Which sailing app is best? A comparison by purpose

Anyone looking for the best sailing app often ends up comparing apples with oranges. A weather map answers different questions from a chart plotter, and an Atlantic crossing needs different tools from a weekend trip from Kiel to Marstal. That is why this comparison sorts the well-known apps by the job they do, not by a score.

Disclosure: this comparison is written by the team behind Sailseer, one of the apps compared. Information as of October 2026. Providers change features and prices all the time; their own websites are authoritative.

Weather on the map: Windy

Windy is a weather map with more than 40 layers: several models side by side, rain radar, satellite, lightning and meteograms, on a map of the whole world. Premium adds the Passage Planner, weather routing with isochrones and polar diagrams, plus an open plugin interface. If you want a picture of the large-scale weather anywhere in the world, this is the place to go.

Spot forecasts: Windfinder, Windguru, Windy.app

These three think in spots: one place, one table, wind hour by hour. Windfinder has a very dense network of live stations and webcams, more than 21,000 by its own count, and the Superforecast for Europe in its Plus subscription. Windguru is the board sports classic: a compact table with several models, its own stations, archive and statistics for each spot. Windy.app (a different provider from Windy) offers around 17 models, a “Best Model” picked by recent accuracy against stations, tides, alerts and a marina database. For kiting, windsurfing and dinghy sailing, and for the question of how it will blow on the beach this afternoon, all three are strong.

Bluewater and weather routing: PredictWind

PredictWind is the tool for long passages across open water: its own models, weather routing with polar diagrams and isochrones, departure planning, comfort-based routing, heavily compressed GRIB files for satellite connections, GMDSS texts and its own hardware for use on board.

Charts and navigation: Navionics, savvy navvy, OpenCPN

For navigation you need charts, and that is not where weather apps are at home. Navionics is Garmin's widely used chart app. savvy navvy combines charts with route planning and navigation in one app. OpenCPN is a free chart plotter for the PC that also reads GRIB files. Sailseer imports a route from OpenCPN or Navionics as GPX and hands the planned route back to your plotter and chart app as GPX.

Harbours and anchorages: Navily, noforeignland

Navily is a guide to marinas and anchorages with reviews and berth booking, noforeignland a community of cruising sailors with anchorages and reports. Sailseer links to both from a harbour's info page instead of copying their content.

Harbour-to-harbour planning: Sailseer

Sailseer answers one specific question: can I get my boat from harbour A to harbour B, when is the best time to leave, and do the models agree? To answer it, Sailseer works across its cruising area, from Greenland and Svalbard via the North Sea and the Baltic to the Canaries, the whole Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the Red Sea, Cape Verde, the Caribbean with the Bahamas and Panama, and the Indian Ocean from the Seychelles to Langkawi, with:

• a consensus of nine weather models plus the ECMWF ensemble for gusts and uncertainty,
• official warnings and marine forecasts from the national weather services,
• tides and tidal streams included in the speed over ground,
• bridges and locks with opening times,
• around 8,800 harbour profiles with depths, berths and 16 services from diesel to chandlery,
• restricted areas and firing ranges, traffic separation schemes and the formalities for each country,
• your boat's polar, tacks when the course is upwind and a comparison of 120 departure times,
• a float plan that alerts your shore contacts if you are overdue,
• GPX for Garmin, Raymarine and B&G and GRIB for OpenCPN and qtVlm,
• an Android app that calculates passages, multi-day trips and range on the device, even without a connection.

Sailseer is free, needs no account, carries no advertising and is available in twelve languages. All features are listed under What Sailseer can do. To try it out, plan a passage on the map or look at a cruising area such as Croatia or Greece.

The features at a glance

“Not stated” means: not found on the product and help pages we read in September 2026.

Which combination fits?

• Weekend trip or charter week in Europe: Sailseer for the passage, departure time and harbours, Windy for the big picture, a chart app for navigation.
• Kiting, windsurfing, dinghy sailing at a spot: Windfinder, Windguru or Windy.app.
• Waters with bridges, locks or tidal flats: Sailseer, because it builds opening times, closures and tidal windows straight into the route.
• Multi-day trip or delivery: Sailseer with daily legs, reserve days, ports of refuge and a float plan.

Which models lie behind the numbers is explained in the guide to weather models; how to find the best departure time is covered in Finding a weather window.

No app replaces the official marine forecast, the warnings from the weather services and the official chart. Sailseer is not intended for navigation.