Pilgrim vs Pixel Pilgrim
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Pilgrim
This app is a walking companion that tracks your journey, allows voice note recording, and offers guided meditation. It focuses on mindful movement and reflection without competitive features.
- GPS tracking with pace and altitude
- Voice note recording with on-device transcription
- Six styles of writing prompts
- Dedicated meditation mode with breathing circle
- Anonymous collective distance tracking
- Digital Goshuin seal collection
- On-device data processing and privacy
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Every walk holds something waiting to be noticed. A walking companion for those who walk with intention, whether across a continent or around the block. No leaderboards. No calorie goals. No social feeds. Just you, the path, and whatever arises. WALK GPS tracking with live pace, steps, altitude, and waypoint marking. A three-way breakdown shows how each walk splits between walking, talking, and meditating, because those are different states of attention. Lock the screen and keep going; a Live Activity holds it there. SEEK For days you want to be led. Choose a duration, set an intention, and Pilgrim hides clearings in fog on your map: places you didn't choose, shaped by your question and the hour you set out. A quiet pulse guides you: a sonar ping in your pocket, a crescent of light on the map. Reach the fog and be still, and the way continues. Found places return in your summary glowing with the light of the hour you reached them. HONOR Follow a path someone else laid down: a walk a friend shared, one of your own walked again, or a stage of the Camino, the Kumano Kodō, or Shikoku's eighty-eight temples. Their voices arrive where they were spoken, and you can answer in the same place. Save the maps before you go and the way holds with no signal at all. LEAVE A WHISPER Leave an ephemeral audio message at your location for others to find. Choose from seven energies (presence, lightness, wonder, gratitude, compassion, courage, stillness) and set how long it lingers: a day, a week, a month. Walk near someone else's and it plays softly, a voice from a stranger who passed this way. PLACE A STONE Start or grow a cairn as you walk. Cairns are permanent, evolving through seven tiers as pilgrims add stones, from a faint mark to an eternal cairn of 108. Each tier carries its own kanji and meaning. Walk to one to see who has been here before you. RECORD Tap to capture a voice note at any moment, timestamped and pinned to your location. After the walk, everything is transcribed on your device using WhisperKit. No audio ever leaves your phone. GATHER YOUR RELICS Photos from a walk appear in a carousel on your summary, gathered from Apple Photos by time and GPS. Pin one and it becomes a circular thumbnail anchored to exactly where you stood: on your map, your walk page, and inside .pilgrim exports. Nothing is copied or uploaded, only referenced. Opt-in, default off. REFLECT Six styles of writing prompts (contemplative, reflective, creative, gratitude, philosophical, journaling), generated on-device from your own words, walk context, and pinned photos. Copy them into your writing tool of choice and turn a walk into writing. MEDITATE A meditation mode with an animated breathing circle and customizable rhythms. Downloadable voice guide packs offer spoken prompts during stillness. Ambient soundscapes accompany the practice. Meditation time is tracked separately, alongside walk time. PILGRIM COLLECTS GOSHUIN In Japan, pilgrims collect vermilion ink stamps at temples along a route. Pilgrim generates a digital seal for each walk from its own data: distance, duration, weather, elevation. Milestones press their own seals for a first walk and a first unknown. Your collection grows with your practice. YOUR WALK IS YOURS ALONE Everything stays on your device, transcription included. No accounts, no analytics, no behavioral profiling. Delete the app and your data goes with it, unless you exported it first. An anonymous counter, with no accounts or identifiers, tracks how far pilgrims have walked together and crosses milestones as it goes: the Camino, the Shikoku 88, the length of Japan. Weather awareness via WeatherKit. Moon phases and planetary hours woven into the walk context. Seasonal color shifts calibrated to your hemisphere. Export as .pilgrim packages. Share walks as ephemeral web pages or hand-painted etegami postcards. View your journey at view.pilgrimapp.org. Open source. Free forever. No subscriptions. pilgrimapp.org
Pixel Pilgrim
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Walk the Camino de Santiago. From wherever you are. Every real step you take moves your pixel pilgrim along the legendary Camino Francés, 765 km and 33 stages from St-Jean-Pied-de-Port across the Pyrenees, the endless Meseta and green Galicia to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. * Your steps, your journey: connects to Apple Health / Health Connect. No treadmill screens, no ads, no account: just your daily walks, turned into a pilgrimage. * 33 pixel panoramas: every stage is a 16-bit painting that unlocks as you arrive, with a day/night cycle that follows your clock. * A real guidebook: elevation profiles, albergues, and some history of every stage, told one arrival ceremony at a time. * Collect it all: 33 credencial stamps, badges, levels, streaks, landmark moments like Cruz de Ferro and the 100 km stone. * Your pilgrim: customize skin, hair and tunic; share pixel postcards from the road; earn your Compostela certificate in Santiago. * On your home screen; a widget (and iOS lock-screen widget) keeps your pilgrim's progress in sight: next town, steps today. The first 4 stages are free. One single purchase unlocks the full road to Santiago. No subscription, no ads. Buen Camino!
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Pilgrim at none against Pixel Pilgrim's 1. Pixel Pilgrim's advantage is device support (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 18.0). On price, update cadence and ads there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Pixel Pilgrim sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Pilgrim asks for nothing beyond the download.
Pilgrim ships an update every 11 days, Pixel Pilgrim every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 18, 2026 and October 17, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Pilgrim | Pixel Pilgrim |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (6 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 6 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 11 days — better | Every 2 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 80 MB | 143 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | walk · talk · meditate | Maurits van Hassel |
In-app purchases
Pilgrim
No in-app purchases
Pixel Pilgrim
- The Full Camino$8.99
Questions
Is Pilgrim free?
Is Pixel Pilgrim free?
Do Pilgrim or Pixel Pilgrim have ads?
Which is updated more often, Pilgrim or Pixel Pilgrim?
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