Best Permit & Campsite Alert Apps in 2026
Sold-out permits and campgrounds leak inventory constantly as people cancel. A whole category of tools exists to catch those openings, and they are genuinely different from each other. Here is an honest rundown of the four main options in 2026, including where each one is the right choice. Yes, we make one of them. We will tell you when to use the others.
The quick answer
Match the tool to what you are chasing:
- Wilderness permits and lotteries (Half Dome, Whitney, Enchantments, river permits): PermitSnag
- Free campground alerts in the US: Campflare
- Camping in Canada (BC Parks, Parks Canada, Ontario Parks): Campnab
- One-off SMS tracker for a single popular permit, or international permits like New Zealand's Great Walks: Outdoor Status
PermitSnag: permits and lotteries first
PermitSnag tracks 623 US wilderness permits (Recreation.gov, California and Utah state parks, BLM, NPS) plus 118,000+ campsites. The difference from everything else on this list is the lottery layer: a master calendar of every application window, open/close/result reminders, group lottery pools, and published odds pages built from official statistics. Alerts go out by push, SMS, email, and browser notification, with Fast Lane links that land you at booking with your dates selected. Free tier includes one alert with hourly scans; Pro is $7.99/month (or $79.99/year) with roughly one-minute scans and unlimited watches; a single permit costs $12 a la carte.
Campflare: the best free option for campgrounds
Campflare covers 10,000+ US campgrounds, scans popular ones as often as every 15-45 seconds, and is completely free with email and text alerts plus an iOS app. If your problem is a booked-out car campground, start here. What it does not do: wilderness permits, lotteries, quotas, or trailhead spots. Plenty of people run Campflare for campgrounds and PermitSnag for permits side by side.
Campnab: strongest in Canada
Campnab is the veteran of campsite cancellation scanning, covering 3,200+ parks and 7,000+ campgrounds across the US and Canada, with some permit and day-use scanning too. Memberships run CAD $10-30/month for 3-7 concurrent scans, and one-off pay-per-use scans cost $10-20 each. Its Canadian coverage (BC Parks, Parks Canada, Ontario Parks) is the best available, which makes it the clear pick north of the border.
Outdoor Status: per-permit SMS trackers
Outdoor Status sells cancellation trackers for popular permits at roughly $15 each, delivered by text, with solid coverage of marquee US destinations plus some international ones (New Zealand Great Walks, Canadian backcountry). It is simple and it works. The trade-offs: SMS only, no lottery tooling, and per-permit pricing that adds up fast if you watch more than one thing per season.
Pro tip: alerts are half the game
Whichever tool you pick, speed of response matters more than speed of scanning. Have the reservation site logged in on your phone, know your party size and dates cold, and act within minutes. High-demand cancellations are often rebooked in under ten minutes.
How to compare them yourself
Before committing to any alert service, check:
- Does it cover your specific permit or campground? Coverage lists differ more than marketing suggests.
- What channels does it alert on? SMS beats email when a spot lasts minutes.
- How many things can you watch at once, and what does that cost?
- Does it help before the lottery (calendars, reminders, pools) or only after (cancellations)?
Conclusion
There is no single best alert app, but there is a best one for your trip. Campflare for free US campground alerts, Campnab for Canada, Outdoor Status for a one-off permit text, and PermitSnag when permits and lotteries are the mission. For the full feature-by-feature breakdowns, see our comparisons with Campnab, Campflare, and Outdoor Status.