Best apps for Thailand: the apps every traveller needs

Which apps do you need for Thailand?

The short list, in the order you will use them:

1. Stippl: plan the route, the transport legs, the stays and the budget in one trip
2. Grab or Bolt: rides at a fixed price in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Krabi and Phuket
3. 12Go: tickets for the night train, buses, minivans and island ferries
4. LINE: the chat app your guesthouse, boat operator and dive school use
5. Google Maps or Maps.me: navigation, the BTS and MRT, offline maps for the islands
6. Google Translate: the camera for Thai menus, signs and bus boards
7. An eSIM: data from the moment you land, no SIM queue at the airport
8. A card or currency app: baht at a fair rate, plus Wongnai or LINE MAN for food

The first one decides how well the other seven work, so that is where this guide spends most of its time.

Stippl: the best app to plan your Thailand trip

More than 268,000 Thailand trips have been planned with Stippl, which makes Thailand one of the countries we know best from the inside. You add the places, Stippl puts them on a map in order, and every leg between two stops becomes a transport item with its travel time. Stays, tickets, notes and the budget sit against the day they belong to. That matters more in Thailand than almost anywhere, because the hard part is not choosing places. It is the order, the season and the boats.

Island hopping: Andaman Sea or Gulf of Thailand

Thailand has two island coasts, and they have opposite monsoons. The Andaman side (Phuket, Krabi, Koh Phi Phi, Koh Lanta and, far south, Koh Lipe) is dry roughly November to April. The Gulf side (Koh Samui, Koh Phangan and Koh Tao) is dry roughly January to September and gets its real rain from late October to December. In the rainy months you don't cancel Thailand, you switch coasts.

On the Stippl map you see both coasts at once, so you can check your travel month against the side you are planning before you book anything. Planning for July? Put the Gulf in the trip. Planning for December? The Andaman coast is at its best, and Koh Tao is not. The Koh Samui vs Phuket comparison goes deeper on the choice, and our Thailand guide covers every region.

One date to plan around: Maya Bay on Phi Phi Leh closes every year from 1 August to 30 September. The Phi Phi boat trips still run, without that one landing.

Ferries, night trains and domestic flights as legs

A Thailand route is three kinds of transport, and each one goes into Stippl as a leg between two stops:

• The night train. Bangkok to Chiang Mai takes 13 to 15 hours from Krung Thep Aphiwat station, not the old Hua Lamphong. Mark it as overnight transport and Stippl counts the night on board without inventing a hotel night.
• Domestic flights. The long hop south is a flight: Chiang Mai to Krabi is about two hours direct, and AirAsia, Nok Air, Thai Lion and Bangkok Airways fly the main routes.
• Ferries. Every island stop starts and ends at a pier, and on busy Andaman routes there are several piers with similar names. Add the pier to the leg and you will not find out at 8 am that the minivan went to the wrong one.

Once the legs are in, the route shows what it really costs in travel time. The Andaman to Gulf crossing by bus and ferry via Surat Thani is a full travel day of five to seven hours; seeing that on the plan is usually what convinces people to pick one coast or to fly.

How long travellers really stay: Stippl trip data

Across those 268,000 trips, a typical stop in Thailand lasts three nights, and more than one stop in five is a single night. The most planned places are Bangkok (397,504 stops), the Krabi region (nearly 170,000), Chiang Mai (161,231) and Phuket (160,716).

The interesting part is how long people give each one. Bangkok is planned twice as often as anywhere else, yet travellers give it two and a half nights on average: it is a gateway, not a base. Chiang Mai gets about three and a half nights. Koh Phi Phi gets two and a half, because it is small and most of its sights are boat trips. Koh Tao holds travellers longest of anywhere in Thailand, nearly four nights, because people come to dive. Use those numbers as a sense check when your own plan has Bangkok at six nights and Koh Tao at one.

Sample route: two weeks in Thailand as planned in Stippl

This is the short version of a classic first trip: north first, then the Andaman coast, best from November to April. Fourteen nights in beds, plus one on the train.

A few things the plan catches for you. Bangkok gets three nights, a little more than the average, because jet lag eats the first day; where to stay in Bangkok picks the area. The night train saves a room and a travel day. The Phi Phi ferry from Ao Nang leaves from Nopparat Thara, not from Ao Nang's own longtail jetty, and the island charges a national park fee of €10.40 (400 ฿) per person on arrival. Phuket has its own international airport, so the trip ends without one more ferry. Each stay is booked from its stop in the trip, so when people ask for the best app to book hotels in Thailand, the practical answer is the one already holding your dates.

Plan this route in Stippl, change the nights, swap Phi Phi for Koh Lanta, and the legs update with you. Want every step from season to ferries? Our full Thailand trip planner guide walks through it. Travelling between June and September? Keep Bangkok and Chiang Mai, then fly to Koh Samui and hop the Gulf instead: our 10-day Thailand islands itinerary has those ferries. For the north in more depth, the 10-day Thailand itinerary adds Pai.

Budget in baht, planning with friends and the offline map

Set the trip budget in baht and Stippl shows each amount in your own currency beside it. For a sense of scale: a backpacker day in Thailand runs about €20-30 (770-1,150 ฿) and a mid-range day €55-90 (2,110-3,460 ฿), and a typical dinner logged by travellers who planned Thailand with Stippl comes to about €6.90 (265 ฿). Log the noodles as you pay for them and you can see per stop where the money went.

