Questions and answers

A trip planner that keeps everything for a trip in one place: the plan for each day, your flights, hotels, cars and tours, photos, files and notes. Bookings can file themselves from your email, it works on your phone without a signal, and it can warn you when a flight changes.

Tap New trip on your trips list and give it a name and dates, or just forward a booking confirmation (see below) and PlanPika starts the trip for you, named after where you’re going. Add stops with Add a stop, and drag or use the move button to put them on the right day.

Yes. On iPhone, open planpika.com in Safari, tap the Share button, then Add to Home Screen. On Android, open it in Chrome and choose Install app or Add to Home screen from the menu. Open PlanPika from that icon from then on.

From the Home Screen it works like an app: swipe sideways to go back or close a sheet, and pull down to sync.

Yes, once it’s on your Home Screen and has synced. Your trips, bookings, photos, files and the trip PDF are kept on the phone, so they open on a plane or with no signal. It syncs by itself whenever it opens with a connection; to be sure before you leave, open the app on Wi-Fi and pull down until you see Synced. On a weak signal it shows the copy on your phone and swaps in anything newer when it arrives.

Three ways, and you can use any of them:

• Forward the email to plans@planpika.com. This is the simplest.
• Connect a mailbox and PlanPika reads new booking emails from it on its own.
• Paste or upload it: on a trip, Add a stop lets you paste an email, or upload a PDF or a screenshot of a booking.

Each booking is read for every flight leg, confirmation number, address, check-in time, cost and support number, and filed on the trip whose dates it falls in. If no trip matches it starts a new one. Everything that arrives is listed in Inbox, with what was done with it.

1. In Settings → Email & bookings, add every address your bookings come to (up to the limit shown). Each one gets a confirmation link; click it. Your sign-in address is already confirmed.
2. Forward any confirmation from one of those addresses to plans@planpika.com.
3. It appears on your trip within a minute or two, and in Inbox.

Mail is only accepted from your confirmed addresses, so nobody else can add things to your trips by sending to that address. You can turn forwarding off in the same section.

Yes. Set a rule in your email that forwards airline and booking-site mail to plans@planpika.com automatically. Settings → Email & bookings has step-by-step instructions for Gmail and Outlook, and a ready-made list of airline and booking-site senders to paste into the rule. Then when an airline moves or cancels a flight, the change reaches your trip without you opening anything.

Yes, it can read a mailbox you connect. It connects over IMAP, the standard way email apps read mail and something almost every email service offers. POP3 isn’t supported. If your provider offers both, use the IMAP settings; if it only offers POP3, forward your bookings instead.

To connect one, go to Settings → Email & bookings → Booking mailbox:

1. IMAP host and Port: from your provider. Common ones: Gmail imap.gmail.com, Outlook and Hotmail outlook.office365.com, iCloud imap.mail.me.com, Yahoo imap.mail.yahoo.com, all on port 993.
2. Username: your full email address.
3. App password: not your normal password. Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo and Outlook let you make an “app password” in your account’s security settings (two-step verification has to be on). Make one just for PlanPika; you can delete it there at any time and the connection stops.
4. Only read mail from (optional): the senders to read, like you@gmail.com, @delta.com. Leave it blank to read every new message.
5. Press Test connection, then Save mailbox with “Let the polling script check this mailbox” ticked.

PlanPika only ever reads your Inbox, never Spam, Junk or any other folder. It changes nothing: messages aren’t marked read, moved or deleted. The first check looks back two weeks; after that only new mail is read, and nothing is read twice. A good trick is a separate address just for travel (or a Gmail filter that labels bookings into the Inbox of a travel account), so it never sees your personal mail at all.

Forwarding is the most private: PlanPika only ever sees the emails you send it. A connected mailbox is the most hands-off: bookings and airline changes arrive without you doing anything, but PlanPika can read that mailbox’s Inbox (only the senders you allow, if you set that). Automatic forwarding rules give you most of both.

Open Inbox: every email is listed with what happened to it. A booking missing something it needs (a flight with no arrival time, a hotel with no address) waits there rather than going on a trip as a guess; Read it again tries once more. If a booking landed on the wrong trip, remove its stops there, then open the right trip, tap Add a stop and paste the email: pasted from a trip, it goes onto that trip.

Yes. Flights on your trips are checked automatically: about once a week while they’re far off, a couple of times a day from two days before, every three hours on the day, always at three hours before departure, then every 15 minutes until you board and every 30 minutes in the air. New gates, terminals, delays, cancellations and schedule changes go straight onto the trip and to your phone.

It also warns you when a connection is getting tight, and asks “Did they move you?” with the other flights that day so you can pick the new one in one tap. You can also open any flight and tap My flight changed. If only some of you were moved, untick the others and the booking is split so each flight shows who’s on it.

In Settings → Flights & alerts, turn alerts on for the device you’re using, and allow notifications when asked. On iPhone this only works from the Home Screen app. Use Send a test alert to check. You’ll get alerts about three hours before departure, an hour before boarding, and for any change.

The airport sound plays when an alert arrives while PlanPika is open on your screen. With the app closed you hear your phone’s normal notification sound. On iPhone, tap anywhere in the app once after opening it so the sound is allowed to play, and check the silent switch. You can switch the sound off in Settings.

