Why We Still Recommend Trails Offroad in 2026

After ten years of off-road and overlanding trips, we have tried just about every way there is to find good trail information. Trails Offroad still has some of the best, most trustworthy trail data of any application we use. It is the first place we look when we want detailed, field-verified information about a trail — and these days it is also a capable standalone navigation app in its own right, not just a content source. After all these years it is still the resource we recommend most often.

A bit of honesty up front, because that is how we do things here: Chris joined the Trails Offroad team as a contributing writer back in 2016 but due to scheduling conflicts had to quit contributing in 2017. He kept in touch with the team, helped curate the relationship between Gaia GPS and Trails Offroad and even worked in the TA Booth at Overland Expo. We are also a Trails Offroad affiliate. So yes, we have skin in the game. But the reason we wrote about them in 2016, and again in 2021, and now again in 2026, is simple — we genuinely use the product and it keeps getting better.

- Safe Travels

What Trails Offroad Actually Is

Trails Offroad is a catalog of professionally documented off-road and overlanding trail guides. The key word is documented. This is not a crowd-dumped pile of GPX tracks. Each guide is written by a real person who has driven the trail, and every one includes the things that actually matter when you are standing at a trailhead deciding whether to commit:

• An honest difficulty rating based on real trail conditions and hazards, not an algorithm guessing from distance and elevation.
• Waypoints with photos, so you can see that tricky off-camber section or the turn that is easy to miss before you are there.
• A GPX track you can load into your navigation app.
• Trail video, a written description, and user reviews.
• Condition notes that get updated, because trails change constantly — washouts, closures, reroutes.

That last point is the whole ballgame. Anyone can post a track once. Keeping trail data current is the hard part, and it is exactly what a network of dedicated writers across the country is built to do.

What’s New Since We Last Wrote About It

The Trails Offroad of 2026 is a lot bigger than the one we covered in 2021. A few things stand out:

• The catalog has grown. You now get access to 3,000+ full trail guides plus 2,000+ “Scout Routes” — lighter-weight routes for when you want more ground to explore beyond the fully documented guides.
• They built their own app. This is the big one. Back in 2021 we leaned on Gaia GPS to actually navigate Trails Offroad data. Today Trails Offroad has a full standalone app for iOS and Android with in-app navigation, route recording, offline maps you can download by entire state, and public land overlays so you can see boundaries and legal roads right on the map.
• Group trip planning. You can build and share lists of trails, add comments, and plan a trip with your crew instead of texting screenshots back and forth.

So whether you want to live entirely inside the Trails Offroad app or use it as a content source and navigate elsewhere, both paths now work well.

It Still Pairs Beautifully With Gaia GPS

Longtime readers know Gaia GPS is our “Gold Standard” for navigation, and Trails Offroad remains the perfect companion to it. When you find a trail you like on TrailsOffroad.com, there is an “Upload to Gaia GPS” button right on the trail page and the map view. One click — the first time you authorize the connection — and the full track plus waypoints land in your Gaia account, ready for your next adventure. It works from the website on a laptop or your phone.

For us that combination is hard to beat: Trails Offroad for what to drive and the honest details about it, Gaia GPS for how to navigate it with the deepest map catalog out there. We actually helped connect the two teams years ago to make that one-click import happen, and we are proud of that.

Is It Worth Paying For?

You can start completely free. A free account gets you around 200 curated trail guides and the basic tools, which is plenty to see whether the platform fits how you travel.

The full experience is the All-Access membership at $39.99/year — that unlocks the 3,000+ guides, the Scout Routes, advanced GPS tools, and offline maps. Yes, that is up from the $25 we quoted in 2021, but the platform you are paying for is dramatically more capable now, app and all. At a little over three dollars a month for current, photo-rich, field-verified trail data, we still think it is one of the better values in this hobby. One avoided dead-end, washout, or closed trail on a long weekend pays for the year.

Who We Recommend It To

If you like to discover and drive documented trails — especially if you are new to an area, newer to off-roading, or just do not have time to piece together sketchy data from a dozen forum threads — Trails Offroad is a genuine shortcut to a better, safer trip. If you are the type who loves to build your own routes from scratch, it is still worth having as a reference and a sanity check on conditions.

Ten years in, it is still on our short list of things we actually pay for and actually use. That is the highest compliment we give any product.

If you want to give it a look, start with that free account, and if you decide to go All-Access you can do so here.

Disclaimer: 4X Overland Adventures is a Trails Offroad affiliate — if you sign up for a membership through our links we receive a small referral credit at no extra cost to you. As always, we are not paid to write reviews, we use the products we recommend, and our opinions are our own. We will gladly tell you when we think something falls short. This one does not.