Kamptribe compared with Roadtrippers, RV Trip Wizard and Google My Maps: which planner fits your RV trip?

Honesty first: what you use each tool for

There are good planners for a road trip through North America, and most were made by people who spend a lot of time on the road themselves. Roadtrippers, RV Trip Wizard from RV LIFE and Google My Maps come up in every search, and rightly so. This guide puts them alongside Kamptribe, with the strengths of each named sincerely — a comparison that only lists its own advantages isn't a comparison.

We describe the tools as they looked at the time of writing, September 2026, as far as we could verify; features and subscriptions change, so check the current state on their own sites. None of these tools is bad. The question is which one fits a family, couple or group of friends from the Netherlands or Belgium renting an RV and wanting to plan the trip together, budget included.

In short: Roadtrippers is strong at discovery on the road, RV Trip Wizard at RV practicalities for those who drive one a lot, and Google My Maps at free-form, free maps. Kamptribe is built around one specific situation: a rented RV, a limited number of weeks, several people with a say, and a budget that has to add up in euros. That situation calls for different priorities from those of an American RV owner, and that explains the differences below better than a list of features.

What Roadtrippers does well

Roadtrippers is perhaps North America's best-known road trip planner, and its strength lies in discovery. Along your route it shows a huge collection of sights, from national parks to the quirky roadside attractions America is famous for, with photos and descriptions that invite a detour. For those who see the trip mainly as a string of places, that's inspiring. The range of campgrounds and overnight spots along the route is broad too, including places beyond the usual campgrounds.

The app works on phone and web, lets you share a route with several travel companions and, in the paid version, offers extras such as offline maps and routing that takes your RV's dimensions into account. The link with campground databases and the large community give it a breadth a newcomer can't simply match. For those who mainly want to know what there is to see between two stops, that's the key question, and Roadtrippers answers it better than anyone.

What it's less geared towards — and that's a choice, not a shortcoming — is the European traveller: the tool is in English, works in dollars and miles, and the budget part isn't the heart of the product. For a family wanting to know what the trip costs in euros and who pays what, that arithmetic stays outside the app.

What RV Trip Wizard and RV LIFE do well

RV Trip Wizard is part of RV LIFE, a set of tools made for people who live in an RV a lot or full-time. You can tell from the RV practicalities: you enter your RV's dimensions and weight, and the planner and the accompanying navigation app take low bridges, propane restrictions and roads unsuitable for large vehicles into account. That is a serious safety advantage a regular navigation app doesn't offer.

RV LIFE also has an extensive campground database with reviews from fellow RVers, and RV Trip Wizard estimates fuel and campground costs based on your route. For American and Canadian users who own their RV and drive thousands of miles a year, that is a strong and coherent package. The fact that the reviews come from real campground guests gives you, when choosing between two campgrounds outside the national parks, a footing that official descriptions don't offer.

The focus, logically, is on the RV owner in North America: a subscription, in English, dollars and miles, and a depth in RV practicalities that is sometimes more than someone driving a rental RV for two weeks needs. The collaboration aspect — several people working on one trip together — isn't what the product revolves around. For a renter it also matters that the RV's dimensions are only fixed once the booking is complete, whereas an owner enters them once.

Where Google My Maps excels

Google My Maps is free, familiar and surprisingly powerful for anyone who wants to build their own map. You drop pins for campgrounds, parks and restaurants in layers you can switch on and off, import a spreadsheet of addresses, draw routes and share the map with whoever you like, who can then work in it too. For a first brainstorm at the kitchen table there's little better.

Because it's Google, it connects seamlessly with Google Maps and with the search results you're already using, and the map persists as long as your account does. Many families start here and are right to: dropping pins costs nothing and forces you to think about distances. And because everyone already knows it, nobody has to learn a new app before the conversation about the trip can begin.

What it isn't is an RV planner. My Maps doesn't know your RV, doesn't calculate nights, kilometres or costs, and the routes are car routes — there's no awareness of height or length. So as soon as the trip gets concrete, the plan often moves to a spreadsheet alongside it, and that's where the fragmentation this guide wants to warn about begins. Everyone then has their own version, and nobody knows anymore which one is right.

Where Kamptribe is different

Kamptribe is built for one trip: the family, couple or group of friends from the Netherlands or Belgium renting an RV in the US or Canada. The first difference is the budget that runs live. Every stop has nights and a campground price, every driving day yields kilometres and therefore fuel, and the fixed items — flights, RV per night, food per adult and per child, the hotel nights at the start and end, the exchange rate — sit in the same plan. Shift a stop and the total in euros changes with it.

The second difference is planning together. You invite travel companions as viewer or editor, so one builds the route and another books the campgrounds, and everyone looks at the same plan and the same budget. For a group of friends with two RVs or a family where the children get a say, that's the difference between a plan and twenty browser tabs.

Furthermore: routing that takes your RV's dimensions into account, so length, height and weight weigh into the route; fully in Dutch and English; start free without an account in the guest planner, and save only when you want to. For those who want more, there's Trail Scout in Advanced: map-aware AI suggestions that look at what's on your map — your stops, your RV, your days — instead of giving generic advice.

When you're better off choosing something else

Honesty requires saying where Kamptribe isn't the best choice. If you mainly want to discover everything along the road, with thousands of sights and photos, Roadtrippers is richer. If you own an RV yourself and drive it through North America for months every year, RV LIFE offers a depth in navigation and campground reviews made precisely for that. If you just want to share a few pins, Google My Maps is free and ready in a minute.

Also good to know: Kamptribe is a planning layer, not a booking site. You book campgrounds through Recreation.gov, Parks Canada and the campgrounds themselves, and the RV with the rental company or your agent; Kamptribe helps you know what to book when and keeps the overview and the budget. Anyone looking for a tool that books everything in one click is looking for something else.

The tools aren't mutually exclusive, by the way. Many families brainstorm in My Maps or Roadtrippers and move the plan to Kamptribe once it gets serious and there's arithmetic and collaboration to be done. That's a perfectly good way of working. Take the pins from My Maps over as stops, add your RV and group, and within half an hour you have a plan with kilometres, nights and budget — without giving up the inspiring part of planning.

How to try it without risk

You don't have to choose anything to experience it. Open the guest planner, take a ready-made route as a starting point — for instance the California loop below — fill in your group and RV and watch how the budget moves as you add a stop or shift a night. That takes a quarter of an hour and no account. You'll see straight away how the driving days and campground nights relate to each other.

If you like it, save the plan, invite your travel companions and carry on in one place where route, budget, reservation moments and tasks come together. If you don't, you've at least got your driving distances and your first budget picture sharp in that quarter of an hour — and with any tool at all, that's the best start to an RV trip.