Using TripCompanion
TripCompanion is free to use. Discover, trips, planning together, messages and your data are free for everyone. TripCompanion Plus is an optional subscription that raises a few monthly limits (below). There is no advertising and no commission on anything you book.
You need an account to save places, make trips and send messages; anyone can read a trip shared by link. You must be 13 or older. You sign in with Apple or Google, so keep that account secure: anyone who can use it can use your TripCompanion account.
TripCompanion Plus
- What it is. Plus raises the monthly limits on Ask, trip ideas and trips planned for you. The app shows the free limits and Plus’s side by side before you buy. Plus’s numbers are fair use: past them, that feature waits for the next month. Everything else stays the same with or without Plus.
- Paying. You buy Plus through the App Store or Google Play, and they charge the account you use there. The price, its currency and the period (a month or a year) are shown before you confirm. Payment is handled entirely by Apple or Google: we never see your card.
- Renewal. Plus renews automatically at the end of each period, at the same price, unless you cancel at least 24 hours before it ends. The store charges the renewal in the 24 hours before the period ends.
- Free trial. Where a free trial is offered, it is once per person. If you don’t cancel at least 24 hours before it ends, the subscription starts and you are charged. If you subscribe during a trial, the rest of the trial ends.
- Cancelling. Cancel in your App Store or Google Play subscriptions; the app’s Plus screen takes you there. Plus stays on until the end of the period you paid for. Deleting the app does not cancel the subscription. Deleting your account triggers an attempt to cancel an active Google Play subscription, but it can fail; cancel Apple subscriptions yourself in the App Store. Check the store to confirm your subscription will not renew.
- Refunds. Apple and Google handle refunds under their own policies, and you ask them for one; we can’t issue refunds ourselves. Nothing here limits your rights under consumer law where you live.
- Price changes. If the price changes, the store tells you beforehand and, where the law requires it, asks you to agree. You can cancel before the new price applies.
- One account. A subscription belongs to the TripCompanion account that bought it. On a new phone, sign in with that account and use “Restore purchases”.
- If Plus ends. If we ever stop offering Plus, we will say so in the app beforehand, and you won’t be charged for any period after it ends.
What you write stays yours
Your trips, notes, descriptions and photos remain yours. We don’t claim ownership of any of it.
When you publish a trip or a hidden gem, you let us store it and show it to the people you published it to. That is all publishing means, and it lasts only while it stays published. Delete it and the permission ends.
If you make a trip public, other people can copy it into their own accounts. Their copy is theirs, and deleting yours doesn’t delete theirs. If you don’t want that, share it by link instead.
Messages and trip chats
Messages between travellers and the chat of each trip are end-to-end encrypted: only the people in the conversation can read them, not us. A one-to-one conversation needs both people to follow each other; a trip’s chat is open to everyone on that trip.
The rules below apply to what you send as much as to what you publish. You can block anyone. If you report a conversation, you choose which messages go with the report, and only those reach the person who reviews it.
What you may not post or send
- Anything unlawful, or anything that harasses or targets a person.
- Photos you don’t have the right to use, or that show someone who would object to being published.
- Invented places. Adding somewhere that doesn’t exist, or a business you are promoting rather than recommending, is spam.
- Anything meant to mislead: fake reviews, fake locations, impersonation.
A hidden gem you add is yours alone until you choose “Everyone”; then a person on our team checks it before anyone else sees it. Anyone can report a person, trip, place or conversation from the app, and a person reads every report. We may remove content that breaks these rules and, for repeated or serious cases, close the account.
What the app doesn’t promise
Place information can be wrong. It comes from an open dataset anyone can contribute to, from Foursquare and from other travellers. Businesses close, move and change their hours without telling anyone. Check before you travel a long way.
Trip ideas, day plans and descriptions are written by software (Claude, by Anthropic) from what you asked and the places we hold. They are built not to state things they can’t know, and will still sometimes be wrong: treat them as a starting point, not a guarantee. In the app they are marked “Suggested by AI”. Plus gives you more of them, not more certain ones. Claude is a trademark of Anthropic, PBC; TripCompanion is independent of Anthropic and not endorsed by it.
Travel times are estimates, and routes don’t know about closures, strikes or the weather.
Judgement about safety is yours. A place being quiet, well rated or off the tourist route says nothing about whether it is safe, open or right for you.
The service is provided as it is, without warranties. As far as the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss from using it. Nothing here limits liability that the law doesn’t allow us to limit.
Ending it
You can delete your account at any time: in the app (You › Settings › Delete account), or as described on Delete your account if you can’t use the app. If you have Plus, cancel it in the store first. We may suspend an account that breaks these terms, and will say why unless that would help someone get around the block.
The App Store
If you got TripCompanion from the App Store, Apple’s standard licence terms for apps apply alongside these. These terms are between you and us, not Apple: Apple isn’t responsible for the app, its content or its support, and has no obligation to maintain it.
Attribution
Place data comes from the Overture Maps Foundation under CDLA Permissive 2.0. Photos, ratings, tips, opening hours and busy times come from Foursquare. Maps in the app are © Mapbox and © OpenStreetMap contributors; maps on this site are © OpenStreetMap contributors via OpenFreeMap. Those licences require attribution, which appears in the app and on this site.
Changes
If these terms change in a way that matters, we will tell you in the app before the change takes effect.