Best Mileage Tracking Apps Compared: MileIQ vs Everlance vs Free Alternatives

Choosing a mileage app usually comes down to one question: how often do you actually drive for work? Someone doing daily deliveries needs different software from someone who makes one client visit a month. We tested the claims, pricing pages and reviewer feedback for the apps people search for most, so you can pick the right tool rather than the most heavily marketed one.

What actually matters in a mileage app

Every app in this roundup does the same basic job: it logs your drives, tags them as business or personal, and multiplies the business miles by a mileage rate to work out your deduction or reimbursement. The 2026 IRS standard business mileage rate opened the year at 72.5 cents per mile and rose to 76 cents per mile from 1 July after a mid-year adjustment, and every app here ultimately runs that same sum, or your employer's own reimbursement rate. What separates them is how the tracking happens, how much of it is free, and how clean the exported report is if the IRS or your finance team ever asks to see it.

MileIQ

MileIQ was one of the first apps to popularise automatic swipe-to-classify mileage tracking, and it's still built around that idea. It runs quietly in the background using your phone's GPS, logs each drive automatically, and you swipe right for business or left for personal once you've arrived. The free plan covers your first 40 drives every month, which suits someone with a handful of client visits or occasional site trips. Once you go over that, you need the Unlimited plan. MileIQ raised its individual pricing during 2026, and depending on whether you pay monthly or annually, current reports put the Unlimited plan's cost in a wide range, so check the official pricing page before committing to a plan, rather than trusting a number from a review site. Reports export as IRS-compliant spreadsheets showing date, mileage, and purpose, which is exactly what Publication 463 asks for. MileIQ suits people who want the simplest possible daily workflow and don't mind the classification happening one swipe at a time.

Everlance

Everlance goes a step further than pure mileage tracking by folding in expense capture and, on paid tiers, tax estimates. Automatic GPS trip detection is standard, and the free plan covers 30 automatically detected trips a month, similar territory to MileIQ. Paid individual plans (Starter and Professional) run in the region of $70 to $100 a year, according to Everlance's own pricing page, while business teams typically pay per user per month on a CPM-style plan. That makes Everlance noticeably cheaper than most competitors on an annual basis if you don't need the business team features. It exports IRS-ready mileage and expense reports, and its combination of mileage plus expense tracking makes it a reasonable single app for a freelancer who doesn't want to juggle two subscriptions. It isn't flawless, though — automatic detection doesn't catch every trip, as one hands-on tester found.

Stride

Stride is the outlier here: it's completely free, with no paid tier at all. It still does automatic GPS mileage tracking, unlimited trip logging, and generates an IRS-ready expense report you can hand to an accountant or import into tax software, plus a direct H&R Block integration at filing time. The trade-off is that Stride is built by Stride Health primarily to funnel gig workers towards its insurance marketplace, so support and polish aren't quite at the level of a paid, ad-free app, and reviewers note the interface feels aimed squarely at rideshare and delivery drivers rather than general business use. If your budget is the main constraint and you don't need advanced reporting, Stride is hard to beat on price alone.

QuickBooks' built-in mileage tracker

QuickBooks doesn't sell mileage tracking as a standalone product — it's a feature bundled inside the QuickBooks Solopreneur and QuickBooks Online mobile apps, which currently start at roughly $20 a month for Solopreneur. Turn on the toggle in the mobile app, and it uses your phone's location services to detect and log trips automatically, which you then swipe or tap to categorise as business. The advantage is integration: mileage logged here flows straight into your Schedule C figures alongside your invoices and expenses, so you're not reconciling two separate tools at tax time. The downside is cost — you're paying for a full accounting subscription, not just a mileage app, so this only makes sense if you're already using or planning to use QuickBooks for your bookkeeping.

Driversnote

Driversnote is aimed squarely at people who need a clean, defensible mileage log without much manual fuss. It uses GPS and motion sensors to detect and record trips automatically, and lets you tag them with client names or purposes for easier bookkeeping later. The free plan covers 15 trips a month, roughly half of MileIQ or Everlance's free allowance, so heavier drivers will hit the paywall faster. Paid plans scale by how often you drive, and exact pricing varies by tier and region, so it's worth checking the Driversnote pricing page directly rather than relying on a fixed figure. Exports come as CSV or PDF logs built to satisfy IRS documentation rules. It's a solid pick for professionals who drive most days and want a report they can hand over without editing it first.

Worth a brief mention alongside these five: TripLog and Hurdlr cover similar ground, with TripLog's plans starting from around $8 per user per month and leaning towards small teams and fleets rather than solo users.

“Everlance just didn't capture our ride automatically.”

— Timeero mileage-tracking review team, in a hands-on Everlance test (timeero.com)

That's a useful reminder for any GPS-based app: automatic detection is convenient, not infallible. Missed trips still need a fallback of manual entry, or you risk gaps in the very log you're relying on to survive a review of your mileage deduction.

When a free calculator beats a subscription app

None of these apps are bad — they solve a real problem for people who drive constantly and would otherwise lose track of dozens of trips a month. But a subscription, or even a free app with ongoing background tracking, isn't always the right tool. If you only need to work out the deduction or reimbursement for a specific trip or a short list of drives, a free one-off tool such as PerDiemWise's mileage reimbursement calculator does the same underlying maths — miles times the current IRS rate — without asking for a card number, ongoing location permissions, or an account.

• You drive for business most days and would lose track without automatic logging — a subscription app earns its cost.
• You need years of continuous mileage history for audit protection — a dedicated app's stored log is genuinely useful here.
• You only need to calculate a handful of trips a month, or a single reimbursement — a free calculator is faster and asks nothing of your phone's location settings.
• You're comparing what your employer owes you against the IRS rate for a one-off trip — a calculator answers that in seconds.
• You want mileage folded into a wider accounting workflow — QuickBooks or Everlance's combined tools may justify their price.

Whichever route you take, the records requirement doesn't change: the IRS expects a contemporaneous log showing date, mileage, and business purpose for every trip you claim, whether you produce it with an app or write it by hand and check it against a calculator afterwards. Our guide to calculating mileage reimbursement walks through exactly what that record should contain, and our piece on the mileage tax deduction for the self-employed covers how the app-generated logs above actually get used on your tax return.