Best Mileage Tracking Apps for Canadian Freelancers (2026)

If you are self-employed in Canada and drive for work, a mileage app has one job at tax time: give you a logbook that holds up if the CRA asks, and from it, the share of your driving that was for business. That share, your business-use percentage, is what you apply to your actual vehicle costs on Form T2125. This guide sets out what a Canadian sole proprietor actually needs from a mileage app, then measures five apps that sell to Canadians against those needs.

We make ReceiptOne, and it is not part of this comparison. Every price and feature below comes from each vendor's own pages, read on October 5, 2026. Where a vendor does not publish something, or its help centre would not load for us, the table says "not stated". That does not mean the feature is missing, only that we could not confirm it. Check the vendor's page before you buy.

What a Mileage App Can and Cannot Give You

For a sole proprietor there is no per-kilometre deduction. The CRA's motor vehicle expenses page gives one method: business kilometres divided by total kilometres, multiplied by your total vehicle expenses. You work it out in Chart A of Form T2125 and the result goes on line 9281. The expenses are what the vehicle actually cost you: fuel, insurance, registration, repairs, and interest or leasing within the CRA limits. Capital cost allowance is calculated separately, and the business-use percentage applies to it too.

The per-kilometre figures quoted everywhere, 73 cents for the first 5,000 km and 67 cents after that in the provinces for 2026, are something else. The Department of Finance announcement of January 14, 2026 calls them "the limit on the deduction of tax-exempt allowances paid by employers to employees who use their personal vehicle for business purposes." They cap what an employer can pay an employee tax-free. They are not a deduction method for someone filing a T2125.

The Canadian guides from MileIQ, Driversnote, Everlance and TripLog all say this correctly. The risk is in the reports: some apps put a dollar value on each trip using a per-kilometre rate, and Driversnote's homepage demo shows a rate multiplied by distance. That figure is not your line 9281 amount. TripLog's Canadian guide also lists 72 and 66 cents as the 2026 rates; those are the 2025 figures.

What You Need From a Mileage App

Three things decide whether an app is useful to a sole proprietor at tax time. Features beyond them, such as maps, team dashboards or reimbursement workflows, are built for employers and mostly do not matter to you.

1. The Logbook Fields the CRA Asks For

The CRA's motor vehicle records page asks for each business trip's date, destination, purpose and kilometres, plus each vehicle's odometer reading at the start and end of the fiscal period. After one full year of logbook (the base year), you can keep a three-month sample logbook in later years if the result stays within 10% of the base year.

Most apps capture date, addresses and distance on their own. Purpose is the field that goes missing: an app can tell where you drove, not why, so check that it lets you add a purpose to each trip and that the purpose appears in the report. "Client meeting, Smith renovation" is a purpose; "business" is only a category. Then check where the odometer readings live. If the app has no place for them, write them down on the first and last day of your fiscal period and keep them with your logbook.

2. A Real Business and Personal Split

The odometer readings give you total kilometres, the bottom half of the fraction. An app only knows the trips it recorded. Unless it records every personal drive too, a percentage built from logged trips alone will come out too high.

Apps that detect drives automatically record personal trips as a by-product, which helps, but only while the phone is with you and tracking is on. A drive taken by your partner, or one where your battery died, is in the odometer but not the app. Treat the app's own percentage as a check, and calculate the figure you file from business kilometres in the app over total kilometres from the odometer.

3. An Export That Supports Chart A

Chart A of Form T2125 needs two numbers from your logbook: kilometres driven for business during the fiscal period and total kilometres driven. Everything else in the chart comes from your receipts. A useful export gives you a full-year trip list with every logbook field, a business kilometre total, and ideally the odometer readings, in a format you or your accountant can open: PDF to keep, CSV or Excel to check the totals.

What a Chart A export should not do is hand you a dollar figure built from a per-kilometre rate. If the report shows one, ignore that column and take only the kilometres.

Five Apps at a Glance

The CRA does not certify mileage apps. "CRA-compliant" is a vendor's own description. What makes a log stand up is that it was kept through the year, covers every business trip with the four details above, and is backed by odometer readings.

