Questions, answered.

Yes — the core experience is free. Building day-by-day itineraries, planning with your buds, in-trip chat, polls, photos, splitting pay, saving public trips: all free, forever. The free plan has fair-use limits (see below); an optional paid plan, Tripbuds Pro, removes them.

The free plan currently includes up to 3 active trips, up to 4 buds per trip, and 1 AI itinerary generation per month — plus a one-time bundle of bonus AI generations when you join, so you can plan your first trip properly. The current limits are always shown in the app.

Pro is our optional subscription for power planners. It removes the free-plan limits (unlimited trips, unlimited buds per trip, unlimited AI planning) and adds live flight status, flight-delay alerts, and PDF export of your trips. The basics are never paywalled.

Pro will be available monthly or annually — expected at around US$4.99/month or US$44.99/year, with local pricing set by the App Store and Google Play. Final prices are shown in the app before you buy. Annual works out meaningfully cheaper.

Through your Apple or Google account — we never see your card details. It renews automatically unless you cancel (anytime, in your store's subscription settings); you keep Pro until the end of the period you paid for. Refunds are handled by Apple/Google under their policies. If Pro lapses, you drop back to the free plan — nothing you created is deleted.

When you book a stay through Tripbuds, we earn a small affiliate commission from our booking partner — up to 4% from Booking.com. The price you pay is the same as booking direct — nothing is added on top. It's how we keep the core app free without selling your data.

What we need to run a planning app: your account email, date of birth (to check you're 16+), the trips you create and save, photos and chats you add, and your expenses for split pay. We also use two tools to keep the app good: Sentry for crash reports and PostHog for first-party product analytics (which screens and features get used, linked to your account, never sold or used for ads). If you subscribe to Pro, RevenueCat manages your subscription status — Apple or Google handle the payment, so we never see your card. The full breakdown is in our privacy policy.

No and no. We don't sell user data, we don't run ad networks inside the app, we don't use Apple's or Google's advertising identifiers, and we don't track you across other apps or websites. We make money from Pro subscriptions and booking commissions — that's the whole model.

Trip generation runs on Anthropic's Claude models. Your private trip content is not used to train their models.

No. Trips you create are private until you choose to make one public. Saving a public trip to your My trips keeps your saved copy private too. Your public profile only shows what you've explicitly published.

16 or over. We ask for your date of birth at signup to check — it's never shown to other users.

In the app: Settings → Account → Delete account. We remove your account and personal data per our privacy policy (you can export your data first from Settings). You can also email privacy@tripbuds.com if you'd rather we handle it.

Stays on Tripbuds are matched against Booking.com inventory (flights via partners like Kiwi.com). When you tap "Book", you complete the booking with the partner — your reservation, cancellation policy and payment are handled there. Our affiliate links run through the CJ Affiliate network; partners never receive your name or email from us.

Yes. We show the live price from our partner. We don't add a markup — our commission comes from the partner, not from you.

Sold-out dates are flagged in the app. If a place has closed or changed hands, tips on the stop usually reflect it, and you can let us know at support@tripbuds.com so we can update the listing.