Plan a Trip With Friends — Free Collaborative Travel Planner

Build a shared itinerary together in real time. Invite anyone, edit at the same time, see every change live. Free forever, no app download required.

Start Planning With Friends — It's Free Solo? Try the free builder

Real-Time Collaboration Like Google Docs — For Travel

Planning a trip with a group is one of the most chaotic things you can do online. Half the conversation lives in WhatsApp, half in Instagram DMs, the spreadsheet hasn't been updated in three weeks, and somehow the friend who's actually booking the Airbnb has the wrong dates. SmartTrippy fixes this by giving every group trip one shared, live, version-controlled home — exactly the way Google Docs solved this problem for documents over a decade ago.

Open the trip and you'll see your friends' cursors moving around the itinerary as they edit. Add an activity to Day 3 and it appears for everyone within milliseconds. Comment on the hotel choice and the person who suggested it gets notified. There's no "I'll send the latest version", no merge conflicts, and no chance the trip's most important detail is sitting in a chat thread that scrolled off the screen.

Everyone Can Edit at the Same Time

True simultaneous editing means two friends can be working on the same day at the same moment without either of them losing their changes. One adds a museum, the other adds a lunch spot, and the timeline absorbs both edits in the right order. This is the single biggest difference between SmartTrippy and any planner built around a single-user spreadsheet or document.

Share With Anyone — No App Download Required

SmartTrippy is a browser-based web app, which means anyone you invite can open the itinerary on their phone, laptop or tablet without installing anything. That's a bigger deal than it sounds: every "let's all download this app" message in a group chat costs you collaborators. The friend on an old Android, the parent who doesn't want a new app, the partner who's already at storage limits — they all just open a link and they're in.

You can share a trip three ways: by entering email addresses for invite-only access, by generating a shareable link that anyone with the URL can open, or by publishing the trip publicly so it appears in the SmartTrippy inspiration feed for other travelers to remix.

Three Permission Levels — Owner, Editor, Viewer

Not every collaborator needs the same level of control, and SmartTrippy gives you three distinct permission tiers that you can mix and match per person on every trip.

PermissionCan doCannot do
OwnerEverything — including deleting the trip and managing collaborators
EditorAdd, edit and remove activities, hotels, transport and notesDelete the trip or change other people's permissions
ViewerRead the itinerary and leave commentsChange any planning detail

The viewer role is perfect for parents who want to know the plan, friends-of-friends who are joining for a few days, or that one person in the group who shouldn't be allowed to delete things.

How to Plan a Group Trip Step by Step

Here's the exact process most groups follow on SmartTrippy:

  1. One person creates the trip. Sign up for free, enter the destination and dates. This takes under a minute.
  2. Invite the group. Click Share, paste in everyone's emails, and pick Editor for collaborators or Viewer for "keep me in the loop" friends.
  3. Brainstorm activities together. Everyone drops in their must-do activities and restaurants — no need to organise yet, just get ideas on the page.
  4. Vote with reactions. Use thumbs-up and heart reactions on each activity to surface what the group actually agrees on.
  5. Sort into days. Drag the agreed activities into specific days. The map view helps you group nearby places together.
  6. Lock in bookings. Add hotels and transport with confirmation numbers attached, so the whole group can find them on the day.
  7. Travel. Open the itinerary on your phone — works offline once loaded — and tick things off as you go.

Want to start from a complete suggested plan instead of a blank page? Try the AI travel planner first, then invite the group to refine it together.

Frequently Asked Questions About Group Trip Planning

Can multiple people edit the same trip at the same time?

Yes — SmartTrippy supports real-time collaboration. Multiple people can edit the same itinerary simultaneously and all changes appear instantly for every collaborator, similar to Google Docs.

Is collaborative trip planning free on SmartTrippy?

Yes — inviting friends, real-time editing, comments and shared viewing are all free with no cap on the number of collaborators per trip.

Do my friends need a SmartTrippy account to view the trip?

Viewing a shared trip requires no account at all if you send a public view-only link. To edit a trip or leave comments your friends will need to create a free account, which takes seconds.

What permission levels can I set for each collaborator?

Three levels: Owner can do anything including delete the trip; Editor can add, edit and remove anything but cannot delete the trip or change other people's permissions; Viewer can read the itinerary and leave comments but cannot edit anything.

How do you prevent two people from overwriting each other's edits?

SmartTrippy uses operational transformation under the hood, the same approach Google Docs uses. Edits from different collaborators are merged automatically and the timeline always converges to the same result for everyone, no matter the order things were typed.

Can I see what each person changed?

Yes — every itinerary has a complete revision history showing who added, edited or removed each item, with one-click rollback to any previous state.

What about cost-splitting for the group?

Each activity, hotel and transport item can have a cost attached, and the trip totals are split per person automatically. You can mark items as 'group cost' or 'paid by Alice' and SmartTrippy keeps a running settlement summary so nobody has to do mental maths at the end of the trip.

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