Travel has always been a huge part of my life. Whether I’m planning a weekend getaway for a hike or a longer multi-country backpacking trip, I’ve relied on travel apps to help keep things organized. But after years of using some of the best travel apps like Wanderlog, TripIt, making notes in Google Keep or Notion, or even maintaining a pen and paper journal, I realized they all came with frustrating trade-offs. Too many ads, pushy upgrade prompts, opaque subscription models, lack of features, and most worryingly, an always-on stream of data collection and tracking. For something as personal as travel, that’s something I really don’t want.

So earlier this year, I started looking for alternatives. I wanted something lightweight, customizable, and private. If it was self-hostable and open source, even better. Turns out, there really is an open-source project for every need. That search led me to AdventureLog, a self-hosted, open source travel tracker and itinerary manager that’s as functional as it is privacy-respecting. I installed it on my Synology NAS with Docker, and it has completely changed how I travel and plan trips. Here’s how.

The first time I really put AdventureLog through its paces was on a weeklong trip to Prague. It’s a city I’ve always wanted to revisit, not just pass through. So, with one of my favorite bands performing in the city, it made sense to plan a vacation around it. I wasn’t interested in joining pre-planned walking tours or sticking to an optimized route of “top 10 things to see.” I wanted to keep a free-flowing itinerary with some sights I wanted to see, open-ended enough to go with the flow, while keeping track of the smaller discoveries for a future trip.

Before leaving, I created a new trip in AdventureLog. I added a rough outline of the week, including basics like arrival times, my Airbnb location, and a few scattered bookmarks of places I’d read about. A tucked-away cafe near Letna Park, a record store in Vinohrady, and a speakeasy bar in the Old Town that only locals seemed to talk about online. What was different this time wasn’t just how I planned the trip, but how the tool I was using actually stayed out of the way. There was no clutter, no offers, no pop-ups, no ad-driven suggestions for other things I might want to do. Just a timeline and a clean map interface.

All that might sound like a standard travel planning app, but AdventureLog gets a bit more interesting. It also functions as a travel diary. Each day, I logged entries as they happened. Cinnamon buns for breakfast, a random, unplanned visit to the Klementinum library that felt like stepping into a movie set. Or a long walk by the river. The act of logging things in the moment felt like capturing the flavor of the day, the kind of thing that would usually go in my diary and that I’d never preserve in Notion or a basic checklist. By turning the travel app into a travel journal, AdventureLog has become a tool I use a couple of times a week, versus only when I’m planning a trip.

When used to its full potential, AdventureLog can create a personal archive of your trip, complete with notes, places, and impressions. Something few other travel apps can achieve.

AdventureLog is deceptively simple, but the more I used it, the more I appreciated the depth it offers under the hood. Built with modern tools, it runs fast and reliably even on minimal hardware. The interface is responsive enough to feel like a native app, whether I’m on a laptop or checking it from my phone during a layover.

Each trip becomes its own timeline. You can add a name and cover image, then start building out daily logs. The text fields support Markdown, which I found surprisingly useful for structuring my notes. I’m used to Markdown from my notes apps, so it just made text formatting that much quicker. I use it for everything from quick restaurant recs to more reflective journal-style writing. Tags let you group entries across trips, and the integrated OpenStreetMap view ties everything together visually. The nice part about it all is that it’s all optional. You can categorize as much or as little as you want. You don’t need to know how to use a complex database or fiddle with formatting — it just works.

One of the things I’ve come to love is how easy it is to glance back and get a bird’s-eye view of my travel history. With other apps, things get siloed with a one trip per doc style, or half-written entries scattered across different platforms. With AdventureLog, everything is in one place. I can scroll through months of travel, click into a trip, and instantly drop back into that headspace. It feels more like a living archive than a planner, especially when coupled with the built-in calendar that gives me a bird’s eye view of upcoming trips.

And because it runs entirely on my own server, nothing leaves that space unless I export it myself. There’s no data collection, no cloud sync to opt out of, and no analytics running quietly in the background. If you’re interested in self-hosting, you probably value that just as much as me. By default, I can only access it on my home network. However, I’ve configured a remote proxy as well for on-the-go access.

If the idea of self-hosting sounds intimidating, it’s not. The installation process for AdventureLog is one of the smoothest I’ve encountered. I used Docker on my Synology NAS, but it runs just as well on a Raspberry Pi, home server, or cloud instance. The documentation is detailed and clear, with effectively a single Docker command that pulls the image, sets up your data and media folders, and gets the app running on your local network.

On my setup, I mounted everything to Volume 2, which is where my Docker install lives, and exposed the right ports for the container. Once I opened it in my browser, AdventureLog walked me through creating my account and setting up the first trip. No dependencies to figure out, and no need to register for any third-party APIs. The app is fully self-contained.

There’s no official mobile app, but the responsive design makes it feel at home on any screen size. If you prefer, you can add it to your homescreen as a shortcut. That’s what I’ve done. I use Tailscale to access my NAS while traveling, but you can just as easily expose it via a reverse proxy, like the one built into Synology NAS drives.

Reclaiming the joy of travel planning

Most travel apps are built around a business model, not your travel needs. Even the most polished ones are ultimately there to sell you something. It could be flights, hotels, local tours, a premium tier, or in many cases, your own data. If you just want a tool to plan and document your trips, these apps can often feel cluttered and overdesigned. Those are the last things you want to deal with when on the road. AdventureLog is the opposite. It doesn’t try to sell anything. There are no ads, no feature limits, and no pop-ups asking you to upgrade. It gives you a clean, functional space to plan trips, take notes, and revisit past travels. That simplicity is what makes it more useful than most commercial alternatives for me.