Best Travel Planning Apps & AI Trip Planners in India 2026

Category: Comparison

Last updated: October 2026

AI Trip Planner or Travel Planning App: Which Do You Need?

These used to be two different kinds of product. A travel planning app was a container: you did the research, then dropped places into days, a map and a budget. An AI trip planner does the research step for you: you describe the trip, with dates, budget and what you like, and it drafts the itinerary for you to edit.

In 2026 the line is blurring. Wanderlog has added an AI assistant, MakeMyTrip has Myra, and Gemini and ChatGPT will draft a plan from a single message. So this list covers both kinds, and the table shows which ones actually generate an itinerary and which ones expect you to bring your own. If you have never planned with AI before, our guide on how to plan a trip with AI covers what to type and what to double check.

Every app on this list will hold an itinerary. That is not the hard part.

The hard part, if your trip starts in India, is that most of these were built for someone flying out of Chicago. They price in dollars. They have no idea what an Indian passport can and cannot do. And their destination data thins out fast once you go east of Dubai or off the main tourist spine.

So this comparison is deliberately narrow. Not "which app is best," but which ones survive contact with a trip that starts here.

How We Compared Them, and What We Didn't Do

This is a feature comparison, not a lab test. We checked each app against the five things that actually decide whether it is useful from India: whether it prices in rupees without you doing the conversion, whether it knows the visa position for an Indian passport, whether it can produce a day-by-day plan without you researching every single stop, whether two people can edit the same trip at once, and whether you can book anything from inside it.

Free tiers only, because that is what most people will actually use. We did not test customer support, and we did not buy anyone's Pro plan.

And the disclosure that should come before the ranking, not after it: we make TripVexa. We have put it first, and you should weigh that accordingly. What we have tried to do instead of performing neutrality is be specific about what it does badly, so you can judge whether those gaps matter for your trip.

These products ship changes monthly. Treat everything below as a snapshot dated October 2026, not a permanent verdict.

Read the first and last columns together: AI itineraries are now common, but the ones that plan in rupees with Indian passport rules are few, and nothing on this list both plans the trip and books your flights. That is the whole market right now.

1. TripVexa: Best If Your Trip Starts in India

The thing TripVexa does that the others don't is take a full constraint as a single sentence. You type "visa-free beaches under ₹50,000" or "6 days in Vietnam from Delhi under ₹70,000 for two people," and it comes back with destinations, a day-by-day plan, costs already in rupees, and the visa position for an Indian passport, rather than a list of links for you to go and research.

Costs are native INR, not a dollar figure with a conversion stapled on. Hotels are bookable inside the app with instant confirmation and cancellation handling. Trips are collaborative with live sync and view-versus-edit permissions. There is a budget tracker with category breakdowns and a PDF export for offline use. All of that is free, and the complete TripVexa guide walks through each feature.

Where it falls short: there is no native mobile app, only a PWA, which is fine day to day but will bother you if you want something in the App Store. Destination depth is uneven, deep on the popular India-origin routes and thinner once you go genuinely offbeat. And flights are not bookable in-app, so you will still be buying those elsewhere.

Best for: Indian travelers who want the plan, the budget, and the hotel in one place.

2. Wanderlog: The Best Planner That Wasn't Built for You

Wanderlog is the most mature product here and it is not close. Drag-and-drop itinerary building, a genuinely good map view, real collaboration, and proper iOS and Android apps. If you are planning a US road trip, this is probably the right answer.

For an India-origin trip it fights you a little. As of October 2026 there is no rupee-first pricing and nothing about Indian passport visa requirements. Wanderlog does have an AI assistant that suggests places and fills in days, but it sits behind Wanderlog Pro, and the free tier only gives you a handful of AI messages to try it. On the free plan it is a very good container for a plan you have already made, rather than something that makes the plan.

The other thing to know before you commit: the free tier is real but limited, and several of the features people rate Wanderlog for, the AI assistant and route optimisation among them, sit behind Wanderlog Pro. Check which side of that line your must-haves fall on.

Best for: Travelers who enjoy doing their own research and want the most polished place to put it. For a feature by feature breakdown, see Wanderlog vs TripVexa for Indian travelers.

