Comparison

Campound vs Byway

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Campound

Features
Read full description

Find a spot on your public lands. Campound maps national parks, national forests, BLM land, and wilderness — along with the trails, forest roads, and OHV routes that run through them — and helps you find a place to camp. Built to keep working offline, because the best camping is exactly where the cell bars disappear. Plan it on Wi-Fi. Live it off-grid. FIND A SPOT Search reservable campgrounds by date range and see live Recreation.gov availability — the nights actually open, not just a directory. Tap any site for info, ratings, reviews, and an availability calendar. KNOW WHOSE LAND YOU'RE ON Color-coded PAD-US ownership shows national parks, forests, BLM, wilderness, monuments, and state, local, tribal and private land at a glance, with a toggleable legend. Essential for dispersed camping. PLAN A TRIP Build a trip from any mix of campgrounds, trails, forest roads, OHV and BLM routes, and your own points and lines. Drop in a driving route and Campound finds the campgrounds along the corridor with availability — or skip pavement entirely and stitch an off-piste itinerary that never touches a developed site. TRAILS & ROUTES Tap National Forest trails, Forest Service roads, OHV and BLM routes, search them in the current view, and open any route for an elevation profile with gain, loss and distance. NAVIGATE THERE Turn-by-turn navigation to any campground, trailhead, or marked point — voice prompts, ETA, live drift-recalc. The hybrid router drives the paved portion via Mapbox, then takes over with its own A* across Forest Service, BLM, and OHV roads that mainstream nav apps don't cover. The off-road portion runs on the bundled tiles, so you keep going when the signal doesn't. On a trail destination, it switches to follow-the-polyline mode with off-trail and approaching-end cues. MAP IT YOUR WAY Four basemaps — Street, Topo, Satellite, and an offline coordinate Grid. Locate yourself with one tap, jump to any place by search or coordinates, and save campgrounds, rec areas, routes, and your own points to Favorites with optional 1–5 star ratings. MARK YOUR OWN Draw points, lines and polygons styled by a customizable dictionary of pin types, capture GPS as you move, and pin geotagged photos that cluster on the map and open in a carousel. Saves on-device; syncs when online. Export points, lines and full-res photos as a single .campound archive and share via Mail, AirDrop or Files. Import any .campound (Skip or Update on duplicates, IDs preserved). The underlying GeoJSON opens in QGIS, Google Earth, or any GIS tool. Your data is yours. iPHONE, iPAD & APPLE WATCH Universal app — one download, three devices. iPad gets side-by-side detail panels for planning a route on the couch. Apple Watch captures waypoints and tracks hands-free and mirrors the phone's live turn-by-turn with haptics 400 m before each turn, on completion, and at arrival. A guaranteed-delivery outbox means nothing your watch records is ever lost. WORKS OFFLINE Maps for all 50 states ship inside the app — no download step. The map, saved spots, trail search, and the off-road portion of navigation all keep working with no connection. The basemap falls back to a coordinate grid when signal drops and restores when you're back. (Live availability, place search, and paved-road routing need a signal — Campound tells you clearly when they do.) FREE. NO ACCOUNT. No subscription. No ads. No account to create. No tracking. Just open it and go. DATA YOU CAN TRUST Built on authoritative public datasets: Recreation.gov / RIDB for campgrounds, availability, and reviews; USGS PAD-US for protected-area boundaries; USFS and BLM for trails, roads, and routes; basemaps from OpenFreeMap, OpenTopoMap, and Esri; elevation from Open-Elevation; on-road directions from Mapbox. Campound is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by NPS, USFS, BLM, or Recreation.gov. Always confirm current regulations and conditions with the managing agency before you travel.

About

Byway

Discover scenic routes and hidden gems for your road trips. Plan journeys based on duration and interests, with AI-powered customization and turn-by-turn navigation. Earn digital stamps for completed drives and explore community-created routes.

Highlights
  • AI-powered scenic route planning
  • Customizable drive preferences
  • Turn-by-turn navigation
  • Verified atlas of scenic America
  • Digital traveler passport with stamps
  • Community-published routes
  • Offline map support
Features
Read full description

Your maps app gets you there. Byway makes the journey worth it. Byway is the discovery engine for the real world — scenic driving first. Tell it where you're going and how long you have, and it plans a scenic route along real roads through real places: overlooks, small towns, parks, and the stops you'd otherwise drive straight past. Every stop is a verified place, never an invented one. Zero hallucinations. Byway is in private beta. Download the app to join — approvals go out by email as seats open. Already invited? Sign in and start driving. PLAN THE DRIVE, NOT JUST THE DESTINATION Pick a direction and a duration, and the engine builds the route and its stops. Going somewhere specific? Byway threads the scenic way there. Nowhere in mind? Ask for a loop and come home changed. Multi-day trips arrange themselves day by day. BYWAY AI Shape any trip in plain language — more coast, fewer crowds, lunch halfway, make day two easier. The same engine that plans the route answers you, so every change stays on real roads with verified stops. TURN-BY-TURN, BUILT FOR THE SCENIC ROUTE Byway's own navigation guides the whole drive: spoken turn-by-turn, rerouting that returns you to your route instead of the fastest way that skips the point of the trip, and a heads-up when a scenic overlook is coming up on your side of the road. Stops are narrated as you approach — the story of the place, not a list of facts. BYWAY ATLAS Underneath it all is a verified atlas of scenic America: official byways, overlooks, national parks and public land, with a growing corpus of verified places. Your personal Atlas fills in as you drive — every road you've actually driven, drawn on your own map. BYWAY PASSPORT A traveler record you cannot fake: stamps are issued by completed drives, never self-awarded. Finish the drive, earn the stamp. Scan a Byway sticker at partner stops to check in along the way. BYWAY MARKETPLACE Community byways published by travelers and locals who know their roads. Browse by region, length and price — verified locals are marked. When someone publishes a drive worth taking, it lands here. BYWAY COMPASS Your taste, measured. Tell Byway what kind of drives you love — coast, mountains, hidden gems, history — and Compass tunes every route toward it. The more you drive, the sharper it gets at telling a detour from a discovery. BUILT TO BE TRUSTED Byway uses your location only while you use the app, to find drives near you and keep the map centered. There is no tracking and no ad identifier. Saved drives keep working offline. Byway is built on Byway Atlas — official scenic byways and public road data with a growing corpus of verified places across the United States and beyond — and on Byway Engine, the same planner that powers Byway AI at www.byway.world. The road worth taking is already out there. Byway finds it.

Screenshots

Campound4 screens
Byway4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Byway at every 2 days against Campound's every 10 days. Byway also leads on iOS requirement (16.4 vs 18.6). Campound's advantage is device support (3 vs 1). On price, ads and in-app purchases 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Campound ships an update every 10 days, Byway every 2 days. Both last shipped on October 31, 2026.

Scorecard3 real differences · 6 level
Campound versus Byway: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterCampoundByway
PriceFreeFree
Rating—5.0 (3 ratings) — better
Number of ratings—3 — better
Update frequencyEvery 10 daysEvery 2 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
Monetization—Free
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — betteriPhone
Requires iOS18.616.4 — better
Further details — not scored
Size28 MB113 MB
Age rating4+12+
DeveloperMichael WhiteByway Technologies, LLC

In-app purchases

None

Campound

No in-app purchases

None

Byway

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Campound free?
Campound is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Byway free?
Byway is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Campound or Byway have ads?
Neither Campound nor Byway shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Campound or Byway?
Campound ships an update every 10 days, and Byway every 2 days. Most recently, Campound was updated on October 31, 2026 and Byway on October 31, 2026.

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