See your boat on the map,
wherever the water takes you.

Live tracking for narrowboats and cruisers on the UK canals and rivers. Share your position with friends and family, plan routes through the locks, and connect any GPS device — or your own Node-RED flow.

No app to install · works on any phone · Pro from £14.40/year.

Advertisement

On board

Everything you need on the cut

Built for inland waterways, not the open sea.

Live position

Your boat's location updates in real time on the map, with speed and heading.

Live trip strip

While you're under way, a strip across the top of the map shows today's speed, miles, locks passed and moving time — and tucks itself away when you moor.

What's next ahead

The strip also names what's coming — the next lock, winding hole, water point or one of your own waypoints — with the distance and time to it. Measured along the canal in the direction you're going, so the lock round the next bend counts and the one you've just left doesn't.

Track from your phone

Tap once to share your phone's GPS live — no extra kit. Drop through a signal blackspot and fixes are buffered, then re-sent so your track fills back in. Three ways to connect: this browser, the free OwnTracks app, or a tracker aboard. Setup guide →

Share with friends

Invite family and boating friends to follow your boats — no account needed to be added.

Route planning

Plan a trip along the waterway network with distance, lock count and estimated time. Click as many stops as you like — the pins number themselves in the order you'll reach them, and the route follows.

Save waypoints

Mark moorings, water points and hazards. Free accounts save 10; Pro is unlimited.

Track history

Look back over where you've been, scrub through the day and add up the miles. Pro keeps the lot — every trip, the whole season. Free stores your last position only; the trial keeps 5 days.

Export your data

Download your tracks and waypoints as GeoJSON or GPX — open them in QGIS, Google Earth, OsmAnd or Strava. On every plan: you get whatever we hold for you, and Pro is what makes that the whole season.

Add to your home screen

On iPhone, tap Share → Add to Home Screen: Track My Boat gets its own icon and opens full-screen, just like a native app.

Private & secure

Encrypted connections, your data stays yours, and you choose who sees your boat.

Tinkerers welcome

Bring your own tracker — including Node-RED

Track My Boat speaks the open OwnTracks protocol over HTTP or secure MQTT. Use the free OwnTracks phone app, a dedicated GPS tracker, or wire it straight into a Node-RED flow on your boat's Raspberry Pi — push a position from your own sensors, battery monitor or chart plotter in a couple of nodes. Lose the internet mid-cruise and the Node-RED node buffers each fix, then re-sends it — with its real timestamp — the moment you're back on.

Already running a Victron Cerbo GX? Flash the free Venus OS Large image and you get Node-RED built in, alongside the GX device's own GPS support (USB, NMEA 2000 or a virtual GPS via GPSd). Drop in the Victron nodes to read your live position and battery state of charge, then send them straight to Track My Boat over MQTT — no extra hardware, no separate tracker.

Connect a device Setup guide
[GPS] → [function] msg.payload = { _type: "location", lat: msg.lat, lon: msg.lon, tst: Date.now()/1000 } ↓ [mqtt out] owntracks/<you>/<boat> → trackmyboat.co.uk:8883 (TLS)

Pricing

Simple pricing

Try everything for 14 days. Keep tracking for free after that, or go Pro to keep the record.

Free

£0

Tracking and sharing, for as long as you like.

  • Live tracking & sharing
  • Route planning
  • Next lock & facilities ahead
  • Up to 10 saved waypoints
  • Export your data any time
  • Your last position — no track history
Get started

Pro trial

14 days free

Every new account. No card needed.

  • Everything in Free
  • Unlimited waypoints
  • Add more than one boat
  • No ads
  • 5 days of history, not your full record
Start the trial
BEST VALUE

Pro

£14.40 / year inc. VAT

The full record of everywhere you've been.

  • Everything in the trial
  • Full, unlimited history
  • Export your whole season
  • Kept 30 days if you lapse
  • Support a one-person project
Go Pro

Free is a live tracker, not an archive: it stores where your boat is now, and replaces it each time the boat moves. History — the track behind you, the miles, the trip replay — is what Pro is for. You can download whatever we're holding for you on any plan; Pro is what makes that your whole season.

Chandlery

Kit we like

Gear that pairs well with life on the cut. Some links are affiliate links — if you buy through them we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you.

