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
$5.99 Free and paid plans
Free tier limited to ~40 drives/month; unlimited is roughly $5.99/mo. Pricing changes — verify.
Verified 2026-06-08
$0 for five days Five-day app trial
Pro (US$6.99/month or US$49.99/year) provides continued tracking, timeline review, and encrypted cloud backup. Local store prices vary.
MileIQ strengths
- Seamless business/personal trip categorization via swiping
- Highly-regarded automation for simple mileage logging
Considerations for self-employed tradespeople
- 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 app with a five-day trial and Pro subscription, with the location history staying on your phone instead of a classification server.
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
Which app fits your needs?
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 contact us at support@tradestimer.com to request a correction.
Five days to try it. Pro to keep tracking.
The upcoming paid release includes five days of tracking without payment details or automatic charges. Continue with Pro, including encrypted backup. Exports remain available after the trial.
- Automatic stop and trip recording
- Unlimited stops, drives, and days
- Review and edit stops and trips
- Rounded billable hours, exported as text or CSV
- Travel log with estimated distances
- 7-day summary view
- History stored on your phone
Canada: CA$9.99/month or CA$69.99/year. Both plans include the same features.
- Continued automatic tracking and timeline review
- End-to-end encrypted cloud backup
- Restore your full history on a new phone
- A backup stored separately from your phone
US prices are shown in USD; Canadian prices are shown in CAD. Your local App Store or Google Play price may differ. Subscriptions auto-renew until cancelled through the store where you purchased.
Control your location history
TradesTimer stores your history on your phone. Address lookups send coordinates to an address provider. You choose where to share your hours and travel exports.
If you enable Pro backup, TradesTimer encrypts your history before uploading it. Your recovery code unlocks the backup. See the privacy policy for details about address lookups, exports, and other data use.