and not yet visited, and badges for finishing a state.

An account is optional and only needed to back up the list. You can also share a link to your list that opens without the app. The $9.99 premium is a one-time purchase that adds visit dates, notes and photos, so the checklist itself stays free. The catch: 36 ratings and an App Store listing only.

National Parks Journal

Journal is the Android answer. The Google Play listing says no login, no accounts, no ads, and everything works offline and stays on your device. The App Store listing adds digital stamps and a map of visited parks.

Staying on your device cuts both ways. We'd note that neither listing mentions a cloud backup, so a lost phone could mean a lost count. It also still says 63 parks, and the iPhone rating rests on 14 ratings.

Park'd

The Park'd listing sells a stamp log, a visit checklist and a map, and says the visit log, photos and notes work offline. Premium costs $4.99 a month, $19.99 a year or $39.99 for lifetime.

It's the broadest of the small trackers, with campground and trail reference built in. But its description still says 63 parks and lists no Chiricahua, and the rating rests on seven ratings. Its FAQ says core tracking is free and Premium adds advanced stats and customization. Check that it has been updated before you pay for lifetime.

National Park Passport Journey

National Park Passport Journey is the one app built around the book. The listing says you scan the real ink stamps from your passport books, and the app covers 434 NPS sites. Core park information and saved memories work offline.

Journey Pro costs $3.99 a month or $24.99 a year and unlocks offline map downloads. It needs iOS 18.6 or later, which rules out older iPhones. For a completionist who already owns the book, we'd try the free tier first.

Chimani

Chimani is a trip planner, not a tracker. The Chimani site describes check-ins and a simple visit history, but doesn't mention a park checklist. Offline access is marked for Chimani+ only, and the site prices Chimani+ at $35.99 a year.

Its Google Play listing shows 3.5 stars from 1.16K reviews, ads in the free tier and $34.99 a year. The two prices differ, so check the store you buy from. Use it for maps in a park, not to count them.

AllTrails

AllTrails does one job well, and it's trails. The App Store listing shows 4.9 stars from about a million ratings and offers Plus at $35.99 and Peak at $79.99. Offline maps need Plus.

The listing doesn't mention a national parks checklist. So no, it's not a park counter. We'd pick the trail in AllTrails and log the park somewhere else.

What the paid tiers cost

The cheapest paid tier is a one-time $9.99, and the yearly plans we priced run from $19.99 to $35.99. Counting parks can be free, but offline trail maps rarely are, and the two trail apps cluster at about $36.

The chart shows the first-year price, and only the checklist premium is a one-time purchase. The two trail apps charge the same, so the real choice is whether you need offline GPS maps at all. For plain park counting, you don't.

Passes and the 11-park nonresident fee

The America the Beautiful annual pass costs $80 for US residents, and the NPS passes page lists a $250 nonresident annual pass. It also says nonresidents aged 16 and over pay a $100 fee at 11 parks, in addition to the entrance fee, unless admitted with an annual pass.

Those parks are Acadia, Bryce Canyon, Everglades, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite and Zion. Our guide to the international visitor fee goes through the math. A nonresident who visits three of those parks pays $300 in that fee alone, so the $250 pass wins by the third at the latest.

How we would set up the count

Setting up the count takes one evening, and the order matters more than the app. This is the setup we'd use.

What we tested and how

What we tested was pages and listings, not apps on a shelf of phones. Every claim above comes from the official NPS pages, each app's own store listing or product page, and a read of the free USA map's own list, all checked on 4 November 2026. The rivals' evidence is their own pages: the NPS app, Checklist, Journal, Park'd and Passport Journey on their App Store or Google Play listings, Chimani on chimani.com and Google Play, and AllTrails on the App Store. We did not install them or capture their screens, so we can't speak to how they feel in use.

Small trackers change fast, and several have a handful of ratings. Treat our picks as a starting point, and re-check the listing's park count before you commit. For a countries version of this comparison, see the best app to track countries visited, and for states, the best app to track states visited.

Frequently Asked Questions

Key Takeaways

Sources

• National Park Service, National Park System: 434 units, 64 national parks, designation counts
• Anchorage Daily News, US gets its first new national park in 6 years: Chiricahua as the 64th national park
• National Park Service, NPS App: free, iOS and Android, offline park downloads
• NPS app, Google Play listing: rating, downloads, Visits feature
• NPS app, App Store listing: rating, offline use, 420+ sites
• National Park Service, Passport To Your National Parks: cancellation stamps
• Eastern National, Passport To Your National Parks: program since 1986, new home noted
• America's National Parks, Passport To Your National Parks: current program home, free ink stamps at visitor centers
• National Parks Checklist, App Store listing: 64 parks, premium price, account
• National Parks Journal, App Store listing: 63 parks, offline, no account
• National Parks Journal, Google Play listing: Android availability
• Park'd, App Store listing: 63 parks, premium prices
• National Park Passport Journey, App Store listing: stamp scanning, Pro prices
• Chimani, official site: Chimani+ price, offline, visit history
• Chimani, Google Play listing: rating, ads, price
• AllTrails, App Store listing: Plus and Peak prices, offline maps
• National Park Service, Passes: annual pass prices, nonresident fee
• Free USA map: the tool's own park tiles and caption