3. Google Travel: Best for Simple Trips

Google Travel is not really a planner and does not pretend to be. It reads your Gmail, finds the flight and hotel confirmations you have already got, and lays them out on a timeline. For that one job it is quietly excellent, it costs nothing, and it requires no effort from you at all.

What it will not do is help you decide anything. There is no budget tracking, no shared editing, nothing about visas, and no way to build a plan for a trip you have not booked yet. It is the filing cabinet, not the drawing board.

Best for: Anyone who books through Gmail-connected services and wants their confirmations to organise themselves.

4. MakeMyTrip: Where You Actually Pay

MakeMyTrip is India's largest OTA and this list would be dishonest without it, because at some point you have to buy the flights and this is where most Indians do it. Deep inventory, UPI and Indian cards, and a holiday packages section with pre-built itineraries and prices that genuinely suits people who would rather not plan at all.

MakeMyTrip has also added Myra, a conversational AI trip planning assistant that works in English and Hindi, takes voice as well as text, and can suggest an itinerary for you. It is still in beta, and its job is to move you toward a booking on MakeMyTrip, which is fine as long as you know that is where the conversation is heading.

What it is not is a planner you keep working in. If you want to edit a custom day-by-day itinerary over a few weeks, split a budget by category, or plan with three friends at once, those tools are not really there.

Best for: Buying the trip, and for package travelers who want someone else to have made the decisions.

5. TripIt: Best for Frequent Business Travelers

TripIt automatically creates trip timelines by scanning your email for booking confirmations. Forward your confirmation emails and TripIt organizes them into a neat itinerary with times, addresses, and maps.

The Pro version adds real-time flight alerts, seat tracking, and alternate flight suggestions. It is heavily focused on the logistics of travel rather than the discovery and planning phase.

Best for: Frequent flyers and business travelers who need to organize many bookings.

Limitations: No planning or discovery features, no budget tracking, no AI, Pro subscription required for best features.

6. Savaari / Ixigo Trip Planner

Ixigo offers a basic trip planner alongside its booking engine. You can create itineraries and get AI-powered suggestions for destinations. Savaari focuses more on cab bookings and road trip planning within India.

Both are useful for domestic Indian travel but limited for international trip planning. The itinerary features are basic compared to dedicated planning apps.

Best for: Domestic India trips, especially road trips (Savaari) and budget flight searches (Ixigo).

Limitations: Limited international destination coverage, basic itinerary features.

7. Notion / Google Sheets: Best for DIY Planners

Many travelers still use Notion templates or Google Sheets for trip planning. The flexibility is unmatched. You can build any structure you want. But you are starting from scratch every time, with no maps, no budget visualization, no AI assistance, and no automatic visa or cost information.

Collaboration works through standard document sharing. Budget tracking requires manual formulas. There is no integration with booking services.

Best for: People who love customizing their own systems and do not mind manual work.

Limitations: No maps, no AI, no visa info, no booking integration, significant setup time for each trip.

8. Lambus: Good All-Rounder

Lambus is a European trip planner with collaborative features, maps, and a clean interface. It handles multi-stop trips well and has both iOS and Android apps.

For Indian travelers, the same issues as Wanderlog apply: no INR focus, no Indian visa information, and the destination suggestions lean heavily European and American.

Best for: Travelers planning European road trips or multi-city tours.

Limitations: No India-specific features, limited Asia/India destination data.

9. Holidify: Best for India Destination Discovery

Holidify is an Indian platform focused on destination discovery within India. It has good content on Indian destinations with reviews, best time to visit, and things to do. However, it is more of a content site than a planning tool: no itinerary builder, no budget tracker, no collaboration.

Best for: Discovering domestic Indian destinations and reading travel content.

Limitations: Content-only, no planning tools, limited international coverage.

10. ChatGPT, Gemini and Other AI Chatbots: Best for Quick Research

Many travelers now start with ChatGPT or Gemini, and for a first draft they are genuinely good. Ask for "5 days in Bali for a couple" and you get a readable day-by-day plan in seconds. Gemini can also pull in places, prices and reviews from Google Maps, Flights and Hotels, which makes its suggestions more grounded than a chatbot working from memory.

