An ABRP alternative — for the trip around the charging

Last updated August 2026 · an honest look at Stopful as a A Better Route Planner alternative — including where A Better Route Planner is still the better choice

A Better Route Planner is the reference tool for one question: where do I charge, given my exact car? People look for an alternative when the question is bigger than that — a week of stops, nights and hotels around the charging — or when they want something simpler than a battery simulator for a car with ample range.

Stopful plans the trip. Drop your stops and it routes between them with drive time per leg, splits the days, finds hotels — and draws fast chargers (43 kW and up, from Open Charge Map) along each leg, colour-coded by speed, with Tesla Superchargers flagged and stall counts shown. Around that: a budget that estimates the charging cost of your drive legs, a pre-booking estimate of what the whole trip will cost, booking emails forwarded straight into the itinerary, and no-account sharing. It's the EV road-trip planner half of the problem — the half ABRP leaves to you.

Stopful vs A Better Route Planner, feature by feature

Feature	Stopful (this site)	A Better Route Planner
Price	Free	Free / ~$50·yr
Works with no account	Yesplan, save & share	Partialplan yes, save no
Stops per trip (free)	Up to 60	Generous
Map-first planning	Yes	Yes
Drive time & distance per leg	Yes	Yesincl. charging time
Auto day-splitting	Yesby max km/day	Nosplits by charge, not days
Hotel booking w/ dates & guests prefilled	Yes	No
Warns when an overnight stop has no bed booked	Yes	No
EV chargers along the route	Yes	Yesplans charge stops from your battery
Budget / expense tracking	Yes+ fuel & toll estimate	No
Cost estimate before anything is booked	Yeswhole trip, by region & season	Partialcharging cost only
Forward a booking email → itinerary	Yes	No
Real-time collaboration	Partialshare-link, async	No
Share via link (recipient needs no account)	Yes	Yesplan link
Native mobile app / offline	Noweb app, responsive	YesCarPlay / Android Auto
Curated attractions / POI database	PartialAI suggestions	Partialchargers + amenities
Built-in AI trip planning	YesClaude	No
Agent / API access (MCP server)	Yesunique	No

● Yes ● Partial / paid / limited ● No. Free-tier behaviour where a paid tier exists. Competitor data verified July 2026; Stopful's own rows are current as of August 2026. Pricing and features change — check each provider's site.

What will the trip cost — before you book anything?

Every planner here can record money you have already spent. Only one answers the question that comes first: roughly what will this trip cost, and if it's too much, where do I cut? Stopful's Budget tab has an Estimate view that prices a whole itinerary before a single booking exists.

The whole trip, not just fuel — stays per night, food and getting around per person per day, things to do, flight, train and bus fares per leg, plus fuel and tolls worked out from the real route.
Priced by where you are going — more than 150 regions and cities carry their own cost index, so Sardinia isn't priced as mainland Italy and the Swiss Alps aren't priced as France.
And by when — month-by-month seasonality per region. The Mediterranean peaks in August, the Alps peak in February, and the model knows the difference.
And by who's going — rooms are priced by occupancy rather than headcount, a child of 12+ takes an adult's place, an under-2 sleeps in a cot for free, and Friday and Saturday nights carry a premium.
And by how you travel — Budget, Standard or Comfort, with per-category multipliers, because lodging spans an order of magnitude and a metro ticket costs what it costs.
A range, not false precision — every figure is a ± band, and the bands combine statistically (in quadrature) rather than stacking on top of each other, so the range stays narrow enough to be worth reading.
Ranked, so you can act on it — the breakdown sorts by what costs most and groups by place or by category, which is what actually answers "where do I cut".
It never touches your real money — the estimate is derived live from the itinerary and stays structurally separate from logged expenses. Bookings reconcile against it; they never quietly shrink it.

Because it is derived rather than stored, it moves as you plan: add a night, change the party, swap a drive for a flight, and the number follows — and two different trips are directly comparable before either is booked. It is free, needs no account, and works on a trip with zero bookings.

You can see what it produces without signing up for anything: what a road trip costs prices 22 destinations and 37 real routes with this exact model — a night, a day's food, a day's local transport, and the same trip in all twelve months.

When A Better Route Planner is still the better choice

For the charging math itself, ABRP wins and it isn't close: it simulates your exact car's battery — state of charge, elevation, weather, arrival percentages — and plans charge stops accordingly, with live data and in-car use in its premium tier. Stopful deliberately doesn't simulate batteries. If your car's range makes a leg genuinely tight, plan the trip in Stopful and sanity-check the charging in ABRP — the two tools don't overlap, they stack.

Try Stopful

Plan a trip on the map →

Free · no account · drive times, day splits, stays, EV chargers, and an estimate of what it'll all cost before you book.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a simpler alternative to A Better Route Planner?

For planning the trip, yes — Stopful is a free, map-first road-trip planner that shows fast chargers (43 kW+) along every leg without asking for your battery size or arrival state of charge. For the charging simulation itself, ABRP remains the specialist.

Does Stopful plan charging stops for my EV?

It shows you where the fast chargers are along each leg — speeds, operators, stall counts, Tesla Superchargers flagged — and you choose your stops. It does not simulate your battery or pick stops from your state of charge; that's ABRP's job, and the two work well together.

Which EV trip planner shows Tesla Superchargers?

Both. Stopful flags Superchargers with their own marker and stall counts on the trip map, using Open Charge Map data. ABRP includes them in its charge-stop planning with car-specific charging curves.

Can Stopful estimate what charging will cost on a road trip?

Yes, as part of the whole-trip picture: the Budget tab estimates the fuel or charging cost of your drive legs alongside stays, food, activities and fares — a planning range for the entire trip, which is a different job from ABRP's per-session charging cost.

ABRP vs Stopful — which should I use?

Use ABRP when the charging is the hard part: long legs, small battery, winter, an exact arrival percentage to hit. Use Stopful when the trip is the hard part: stops, nights, hotels near chargers, what it all costs, and a plan you can share. Many EV drivers plan the trip in Stopful and check tight legs in ABRP.

Compare with other planners

This comparison reflects publicly available information about A Better Route Planner as of July 2026 and our own testing, and is maintained by Stopful. We've aimed to be fair, including where A Better Route Planner is the better tool. Features and pricing change; verify current details on A Better Route Planner's website. Product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.