Travelling with friends? Send the invite link and everyone plans in the same trip: one map, one set of ferry times, no screenshots in a group chat. In the budget planner anyone can log a cost, say who paid and who it is split between, and Stippl works out who owes whom at the end. That is the long boat, the shared Grab and the dive deposit settled without a spreadsheet.

And on the islands, signal comes and goes. A trip you have opened once on wifi stays readable on your phone, so the stops, booking details and ferry times are there on a pier with no bars. Changes wait until you are back online.

Combining Thailand with Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam

Thailand is rarely the whole trip. 56% of Thailand trips planned in Stippl include another country, and Vietnam is on 29% of all of them, followed by Cambodia, Indonesia and Malaysia, with Laos next. A border crossing goes into the same trip as one more leg.

The classic overland route to Laos runs from Chiang Rai: about two hours by bus to the Chiang Khong border, a shuttle bus across the Friendship Bridge for €0.50 (20 ฿), a Lao visa on arrival, then two days on the slow boat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang with a night in Pakbeng. Cambodia works from Bangkok to Siem Reap by flight or overland, and Vietnam is usually a flight from Bangkok. Add the next country's stops after the border leg and the whole loop sits on one map.

The apps you need on the ground in Thailand

Once the route is set, these are the apps that do the daily work. None of them plans the trip; each does one job very well.

Grab and Bolt: the Thai equivalent of Uber

There is no Uber in Thailand. Grab is the default: the fare is fixed on screen before you confirm, you pay in the app, and the driver has your destination in Thai. Bolt works the same way and is often cheaper, though it has fewer drivers late at night. GrabFood covers delivery. One airport tip: at Phuket airport Grab has its own pickup zone, while Bolt and inDrive drivers have to collect you outside the gate.

12Go: booking trains, buses and ferries

12Go puts Thailand's trains, buses, minivans and ferries in one timetable. It is where you book the night train to Chiang Mai, which sells out days ahead in high season, and the island ferries, which sell out in December and January. Harbour counters are no cheaper than the app. In the sample route above, 12Go covers three of the five legs.

LINE: the most used chat app in Thailand

WhatsApp works fine in Thailand, but Thai businesses run on LINE. The guesthouse sends its LINE ID with the booking, the boat operator confirms the pickup time on LINE, and the dive school on Koh Tao posts the weather call there in the morning. If you want a Thailand app for chat with locals, this is it: install it, add a profile photo, and expect stickers in reply.

Google Maps and Maps.me: navigation and offline maps

Google Maps routes you across Bangkok's BTS Skytrain, MRT and river boats with platform exits; a BTS day pass costs about €3.60 (140 ฿). Before a scooter day on Koh Lanta or Koh Phangan, download the offline map of the island: interior roads drop signal. Maps.me is the backup with good offline trails. A scooter rents for €3.90-10.40 (150-400 ฿) a day, and you need an international driving permit or the insurance is void.

Google Translate: reading Thai menus and signs

English is common on the tourist trail and thin the moment you leave it. Download the Thai language pack on wifi so translation works offline, then point the camera at a handwritten menu or the sign on a songthaew. Learn "mai phet" (not spicy, please) anyway; it goes further than any app.

An eSIM app: online the moment you land

Every app above needs data, and the SIM queue at Suvarnabhumi is the first place a long-haul arrival loses an hour. An eSIM installs at home and connects when you land; on a two-hour ferry you can run a hotspot for the whole group. You can get a Thailand eSIM through Stippl while you plan, and top it up from the same app.

Paying in baht: cards, currency apps and PromptPay

Thailand is cash-first once you leave the malls: street food, markets, songthaews, longtails and most guesthouses want baht. Use a card with no foreign-transaction fee and a currency app to check what a price really is. Thai ATMs charge a fixed €4.70-5.70 (180-220 ฿) per withdrawal, so take out larger amounts less often, always choose to be charged in baht rather than euros, and wait for your card: the machine returns the cash first. The blue PromptPay QR code on a noodle stall is tied to Thai bank accounts, so plan to pay those stalls in cash unless your own wallet app says it supports Thai QR.

Wongnai, LINE MAN and GetYourGuide: food and tours

Wongnai is the restaurant-review app Thai people actually use, which makes it the way to find the noodle shop locals queue for rather than the one with English menus. LINE MAN, LINE's delivery service, often has restaurants GrabFood does not. GetYourGuide is useful for anything with a fixed slot, like an elephant sanctuary that caps visitor numbers; for most other day trips, the guesthouse desk books the same boat for less.

Checklist: the apps to install before you fly

Do these at home, on wifi, the week before you go:

1. Open your Stippl trip on your phone so the route, stays and ferry times are saved.
2. Install the eSIM and check it shows up in your phone settings.
3. Download the offline maps for each region and the Thai pack in Google Translate.
4. Install Grab, Bolt, 12Go and LINE, and add a card to Grab.
5. Fill in the Thailand Digital Arrival Card on the official TDAC portal within 72 hours before you land. It is free, one form covers up to ten travellers, and paid look-alike sites charge for the same thing.

That last one answers the most common question about an "entry app" for Thailand: it is a website, not an app, and you need it for every entry by air, land or sea.