GPS trackers

A dedicated OwnTracks-compatible tracker keeps reporting even when your phone isn't aboard.

View →

Solar & battery monitors

Keep the leisure batteries topped up off-grid and always know your state of charge. A Victron Cerbo GX doubles as your Node-RED tracker.

View →

Waterways guides

Nicholson and Pearson canal guides — the classic paper companions for planning a cruise.

View →

Lifejackets

Auto-inflating buoyancy aids for you and the crew — especially around locks.

View →

Raspberry Pi kits

Run Node-RED on board and push positions from your own sensors straight into the app.

View →

Mooring essentials

Pins, mallet, ropes and a windlass — everything you need to tie up for the night.

View →

Contact

Get in touch

Questions about Track My Boat, Pro, or connecting a device? Drop us a line and we'll get back to you.

FAQ

Questions

The short answers.

How do I pay?

By bank transfer through Wise, from inside the app. We confirm payments by hand, so Pro switches on once we've matched yours — usually within a day. Pro is £14.40 per year including VAT, it's a one-off payment rather than a rolling subscription, and we email you a VAT receipt. Sold by Incanus Ltd to UK customers.

Is there a free trial?

Yes. Every new account gets 14 days of Pro free — unlimited waypoints, extra boats, no ads and 5 days of track history — so you can see how it all works before you decide. No card needed to start, and you drop back to the free plan automatically if you don't upgrade.

One thing is held back for subscribers, and it's the history itself: the trial keeps 5 days rather than the lot. Export works on the trial — download those 5 days whenever you like.

What does the free plan actually store?

Your boat's last known position — where it is now — and nothing behind it. Each time a new fix arrives it replaces the one before, so there's no track to scrub through, no trip replay and no mileage to add up. Live tracking, sharing, route planning and the next-lock strip all work exactly as they do on Pro.

Pro is what keeps the record. Every fix, for as long as you have the account, plus export. If you subscribe and later stop, we hold your full history for another 30 days so nothing is lost to a missed renewal.

What device do I need on the boat?

Any phone with the free OwnTracks app, a standalone GPS tracker that speaks OwnTracks, or your own Node-RED / Raspberry Pi setup. If you run a Victron Cerbo GX on Venus OS Large, its built-in Node-RED and GPS can report straight to us. Our setup guide walks through each option step by step.

Can it track in the background?

Yes — two of the three connection options do. The free OwnTracks app reports with the screen off and the phone in your pocket, and a hardware tracker or Node-RED setup runs without a phone aboard at all. Tracking from the browser needs the screen on and the app open, since phones pause GPS in the background. The setup guide covers all three.

Who can see my boat?

Only you and the friends you invite — unless you turn on a public share link for a boat. Nothing is public by default.

What happens to accounts that are never used?

We delete them. If an account hasn't added a boat or connected with a friend within 30 days of signing up, it's removed automatically — along with the email address we held for it. We'll email you twice first, a week before and again two days before, and adding a boat or accepting a friend's invite at any point keeps the account for good. It keeps the map honest and means we're not sitting on the details of people who signed up once and never came back.

If the email address was never confirmed, an unused account goes after 14 days instead, with no warning emails — we don't write to an address nobody has confirmed, since a mistyped one belongs to a stranger. Confirm your address and you're on the 30-day schedule with the warnings.

Can I get my data out?

Yes, on every plan. From Settings → Account you can download your boat tracks and saved waypoints as GeoJSON or GPX — standard formats you can open in QGIS, Google Earth, OsmAnd, Strava and most mapping tools.

What comes out is whatever we're holding for you, which is what your plan decides: on free that's your last known position and your waypoints, on a trial it's 5 days, and on Pro it's every trip you've ever made. We don't hold your data to ransom — Pro is what makes there be more of it, not what unlocks the door.

Do my friends show up in the OwnTracks app?

Yes. If you connect via OwnTracks in MQTT mode, the friends you've added in Track My Boat appear as friends on the map in your OwnTracks app too — and you on theirs. We only ever share a boat with its owner and their accepted friends, nothing wider.

Do I have to pay to be added as a friend?

No. Following someone else's boat is free. A subscription is per boat-owner account.