Inside the Muttmates road trip planner: what $9.99 actually buys

A kelpie in the front passenger seat of a car watching a long Australian country highway through the windscreen

Muttmates is free. The parks, the beaches, the plans, the packs, the directories: no trial, no ads, no subscription. The one paid thing in the whole app is the road trip planner, so it is fair to ask what it actually does, and whether it is worth it. This post is the honest answer: what happens when you tap "Plan the route", the checks running underneath, and exactly what the one-off $9.99 buys.

It plans along the road, not near the dots

Most trip tools find things near a town you type in. The planner works differently: you give it a start, a destination and up to six stops in between, and it works out the real driving line through all of them, in order. Then it checks what actually sits within about five kilometres of that line: off-leash parks, dog beaches, caravan parks, around 640 free camps and 2,650 highway rest areas, ordered by how close they are to the road. "On the way" means on your way, not forty minutes off the highway near a town that happened to match a search.

It knows the difference between a break and a bed

The planner offers free camps and caravan parks as overnight stops, and rest areas only ever as leg-stretch breaks. It will never tell you to spend the night at a rest area, and the caravan parks it suggests carry our dog policy badges, so you can see before you ring whether dogs are taken at all.

The two-hour rhythm, built in

Dogs travel best on a rhythm of roughly two hours driving, then a proper leg stretch, water and a sniff. The planner has a pacing control for exactly this: stop for a break every hour, every 1.5, 2, 3 or 4 hours, or set your own gap, and it spaces the suggestions to match. The map stays live the whole time. Drag a pin to fine-tune where a stop lands, or tap anywhere on the map to add one.

The check that saves you a fine

Dogs are banned in every Australian national park. Not "on a lead", banned outright, not even allowed to sit in the car with the windows up, and the fines are real. The clever part: the planner checks every stop you enter against the boundaries of more than 750 national parks, and if one lands inside, a warning appears under the route summary naming the park. That is your cue to shift the stop outside the boundary, or line up a boarding kennel or sitter for that leg. No warning means none of your stops are inside one.

Try the whole thing before you pay

Building the itinerary costs nothing and needs no account: type in the trip, tap "Plan the route", and you get the total distance, the driving time and the first three stops on the way. Your first full route is free too, one per account, so you see exactly what you would be paying for before you spend a cent.

After that, a single one-off $9.99 unlocks the whole planner. Not a subscription, not per route: pay once and every route you ever plan is yours in full, saved under Billing so you can come back to them before the next trip. Payment runs through Stripe, and we never see or store your card details.

A paid route keeps working for you

It stays editable. Open a saved route and the map is live: move a stop, add one, take one off, and save the changes at no extra charge.
Print it. One tap builds a plain turn-by-turn sheet, every stop in order with the distance and time between them. Save it as a PDF from the print dialog and the route rides along on your phone, reception or not.
Send it to Google Maps. The whole trip, every stop included, handed straight to Google Maps for live turn-by-turn when you are actually driving.

What $9.99 is really buying. One wrong overnight on a dog trip, a park that turns out not to take dogs, or a stop that sits inside a national park gate, costs more to fix at the boom gate than the planner costs once. The research is the product: the driving line, the five-kilometre check, the pacing and the national park warning do in seconds what used to be an evening of tabs.

See the planner walkthrough, screen by screen

Pricing as at October 2026. The first full route stays free per account, and the guide's walkthrough is kept current as the planner grows.

Common questions

Does the Muttmates road trip planner cost anything?

Building the itinerary is free: distance, driving time and the first three stops on the way, no account needed. Your first full route is free too, one per account. After that, a one-off $9.99 unlocks the whole planner, paid through Stripe, and every route you plan from then on is yours in full. Not a subscription.

How does the planner choose where to stop?

It works out the real driving line through your start, destination and up to six stops in between, then offers off-leash parks, dog beaches, caravan parks, free camps and rest areas within about 5 km of that line, ordered by how close they are to the road. A pacing control spaces breaks every hour up to every 4 hours, or at a custom gap.

Can the planner warn me about national parks?

Yes. Dogs are banned outright in Australian national parks, so the planner checks every stop against the boundaries of more than 750 of them and names the park in a warning under the route summary if a stop lands inside one.