Best Offline Maps for the Annapurna Circuit
(2026 Comparison)
An honest look at five apps: which ones actually work without signal, and where global apps' Nepal data falls short.
Above Manang there is effectively no mobile data. NTC and Ncell coverage between villages is patchy the whole way up from Besisahar. Whatever app you choose must work fully offline - not "mostly offline" or "cached from last use", but deliberately downloaded before you leave Pokhara. Most global apps pass that first test. Very few pass the second: Nepal trail data must actually be correct. On the Annapurna Circuit, wrong data is a safety liability.
We tested five apps against the conditions the circuit actually presents: patchy signal, long stages above 3,500 m, tea house-based navigation, and permit checkpoints that need to be hit in sequence. Here is what we found.
What actually matters at 4,000 m
Strip away the marketing and there are four things that decide whether an offline map app is useful on the upper Annapurna Circuit:
The honest comparison
Five apps, assessed against those four criteria.
Organic Maps / Maps.me
Both apps are genuinely free and work fully offline using OpenStreetMap data. Trail lines for the main Annapurna Circuit are present and broadly correct. What you do not get: tea house listings are thin and often missing, there are no trekking stages, no permit checkpoint markers, and no altitude safety layer. Organic Maps is the cleaner of the two. Fine to carry as a backup - do not rely on it as your primary navigation on the upper circuit.
OsmAnd
OsmAnd is the most feature-complete free offline map app available. It supports contour lines, GPX import, and detailed OSM data. The trade-off is a cluttered interface that takes real time to configure. The Nepal-specific data suffers the same OSM gap problem as Organic Maps: lodges, tea houses, and permit posts are sparsely and inconsistently mapped. The free tier limits how many map regions you can download.
Gaia GPS
Gaia has excellent topographic layer options and is popular with US backcountry hikers. Offline use requires a paid subscription. The core problem for Nepal: the detailed trekking data simply is not there. Trail lines exist but the points-of-interest layer for the Annapurna Circuit is US-centric and does not reflect the tea house economy or permit infrastructure that defines trekking in Nepal.
AllTrails
AllTrails has a few hundred trails recorded for all of Nepal combined - a country with some of the world's most-trekked routes. The Annapurna Circuit has an entry, but user-submitted tracks go unverified for long stretches and the point data is minimal. Offline access is locked behind the paid tier. For a route where the entire trail is the product, AllTrails is not the right tool.
EkTrek
EkTrek was built in Nepal specifically for the Annapurna region. The full trek data bundle - stages, tea houses, waypoints, permit checkpoints, and safety content - downloads on first launch and works with zero signal. GPS positioning works offline regardless of network. The AMS Safety Loop (daily Lake Louise symptom self-check, ascent-rate warnings against your planned itinerary, a descend-now decision gate before the pass) is the one feature no generic mapping app has. Honest caveat: map background tiles are cached as you browse the in-app map today; full pre-downloaded tile packs for the Annapurna corridor are rolling out ahead of the October 2026 season. The trail line, all POIs, and the safety data are always fully offline.
Our recommendation
Carry two apps. Use EkTrek for the Annapurna-specific data: stages, tea houses, permit checkpoints, and the AMS Safety Loop. Use Organic Maps or OsmAnd alongside it as a general-purpose backup for anything outside those pre-loaded points - a detour to a village, a road back to Besisahar, orientation if you are unsure which valley you are in.
Storage is cheap. A rescue helicopter from Thorong La costs upwards of USD 3,000 and depends on weather windows. Carrying both apps takes about 300 MB of combined storage and costs nothing.
EkTrek makes this app, so discount our bias as you see fit. The four criteria above are still the right framework regardless of which app you end up choosing. The data gaps in global apps for Nepal are documented and real - you can verify them by opening OsmAnd or Organic Maps in Manang and looking for tea house listings above Pisang. The AMS Safety Loop is a genuine gap in every competitor listed here; whether EkTrek's implementation of it is good enough is something you can judge on the trail.
Annapurna stages, tea houses, and AMS safety. All offline.
Built in Nepal for the Annapurna Circuit. Download the full data bundle before you leave Pokhara and it works from Besisahar to Muktinath without a single bar of signal.