Free Mileage Trackers Should Be Private, Too
As a freelance photographer, I have to track my mileage for clients and taxes.
But most mileage trackers create a complete log of my movements and just upload them to servers behind loose terms of service. I do not want that history sitting on a company’s server just one breach, subpoena, or acquisition away from belonging to someone else.
So I built my own free mileage tracker, then was glad to find a small wave of independently built free mileage tracker apps that keep trip data on the iPhone or, in a few cases, in the user’s private iCloud account. Rather than treating these apps as competitors, I am happy to promote them.
When built for personal use instead of as a SaaS profit center, an app can be so much better. It doesn’t have to be cross-platform, so it can really be built into iOS, be smoother, and take advantage of all of its native features.
That is why I built Mileager, and why I was encouraged to find I was not the only developer who thought mileage tracking should be free — and private.
How I chose these free mileage tracker apps
I checked the U.S. App Store on August 18, 2026 and limited this list to apps released or updated in the preceding year. Every app below was listed as free with no subscription or in-app purchase, and each developer says trip data stays on the device or syncs through the user’s private iCloud account rather than a developer-controlled one.
One caveat: I have not audited these apps or monitored their network traffic. App Store privacy labels are self-reported — Apple states on every listing that it has not verified them — and prices and business models change.
Free automatic mileage trackers
Mileager
Mileager is my own free mileage tracker for iPhone. It captures drives automatically and lets you classify them, assign purposes, add notes, record tolls and parking, manage multiple vehicles, and export CSV or PDF reports. Trips are stored on the device, optional iCloud sync uses your own Apple account, there is no Mileager account to create, and there are no advertising or analytics SDKs.
Kiro Mileage & Tax Log
Kiro has one of the strictest device-only privacy positions in this group: its developer says there is no account, no cloud service, no analytics, no ad SDKs, and no server that ever receives your location. It detects drives automatically, records routes, supports Business, Personal, Medical, and Charity classifications, learns your frequent destinations and working hours on the device, exports PDF and CSV reports, and offers CarPlay and Siri controls.
Track Mileage
Track Mileage detects trips automatically and records their GPS routes. It supports Business and Personal classifications, multiple vehicles, route maps, and PDF or CSV reports. Its listing says data stays on the device unless you export it.
JustMileage: Mileage Tracker
JustMileage detects drives in the background and classifies them with a swipe. It learns recurring routes, tells vehicles apart by Bluetooth or CarPlay, and produces PDF and CSV reports. Its database is local, with private iCloud sync so your history survives a lost or replaced phone. Its own pitch is the argument that motivated me: mileage tracking shouldn’t cost $120 a year.
Mile Logger — Mileage Tracker
Mile Logger is the most established app here — on the App Store since 2016. It offers automatic detection, work-hour-based classification, named locations, custom purposes, multiple vehicles, CSV export, local storage, and optional backup to your personal iCloud. Its privacy label says no data is collected, but the App Store marks it as containing advertising, so it is not an ad-free product.
Smart Mileage Tracker
Smart Mileage Tracker pairs automatic drive detection with configurable work hours, favorite locations with assigned categories, custom reimbursement rates, backup and restore, and CSV or PDF exports. Its listing says there is no account or subscription and the mileage data stays on the device.
Mileage Tracker by Summit
Summit detects drives using GPS and motion sensing, and includes trip history, filters, manual tracking controls, and CSV export; iCloud sync is listed as coming soon. It is a particularly small and new app, and it requires a recent version of iOS. Its privacy label says no data is collected.
Free manual mileage trackers, for deliberate start-and-stop logging
Automatic tracking is convenient, but not everyone wants an app watching for drives in the background. These apps take a more deliberate approach.
Finally Fixed Mileage
Finally Fixed Mileage records a trip when you start and stop it — by GPS or by entering odometer readings. It also logs fuel purchases, fuel economy, repairs, and maintenance shops, and exports PDF or CSV reports. A good fit if you want GPS-based records without automatic background detection.
DriveLogBook
DriveLogBook is closest to a digital replacement for a paper mileage notebook: enter a vehicle, date, purpose, and odometer readings, and it calculates the distance. It attaches photos of receipts, shows per-vehicle statistics, exports CSV, and works completely offline.
Milo Track — Mileage Tracking
Milo Track records trips with a one-tap start and stop. It includes trip descriptions, date filtering, PDF reports, and Excel exports, works offline, and keeps records local. A useful middle ground between typing in odometer numbers and letting an app detect every drive.
The missing piece is not another app
Finding these apps was encouraging. Several independent developers looked at the same market of subscriptions and cloud accounts and each decided to build something simpler. The disappointing part is that we are mostly building separate, closed-source implementations of the same thing.
Every one of us is wrestling with the same hard problems:
- Reliably detecting drives in the background
- Avoiding missed, split, or wrongly merged trips
- Minimizing battery use
- Surviving interruptions and phone restarts
- Classifying trips without creating busywork
- Producing accurate tax and reimbursement reports
- Protecting an unusually sensitive location history
- Keeping up with iOS changes and tax mileage rates
That is a lot of duplicated work that could be shared.
There are open-source projects — but not yet a shared standard
I initially assumed there was no free, open-source iPhone mileage tracker at all. That turned out to be not quite right.
Simple Miles is an MIT-licensed iOS mileage tracker aimed at gig-delivery drivers, with automatic background tracking, local persistence, and zero third-party dependencies. It is promising, but it is still one developer’s small repository, without the contributors or adoption of a mature shared platform.
Zenroad publishes its code on GitHub and includes automatic trip tracking, but it is not really open source: it is a reference app for the commercial Damoov telematics SDK, built around accounts, Firebase, and backend data services, and distributed under the SDK’s own license terms. That makes it useful for fleet or insurance products — and quite different from a small, local-only personal tax log.
There are also open-source fuel-economy and maintenance trackers, but those solve a related problem, not this one.
What I still have not found is a mature, community-maintained, local-first iPhone mileage tracker that focuses on client and tax records, is easy for an ordinary person to install, and serves as a common codebase that independent developers improve together. That is the project I wish existed.
I may open-source Mileager
I am considering opening Mileager’s source code. Mainly for privacy verification. Publishing the source would let anyone inspect how trips are stored and not transmitted. If anyone would like to see the source code, please email me at David@DavidDegner.com.
The more ambitious reason is collaboration. Mileager could become a shared foundation rather than another lone app: a broader set of developers could improve background tracking, fix edge cases, and translate the interface.
I do not yet know whether there is enough interest to make that worthwhile. If you would use an open-source version, inspect its security design, contribute code, or help maintain it, I would be glad to hear from you.