MileIQ

MileIQ detects drives automatically and lets you swipe each one to business or personal. Its Canadian rates guide says it "tracks every kilometre automatically" and states that the per-kilometre rates do not apply to the self-employed. Suits: someone with many short drives who wants no tapping. Falls short: no currency on the pricing page, and its Canadian report help article was blocked when we tried to read it, so report fields and formats are unconfirmed.

Everlance

Everlance's free plan detects up to 30 trips a month, with unlimited manual trips, and every plan exports CSV and PDF. Its CRA guide tells self-employed readers they "cannot multiply your kilometers by $0.73/km". Suits: a light driver who wants a usable free tier. Falls short: no currency or CAD price on the pricing page, which measures in miles, and its Canadian help article would not load for us.

Driversnote

Driversnote has a Canadian site priced in CAD, PDF and Excel reports, and automatic detection by the phone's motion sensors or an optional iBeacon in the car. Its CRA guide correctly points the self-employed to actual expenses. Suits: someone who wants CAD pricing and automatic tracking without hardware. Falls short: 15 free trips a month, no billing period shown for CA$16, and a demo that prices each trip at a per-distance rate.

TripLog

TripLog's free plan includes unlimited automatic GPS tracking, which is generous; downloading an annual report needs Premium. Suits: a heavy driver who wants automatic detection without paying during the year. Falls short: its Canadian guide quotes last year's rates as 2026's, and the pages we read did not state logbook fields or export format.

QuickBooks Lite

In QuickBooks, mileage is part of the accounting software. Intuit's Canadian Lite page lists automatic kilometre tracking and a mileage log report, and its help article covers adding a business purpose and vehicle to each trip. Suits: a freelancer who also wants invoicing and bank feeds. Falls short: one user, no accountant access, and the Lite page shows only a promotional price.

How to Choose

• You forget to log trips: pick automatic detection. All five apps here state it.
• You want to pay nothing during the year: TripLog's free plan tracks automatically without a cap; Everlance and MileIQ cap free automatic trips at 30 and 40 a month.
• You want CAD pricing: Driversnote publishes it, TripLog offers a CAD option, QuickBooks prices on its Canadian site. MileIQ and Everlance show no currency.
• You keep your books in QuickBooks: its built-in tracker saves a second app.
• Before you pay: use the free tier or trial for a few weeks, then export a report and check it shows a purpose for each trip and a business kilometre total you can carry to Chart A.
• Whatever you choose: record your odometer on the first and last day of your fiscal period and keep your vehicle receipts.

A hypothetical example: a self-employed electrician in Manitoba drives 18,000 km in 2026, 7,200 of them for business. Business use is 40%. Fuel, insurance, registration and repairs total $8,500, so $3,400 goes on line 9281, before capital cost allowance. An app pricing 7,200 km at 73 and 67 cents would show about $5,124, which is the employee allowance cap, not a deduction. Claiming it would overstate their expenses by more than $1,700.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I deduct 73 cents a kilometre as a self-employed Canadian? No. That rate caps tax-free allowances employers pay employees. A sole proprietor deducts actual vehicle expenses multiplied by business-use percentage, using Chart A of Form T2125, on line 9281.

Do I need a mileage app to claim vehicle expenses? No. A paper logbook or spreadsheet with each business trip's date, destination, purpose and kilometres, plus start and end odometer readings, meets the CRA's description. An app makes it easier to record trips as they happen.

Does the CRA certify mileage apps? No. "CRA-compliant" is the vendor's own description. What counts is a complete log backed by odometer readings.

Do I have to keep a full logbook every year? No. After one full base year, the CRA accepts a three-month sample logbook in later years, as long as business use stays within 10% of the base year.

Why does my business-use percentage need odometer readings? The percentage is business kilometres over total kilometres, and the odometer is the reliable record of the total. An app that logged only business trips does not know it.

Is automatic trip detection worth paying for? If you make many short business drives, usually yes, because missed trips are the usual gap in a logbook. You still classify each trip and add its purpose. A few client visits a week can be entered by hand.