On the trip, open the Trip menu → Share with someone → Give access. Enter their email and choose what they can do:

• View only: read everything and download the PDF or offline copy. They can’t change anything or invite anyone.
• Editor: add, remove, move and edit stops and upload files.
• Editor with AI: everything an editor can do, plus the AI tools (planning days, filling in stops, write-ups). These run on your AI key if they don’t have their own.

They get an email with a link. If they don’t have an account yet, they make one with that address and the trip is waiting for them. You can also copy an invite link to send yourself. Change someone’s access or remove them from the same place at any time; it takes effect straight away.

Yes. In Share with someone → Share link, send the itinerary as a PDF (a page for each day, with photos) by email, or make a download link that expires after 24 hours, 3 days or a week. Confirmation numbers are hidden unless you choose to include them. Every PDF you’ve shared is listed on the Shares page, where you can see if it was opened and turn a link off.

Yes. On your trips list, a trip someone shared with you has the option to remove it from your trips. It disappears from your list; the owner keeps it.

A few, to keep things fair: how many people a trip can be shared with, how many invitations and share links you can send in a month, and how many trips and forwarded emails an account can have. If you reach one, the app tells you which and why.

Handy when one long trip is really two (say Mexico City, then a week in Oaxaca). Open the trip, then Trip menu → Trip settings → Split into two trips:

1. Choose the first day of the second trip.
2. Name both trips (it suggests names).
3. Check the summary (how many stops stay and how many move), then Split the trip and confirm.

Days before the split stay where they are; that day and everything after move to the new trip with their stops, photos, files and bookings. Everyone keeps the same access to both. A booking with stops on both sides, like a hotel stay across the split, is kept in both trips. Unscheduled stops stay with the first trip. Only the owner can split a trip.

Yes. Trip menu → Earlier versions lists the trip as it was before each change, and you can go back to any of them. Changes made by the AI are listed under AI changes and can be reviewed and undone one by one.

It reads forwarded bookings, plans empty days, fills in stops with write-ups, photos and practical details, fixes times, and re-plans around the weather. It runs on your own key from Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI, Google (Gemini) or xAI, which you add in Settings → AI. Each provider charges for use under its own terms. Every change the AI makes can be reviewed and undone.

On accounts where trip chat is turned on, yes. Tap Ask AI on a trip to ask about the whole thing (“What’s my hotel’s confirmation number?”), the sparkle next to a day’s Day details to ask about that day (“What should I wear?” uses that day’s plans and forecast), or the sparkle on a stop to ask about that place (“What time does this open?”). It can look things up on the web. “Today” always means today, whichever day you opened.

Conversations stay on your device. If you don’t see the buttons, trip chat isn’t on for your account yet.

MCP lets an AI assistant you already use, like Claude or ChatGPT, work with your trips directly. You can ask it “what’s my gate tomorrow?”, “add a lunch stop near the museum on Thursday” or “move the market to the morning” and it reads or changes the trip for you. It sees what you see in the app: days, stops, bookings with confirmation numbers, flight gates and status, and the forecast.

Claude (app or claude.ai) and ChatGPT: add a custom connector and paste the server address shown in Settings → Connected apps. Press Connect, sign in to PlanPika when asked, and choose what it may do. No token needed.

Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor and other tools: in Settings → Connected apps, name it, choose its access and press Make a token. You see the token once, with a ready-to-copy setup line for Claude Code and a JSON block for other apps. Keep it private: it works like a password for your trips.

You choose when you connect it:

• Read only: it can look but never change anything.
• Read, and suggest changes: its changes come to you as suggestions to accept or turn down. A good default.
• Read and change: it edits your trips directly. Every change still shows in the trip’s history and can be undone.

You can keep any trip away from assistants entirely: Trip settings → Outside AI (MCP). Every connection is listed in Settings → Connected apps with when it was last used, and you can disconnect it there at any time.

No. We never sell your information, there are no ads, and nothing is shared with advertisers, data brokers or marketers. There are no tracking or advertising cookies; the one cookie keeps you signed in. Your trips are yours.

Only services needed to do what you ask, and only the part they need. For example:

• Your AI provider sees the booking or trip details being worked on, when you use an AI feature, on your own key.
• Flight-status services see flight numbers, dates and airports, never your name or bookings.
• Map and weather services see place names and coordinates.
• People you share a trip with see that trip, and anyone with a PDF link sees that PDF until it expires.

The full list, with what each one gets, is in the privacy policy.

• Everything travels over HTTPS.
• Your password is stored only as a one-way hash; nobody, including us, can read it.
• AI keys and mailbox app passwords are encrypted on our server and never sent back to your browser.
• You can add two-step sign-in with an authenticator app or a passkey (Face ID, Touch ID or a security key) in Settings → Security.
• Backups are encrypted.

When PlanPika is on your Home Screen, a copy of your trips (with photos and files) is stored on the phone so it works offline. The app also notes how long pages take to open (timings only, nothing from your trips) to help us fix slow loading. Signing out removes the offline copy.

Yes. Download any trip as a PDF from the Trip menu → Download a copy. Delete a trip from its settings. To get all your data or delete your account, contact support; it’s removed from the live system straight away and backups age out within a year.

Use Forgot password on the sign-in page and we’ll email you a link. Changing your password signs you out everywhere else.

Tell us on the support page: what you were doing, what happened, and roughly when. A screenshot helps.