Permit Radar
Federal, state and county — one map
Sold out doesn't mean gone.
The permits and campsites people plan a year around get cancelled every day. Those spots return to the pool with nobody watching. Permit Radar watches federal, state and county booking systems at once, and tells you the second one opens.
Free for campgrounds · iPhone · Never books for you
Every opening across three countries, on one screen.
Green means bookable right now. Triangles are wilderness trailheads, circles are campgrounds. Tap any pin for open dates and a link straight to the booking page. Zoom out and dense areas group into counts rather than dropping pins, so the map never quietly hides half of what is there.
See what is actually open
Most alert tools show you nothing until something changes, so an empty screen is indistinguishable from a broken app. Permit Radar shows current state as well as changes, filtered by state, by permits or campgrounds, and by how recently each was checked.
Every row carries its own timestamp. An opening checked two minutes ago is a different thing from one checked four hours ago, and the app never pretends otherwise.
One trailhead, not forty
A single wilderness permit covers dozens of trailheads spread across a thousand square miles. Every other tool alerts on the whole permit, so Happy Isles and a trailhead you would never hike arrive as the same notification.
Permit Radar pins each trailhead where it actually is, and lets you watch exactly the one you want.
It shows what your settings cost
Ask for five nights and watch the match count fall to zero in front of you. The usual reason an alert app goes quiet is that someone asked for too much, and nothing else tells you until three silent weeks have passed.
Pick a park and everything inside it is selected at once. Narrow it later, if the alerts get noisy. Not before.
It knows whether your rig actually fits.
Most campground tools treat an RV as a tent that costs more. Permit Radar reads what each agency publishes about each individual site, so a search for a 34 foot fifth wheel returns sites that hold one.
RV-capable places
Not just the ones with "RV" in the name. A dry drive-in site in a national forest counts, because that is where most people actually park.
With a posted length
Filter by rig length and only see what fits. Where no length was ever published the site says so instead of guessing.
Full hookup
Electric, water and sewer, read from the agency's own site records. Partial hookups and amperage where they publish them.
Cabins and lodges
Fire lookouts, guard stations, park cabins and concessioner lodges, watched the same way as campsites.
Pull-through, 50 amp and drive-in are filters too, and every one of them has three states rather than two: yes, no, and not published. A campground that never stated its rig length is not a campground that cannot take you, and the app never shows it as one.
Thirty-two booking systems. And the honest gaps.
Federal, state, county, and now Australia and New Zealand, in one map. Some of the most contested permits in the country cannot be watched by anyone, and we would rather you read that here than find out after paying.
Watched
- Recreation.gov — federal campgrounds, cabins, fire lookouts
- Wilderness permits — the Enchantments, Half Dome, Whitney, Boundary Waters, Desolation, Angels Landing
- ReserveCalifornia — every California state park campground
- ReserveAmerica — state and regional park contracts
- Australia — national, state and territory parks in NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the ACT
- New Zealand — Department of Conservation campsites and huts, plus i-SITE holiday parks
- Twenty-plus county and regional park systems
- Park lodges and cabins run by concessioners
- United States, Australia and New Zealand — 8,000+ places, one map
Cannot be watched
- Lottery and application permits — Grand Canyon backcountry, Glacier, Grand Teton, Great Smoky Mountains, both Coyote Buttes lotteries. They are on Recreation.gov, but publish no availability at all, so there is no cancellation to catch. The app labels every one of them rather than showing you an empty screen.
- Havasupai — the tribe sells permits through a login-only account system and handles cancellations as person-to-person transfers, so there is no public opening to catch. We do not automate tribal booking accounts.
- Phantom Ranch — concessioner lottery
- Private and commercial RV parks — KOA, Thousand Trails, harbor district parks
- State systems outside California and the ReserveAmerica contracts — added as adapters are built
- Canada — every national park campground and backcountry site is on the map, but availability is not connected yet, so there is nothing to watch there today
Campgrounds are free. Always.
Good campground alerting already exists for nothing, so charging for a slower copy of it would be silly. Permits, lodges and cabins are the part nobody else does properly, and they are what you pay for.
Free
- Campgrounds and RV sites across the US, Australia and New Zealand
- Three parks
- Checked every 15 minutes
- No card, no trial, no expiry
One trip
- One permit, thirty days
- Pro check rate while it runs
- Lodge watch $24.99
- Pay once, nothing to cancel
Pro
- Unlimited wilderness permit watches
- Watch a single trailhead, not the whole permit
- Checked every 2 minutes, not 15
- Unlimited parks
- Multi-night matching
Lodges
- Everything in Pro
- Park lodges and cabins
- Lodges checked every 30 seconds
- Any party size
Prices are what the App Store charges; nothing is billed anywhere else. A one-time watch is a consumable and does not renew, and neither annual plan auto-upgrades you to the other.
The ones worth asking.
Does it book the permit for me?
No, and it never will. Permit Radar tells you what opened and links you straight to the booking page, where you book it yourself. Automated booking is what turns public land into a scalping market, and it is a line we won't cross.
How fast is it really?
Free checks run every 15 minutes. Pro brings that to roughly every 2 minutes on Recreation.gov, and lodges on the Lodges plan are checked about every 30 seconds. Those are ceilings set per source, not a promise about any single moment, and the notification arrives within seconds of a check as a Time Sensitive alert that cuts through Focus.
Popular sites still get retaken in minutes, so every listing shows when it was last checked. An alert is a strong lead, not a guarantee.
Why am I not getting many alerts?
Almost always because the criteria are too tight. Minimum nights is the usual culprit, then a single trailhead, then weekends only. The app shows the live match count as you set it up, so you can see this before you save rather than after three silent weeks.
Does it handle RVs properly?
Yes, and that is a recent and deliberate rebuild. Over 2,700 places take an RV, 987 publish a maximum rig length, and the app filters on length, hookups, amperage, pull-through and drive-in access. Over 20,000 individual sites now carry a hookup class, read from each agency's own site records. Where an agency never published a rig length the app says "size not posted" rather than inventing one, because a campground that stayed quiet is not a campground that cannot take you.
Why can I not watch the Grand Canyon backcountry permit?
Because nothing to watch is published. Grand Canyon backcountry, Glacier, Grand Teton, Great Smoky Mountains and the Coyote Buttes lotteries are all on Recreation.gov, but they are lotteries and itinerary applications: there is no quota calendar and therefore no cancellation that can come back. We checked every endpoint Recreation.gov serves for each of them. The app marks these "lottery or application only" and will not sell you a watch on one.
Do I need an account?
No. No email, no password, no name. The app signs itself in anonymously on first launch, and there is nothing to remember or lose.
Is this allowed?
Yes. Permit Radar reads publicly published availability at a modest, steady rate, and never resells, transfers or holds a reservation. Your requests are never forwarded anywhere: the server checks once on behalf of everyone, so nothing identifies you to the booking system.
Which countries?
The United States, because the system it watches covers US federal lands. Other countries run entirely separate booking systems and will come later, if at all.
Free to start
Someone is about to cancel.
Be the one who is watching when they do.
iPhone · iOS 17 or later