Best Free Pilot Logbook Apps in 2026

Five of the logbook apps a student pilot hears about are free to start, and three of them stop being free at a number: 50 hours for LogTen, 100 flights for CrewLounge PILOTLOG, 250 hours for Wingman. The two that never stop being free, MyFlightbook and ZuluLog, pay their bills in other ways. ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot have good logbooks and neither is free at all. Every price and limit below was read from the vendor's own page in October 2026, and the links go to those pages so you can see whether anything has moved.

The question that matters more than price is what happens to your entries when you leave. A logbook is a legal record. 14 CFR 61.51(a) requires you to document training and aeronautical experience "in a manner acceptable to the Administrator", and nothing in that section cares which app you used. What it does require is that the record exist and be produced on request (61.51(i)). So the first test of a free app is whether it hands your data back, in a format another app can read, on the day you stop paying or the day the vendor stops existing.

The free tiers side by side

Free-tier limits, prices and export formats below are as published on each vendor's site, checked October 2026; prices are annual list prices in the currency the vendor quotes.

MyFlightbook is free with no ceiling

MyFlightbook has been free since 2006, runs on donations, and its FAQ says plainly that the service "is not run for profit" and that "there are no salaries to pay" (MyFlightbook FAQ). It is web first, with iOS and Android apps that save to the same account. Download is a CSV or a PDF laid out to EASA FCL.050 guidelines. Import accepts CSV from ForeFlight and LogTen Pro with one caveat the FAQ spells out: custom fields arrive under headers the importer cannot interpret until you rename them.

The risk is the one the FAQ names itself. One person runs it. The same page answers with named backup administrators, a written transition plan, code in two repositories, and an open-source codebase, so anyone holding a backup could stand up their own copy. That is a better continuity answer than most paid vendors publish. It is still a reason to export a CSV every few months.

What you get for nothing is a complete logbook, with currency, endorsements, ratings progress and an 8710 report, behind an interface built by an engineer rather than a design team (About MyFlightbook).

ZuluLog gives the logbook away and sells the extras

ZuluLog's account is free; its Google Play listing says "This app and your ZuluLog.com account are free to use" (ZuluLog on Google Play, checked October 2026). The web app does the logbook, currency alerts and totals for airline applications, and the mobile app on iPad, iPhone and Android adds an EFB with charts, approach plates and ADS-B weather and traffic through a receiver (ZuluLog). Export is PDF and Excel.

What ZuluLog does not publish is a price list a visitor can read without an account. The home page says paid service costs "just a few dollars a month" and stops there. Treat the free tier as real and the upgrade price as something to confirm inside the app before you depend on a paid feature. The pitch is independence: no ads, no tracking cookies, backups at several sites across the United States, and phone support from an FAA-certificated pilot.

Wingman and CrewLounge PILOTLOG are built for airline crews

Both are free up to a limit, and both are aimed at crews who import rosters, which changes what the free tier is for.

Wingman's free plan logs up to 250 hours, exports summaries and logbooks as PDF and Excel, and runs on iOS, Android and the web; Pro removes the hour limit for $4.99 a month billed annually (Wingman pricing, checked October 2026). The headline feature is automatic roster import from airline crew systems. For a student that is irrelevant. But 250 hours covers a private certificate and an instrument rating with room to spare, and exports are not restricted on the free plan.

CrewLounge PILOTLOG's Student edition is free for 100 flight records on desktop (Mac and Windows) and mobile (iOS and Android), prints 60 official logbook formats, and imports from 50 other logbooks; Enterprise lifts the record limit for 39.99 euros a year (PILOTLOG pricing, checked October 2026). It is sold by AvioBook, a Thales Group company. One hundred flights is roughly a private certificate. Count your flights, not your hours, before you commit.

LogTen's 50 free hours can end before the checkride

LogTen is free "for your first 50 hours logged", then $79.99 a year for Basic or $129.99 for Pro, which adds the Mac app and airline schedule import (LogTen pricing, checked October 2026). It runs on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, with Mac in the Pro tier. No Android or web version is listed.

