Polarsteps keeps the route. Who keeps the food?

Credit first

What Polarsteps does well.

It’s on iPhone and Android. For the shape of a whole trip, it’s hard to beat.

• Plan — an itinerary planner, trip details and transport for every leg.
• Record the route automatically on a world map; its site says it keeps going even when you’re off the grid.
• Capture — photos, videos and stories on each step, and Travel Buddies to share a trip.
• Share — trip updates for friends and family, with each trip visible to everyone, followers only, or just you.
• Relive — travel stats, a Trip Reel video, and a printed Travel Book.

What’s missing

The food layer of a trip.

Polarsteps’ unit is a step — a stop on the route. On a food trip through Osaka, one step can hold eleven things you ate: takoyaki from a stall, kushikatsu, a convenience-store egg sandwich at 2 a.m. They blur into one gallery.

PlateDiary’s unit is the dish. One photo of the table and each plate is cut out into its own save; saves group into moments by place and time; and the whole trip lands on your map, place by place. Later, you can search “takoyaki” and find every one — and see that you had it three times.

Kept as it was

Local prices, kept as they were.

Add an optional price to any dish or a bill to the night, and PlateDiary keeps it in the currency you typed. It never converts. A trip that crossed borders shows mixed totals side by side, the way the receipts looked. You can scan a receipt on your phone to fill in prices, and the receipt photo is deleted right after it’s read.

No signal, no problem

Offline abroad.

Capture, cut-outs, naming and browsing all work in airplane mode, so a mountain-town noodle shop or a market with no signal is fine. There’s no account to sign into on hotel Wi-Fi. If you forgot to snap something, import it from your camera roll when you’re home — it lands at the place the photo was taken.

Better together

Using both on one food trip.

1. Plan in PolarstepsMap out the stops and let it record your route.
2. Snap every table in PlateDiaryOne photo per meal — street stalls, cafés, the tasting menu.
3. Add the companionsTag who shared each meal; each person gets a page of every meal together.
4. Relive bothOrder the Travel Book from Polarsteps; flip through the trip’s food on PlateDiary’s map, or wait for that month’s story.
5. Share a highlightExport a night as a picture and add it to your Polarsteps step.

Before you fly

A food trip checklist for your phone.

• Pin your must-eat list in a map app, offline maps downloaded.
• Set your home currency in PlateDiary, and type local prices as you go.
• Start Polarsteps before you leave the airport.
• Agree on who snaps the table — one photo per meal is plenty.
• Leave room in your camera roll; PlateDiary’s camera doesn’t add to it unless you switch on “Keep original”.

At a glance

Polarsteps and PlateDiary.

We make PlateDiary, so weigh that in. Polarsteps facts come from polarsteps.com and its Google Play page, checked 19 October 2026.

Sources

Where the facts come from