MileIQ vs TradesTimer

What MileIQ is

A dedicated automatic mileage tracker that uses GPS to log drives and allows users to swipe between business and personal categories.

Best for: Professionals who primarily need to track business mileage for tax purposes but do not need to track time spent at specific job sites or estimate billable durations.

Pricing at a glance

Where MileIQ is strong

• Seamless business/personal trip categorization via swiping
• Highly-regarded automation for simple mileage logging

Where MileIQ falls short for trades

• Forces the user to use a separate, manual method to track how long they worked at a location for billing.
• Requires the user to manually track jobsite durations because the app only logs driving movement between points.

Why I built a MileIQ alternative

Half my old notebooks are mileage — supply runs to the paint store, the lumber yard, the electrical wholesaler, drives between two clients' houses in one afternoon. MileIQ automates exactly that half, and does it well. But it stops at the odometer.

For a tradesman the drives and the stops are one story: the drive ends where the billable hours begin. TradesTimer records both sides — every trip's distance for the tax log, every stop's duration for the invoice — in one free app, with the location history staying on your phone instead of a classification server.

— Ryder, founder of TradesTimer. Years on the tools across framing, fencing, roofing, concrete, drywall, and painting, plus the back office of an electrical contractor — orders, invoices, and yes, the time tracking.

What TradesTimer does differently

• Automatically identifies 'stops' to provide rounded billable hours alongside mileage
• Eliminates manual input by auto-detecting both trips and jobsite durations without pre-configuring locations

The verdict

MileIQ is a specialized tool for precise mileage categorization, while TradesTimer is built for solo tradespeople who need to reconstruct their entire workday, capturing both driving distance and estimated time spent on-site.

Page last verified 2026-06-08. If MileIQ has changed pricing or features since then and this page is stale, email support@tradestimer.com and we'll fix it.