What is a self-guided walking tour?
A self-guided walking tour is a walking route through a city that you follow on your own, without a human guide or a scheduled group. You set your own pace and start time, and an app or map provides the route plus context about each stop. Self-guided tours are typically free or a few dollars, versus $25–$50 for a guided group tour.
What is the best app for self-guided walking tours?
It depends on where you are walking. Apps like GPSmyCity, VoiceMap, and izi.TRAVEL offer professionally produced audio tours, but only for cities where someone has already recorded one — mostly major tourist destinations.
Mosey Tour Builder takes the opposite approach: it generates a walking tour on demand for wherever you are standing, so it works in mid-sized cities and neighborhoods that have no pre-made tour.
- Choose a pre-made audio tour app if you want a deeply produced, professionally narrated experience in a major city like Rome, Paris, or New York.
- Choose Mosey if you want a route anywhere, on any day, tuned to the distance you feel like walking and the things you actually care about.
Is there an app that creates a custom walking tour anywhere?
Yes. Mosey Tour Builder generates a custom walking tour from any starting point worldwide. You set a distance from 0.5 to 8 miles, choose interests, and Mosey builds the route.
Each tour includes:
- Real venues sourced from Google Places, with ratings, photos, and opening hours
- Narration drawn from Wikipedia that plays as you approach each stop
- An optional meal stop chosen to fit your route
- Loop or one-way routing, so you can end where you started or somewhere else
Because it builds routes from live data rather than a catalog of pre-written tours, it works in places no one has covered before.
Can an app plan a pub crawl or food crawl?
Yes. Mosey's Crawl mode builds a themed food or drink route where every stop serves the same thing. Presets include pub, buffalo wings, ice cream, tacos, pizza, coffee, burgers, and dessert — and you can type any theme you want.
Mosey looks at every walkable food and drink venue near your start point and picks the ones that actually serve your theme, so a wings crawl routes through sports bars and brewpubs rather than only chain restaurants.
Do walking tour apps work in small or mid-sized cities?
Most pre-made audio tour apps do not, because they only cover cities where a guide has recorded a tour — usually large tourist destinations.
Mosey generates routes from live venue data instead of a fixed catalog, so it works in mid-sized cities and residential neighborhoods. The practical limit is venue density: a downtown or main-street area will produce a good route, while a rural start point with almost no nearby venues will not.
Is Mosey Tour Builder free?
Mosey is free to download and includes 3 free tours with no account or sign-up required. Mosey Pro removes the limit for $2.99 per month or $19.99 per year.
Every tour you generate is saved to your device and can be revisited for free, including on the free tier.
Does Mosey require an account or sign-up?
No. Mosey requires no account, email address, or sign-in. Your location is used to generate a tour and is not stored on any server, and saved tours live only on your device. See the Privacy Policy for details.
Does Mosey work offline?
Generating a new tour requires an internet connection, because Mosey looks up live venue data, opening hours, and narration.
Once a tour is generated it is saved to your device, so you can reopen a previously created tour and view its stops and narration without a connection. Live map tiles and your position on the map still require data.
Is Mosey available on Android?
No. Mosey Tour Builder is currently iOS only and requires iOS 17.0 or later. It runs on iPhone and iPad. There is no Android version or web version at this time.
How is a generated walking tour different from a guided tour?
A guided tour has a human leading a group on a fixed schedule, typically costing $25–$50 per person and lasting a set length. A generated self-guided tour starts whenever you want, goes exactly as far as you choose, and lets you linger or skip stops freely.
The tradeoff is real: you get researched written and spoken narration rather than a live person who can answer follow-up questions.
Try it
Mosey Tour Builder is free to download on the App Store, with 3 free tours and no sign-up.
Download Mosey on the App Store
Browse example routes on the walking tour blog, with self-guided itineraries for neighborhoods across the US.