Where they fall short is everything after the draft. The plan lives in a chat, not in an itinerary you can rearrange, share for editing, or track a budget against. Visa rules for an Indian passport and rupee costs are only as reliable as the answer you happened to get, so check them against an official source before you book. And you still copy the result into another tool to actually travel with it.

Best for: Quick research, brainstorming and a rough first draft before using a dedicated planner.

Limitations: Plans live in a chat, no shared editing, no budget tracking, visa and cost details need checking.

Stop Looking for the One App

Here is the thing nobody selling you an app will say: there isn't one. Planning and booking are different jobs, and no product on this list does both well yet. Every experienced traveler you know is quietly running two.

The pairing that works for most people planning from India is one app to decide and hold the trip, and an OTA to buy the flights. Which planner you pick depends on one question: do you want to do the research yourself?

• You want the plan made for you: TripVexa, then MakeMyTrip or Skyscanner for flights
• You enjoy the research: Wanderlog, then whichever OTA is cheapest that week
• You have already booked and just want it tidy: Google Travel, free, zero effort
• You fly constantly for work: TripIt Pro, for the flight alerts alone
• You want a package and no decisions: MakeMyTrip, and skip planners entirely

The real 2026 shift is not that AI writes itineraries. It is that the research half of trip planning, the twenty open tabs comparing whether Da Nang or Nha Trang suits your dates, has stopped being something you have to do yourself. Whether that appeals depends on whether you enjoyed the tabs. Some people genuinely do.

🧭 Try it with a real constraint: "6 days in Vietnam from Delhi under ₹70,000 for two" →

Ready-Made Itineraries

Full day-by-day plans with timings, places and a costed budget:

• 3-day Bangkok itinerary: ₹23,250-46,450 per person
• 3-day Bali itinerary: ₹34,500-63,700 per person

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best travel planning app for Indian travelers? It depends which half of the job you need. For building the plan, TripVexa and Wanderlog are the two strongest options, with TripVexa handling rupee budgets, Indian passport visa rules and AI-generated itineraries, and Wanderlog offering a more mature manual planner with native mobile apps. For booking, MakeMyTrip has the deepest Indian inventory. For keeping confirmations in order, Google Travel and TripIt both do it free.

What is the best AI trip planner in India? TripVexa is built specifically for India-origin trips: you type a plain query like "6 days in Vietnam from Delhi under ₹70,000" and get a day-by-day plan with INR costs, visa notes for an Indian passport, and bookable hotels. MakeMyTrip's Myra assistant and Wanderlog's AI assistant (a Pro feature) also draft itineraries, inside a booking site and a manual planner respectively. General chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini produce readable drafts, but you still check the visa and cost details yourself and move the plan into another tool to use it.

What is the difference between an AI trip planner and a travel planning app? A travel planning app is a place to organise a trip: you research the places, then add them to a day-by-day plan, a map and a budget. An AI trip planner does the research step for you: you describe the trip, with dates, budget and interests, and it drafts the itinerary that you then edit. The better tools now do both, so the useful question is whether you want the first draft made for you or prefer to build it yourself.

Is there a genuinely free trip planner app for Indian travelers? Yes. TripVexa's planning features are free, including AI itineraries, collaboration, budget tracking and PDF export. Google Travel and TripIt's basic tier are free too. Wanderlog is free to start but puts its AI assistant and several other features behind Wanderlog Pro, so check which side of that line your must-haves fall on before you commit a whole trip to it.

Which app is best for planning a trip with friends? TripVexa and Wanderlog are the two that handle real group planning, with shared editing and changes syncing live rather than someone re-sharing a document. TripVexa adds per-person permissions, so you can let people view without letting them rearrange your days. Spreadsheets technically work, but nobody opens a spreadsheet on their phone at an airport. Our group trip planning guide covers how to run the planning itself.

Do I still need MakeMyTrip or Booking.com if I use a planner? Usually yes, for flights. Planning apps are getting better at hotels, and TripVexa books them directly in INR, but flight inventory and Indian payment methods still sit with the big OTAs. The realistic setup is one app to decide and organise the trip, and an OTA to buy the flights.

Destination guides in this post

• Vietnam
• Bangkok

Plan your trip on TripVexa - India's AI-powered travel planner with hotel booking and INR budgets.