Best for performance stats & resort maps

Slopes is the app most people mean when they say "ski tracker," and it's earned that. It records your day automatically - it figures out lifts, runs and uphill on its own - and the free version is genuinely useful and ad-free, with unlimited tracking, key stats and season summaries. I've used it since its early days and it just keeps getting more polished.

Premium (around $30 a year at the time of writing) is where it pulls ahead of everything else: interactive 2D and 3D resort maps, live lift and trail status at supported resorts, real-time per-run analytics, and fitness insights when you pair an Apple Watch. There's a social layer too - find friends on the mountain and compete on private leaderboards.

One feature I love and that not everyone knows about: the rider-sourced snow conditions. Before you head up, you can see what other skiers are saying the snow is actually like. It's right in the app, and you can also browse it on the web at getslopes.com/resorts without even opening the app.

Bottom line: if you care most about detailed stats and resort maps, this is the one to beat.

Best for trip memories & journaling

Full disclosure again: this is mine. After years on the stats-heavy apps, I wanted something that treated a ski season more like a travel journal than a performance log - so I built Snowmate. You add your mountain trips, collect the photos you took along the way, track your sessions, and read the stats that matter without drowning in them. The result is a record of where you've been and who with, not just how fast you went.

A couple of things make it different. There's no account to create - everything backs up privately to your own iCloud, so your data stays yours. And the interface is built to be clean and modern rather than dense. It's free to download, with a paid upgrade once you've logged a handful of sessions.

Where it isn't the strongest: if you want the deepest performance analytics, live 3D maps or detailed fitness breakdowns, Slopes leads there. Snowmate's focus is the story of your winter, and it leans into that rather than competing on raw metrics.

Bottom line: the right pick if you want to remember your season, not just measure it.

Best for simple, rock-solid tracking

Ski Tracks was my first ski tracking app, and for years it was the quiet workhorse of the category: dependable, accurate, and refreshingly simple. Start it, ski, and at the end of the day you get a clean logbook - vertical, speed, distance, run count, total time, and a map you can scrub through. The interface looks a little dated next to newer apps, but plenty of people still swear by its reliability, and its accuracy has a strong reputation.

One thing changed recently that's worth knowing before you commit: under new ownership, Ski Tracks has moved from its old one-time purchase to a subscription (weekly or yearly, in the region of $50 a year - prices vary by country). Some long-time users have been vocal about the switch, particularly around access to their older history. If a simple, one-and-done tracker is what you're after, it's worth checking the current App Store terms first so there are no surprises.

Bottom line: great for straightforward, accurate tracking - just go in aware of the new pricing.

Best for friendly competition

Exa Ski Tracker is built around bragging rights. It covers the usual ground - top speed, distance, altitude, and a split between downhill and lift time - but its hook is comparing results with friends and running little competitions between you. There's a "Fast Ride" mode for measuring max speed over a specific stretch, and you can stamp your stats onto a photo to share. It works on GPS alone, so no mobile data needed, and it's free with an optional premium upgrade.

Bottom line: a fun choice if you ski with a crew and like a bit of rivalry.

Best for snow & weather in the Alps

Bergfex is my go-to for the question "is it worth going today?" It carries detailed snow reports, weather forecasts, live webcams and piste maps for thousands of ski areas, with particularly strong coverage across the Alps - plus ticket prices and avalanche info. Worth noting that it has grown beyond conditions lately: it now also does basic GPS tracking and a ski diary with friend comparisons, so it overlaps a little with the trackers above. Its real strength, though, stays planning and conditions.

Best for researching where to go

If Bergfex tells you about conditions today, Skiresort.info is the encyclopedia of resorts themselves. It has detailed information on roughly 6,000 ski areas worldwide - piste maps, lift and slope breakdowns, ski-pass prices, test reports, webcams and snow reports. It's the app I reach for when I'm deciding where to ski rather than tracking a day I'm already on. Free, and genuinely deep.