LogTen's own page says 50 free hours "means free right up to your PPL". The Part 61 minimum is 40 hours (14 CFR 61.109(a)), and a minimum is not a forecast. If your training runs past 50 hours, the free period ends with the checkride still ahead of you, which is the worst week to be deciding whether to pay for a logbook. Decide before hour 40.

What the money buys is substantial: more than 100 report formats, duty and rest tracking, digital signatures, and a career-search feature still in beta. The pricing page lists reporting rather than a raw data export, so run the export yourself inside the free period and see what comes out.

ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot: logbooks that come with the EFB

Neither is a free logbook. ForeFlight's cheapest plan, Starter, is $130 a year and includes the Digital Logbook alongside planning, charts and weather (ForeFlight pricing, checked October 2026). The logbook tracks currency, holds more than 60 endorsement templates drawn from AC 61-65H, builds an 8710 report, supports remote instructor signing, and the product page says "you can export your entire logbook any time you want from the ForeFlight website" (ForeFlight Logbook). It runs on iPad and iPhone and on ForeFlight Web. What happens to those entries once you stop paying is its own question, answered in what a lapsed ForeFlight subscription does to your logbook.

Garmin Pilot's US Standard plan is $109.99 a year and Premium is $209.98; the Pilot Logbook row appears under both tiers in Garmin's plan comparison, and new users get a 30-day trial (Garmin Pilot catalog, checked October 2026). Garmin's overview page attaches a "requires premium upgrade subscription" footnote to its line about logging flights and engine data, so confirm what Standard includes before buying on the logbook alone (Garmin Pilot overview). The logbook syncs to flyGarmin, where an import and export tool moves entries as CSV through a template (Garmin blog, 2016).

If you already pay for either EFB, its logbook costs nothing extra. If you do not, buying an EFB to get a logbook is backwards. The two apps are compared properly in ForeFlight vs Garmin Pilot.

Is a free logbook app legal for FAA purposes?

A free app satisfies 14 CFR 61.51 exactly as well as a paid one, because 61.51(a) asks only that training time and aeronautical experience be documented "in a manner acceptable to the Administrator". What the rule does specify is content. Paragraph (b) wants the date, total time, departure and arrival locations, the type and identification of the aircraft, the kind of experience (solo, PIC, dual) and the conditions of flight (day, night, instrument). Every app above has fields for those.

Where free apps differ is endorsements. 61.51(h)(2) requires logged training to be "endorsed in a legible manner by the authorized instructor" with the instructor's signature, certificate number and expiration date. Check that your app can hold a signature image or a signed PDF, or keep endorsements on paper and photograph them in. You will be showing those endorsements at the practical test, and a logbook that lives only on a phone is a poor way to open the oral. Print or export before test day.

The lock-in test takes ten minutes

Before you log a real flight in a new app, give it 10 minutes and run it through this:

1. Enter 3 flights, including one with a remark and one with an instructor endorsement.
2. Export in every format offered. Open the CSV in a spreadsheet and confirm the three flights, the remark and the landing counts came through.
3. Import that file into a second app and see what is lost. MyFlightbook's FAQ documents the usual casualty: custom fields, which arrive with headers like "[Hours]Night Vision" that the receiving app cannot place until you rename them.
4. Note what did not export at all. Signatures, photos and endorsement images are the usual gaps.

If the first app is ForeFlight, the export steps are in how to export your ForeFlight logbook. FlyFren, which we build, imports CSV exports from ForeFlight, Garmin Pilot and LogTen Pro and shows every entry for review before anything is saved, then exports the whole logbook as CSV (FlyFren logbook). We mention it here because the preview step is the part of this test most importers skip.

Who should pick which

• Zero cost, no limits, and a plain interface is fine: MyFlightbook.
• An independent vendor, with a basic EFB available later: ZuluLog.
• An airline career ahead and roster import eventually: Wingman.
• Desktop first, with many printed report formats: CrewLounge PILOTLOG.
• Apple only, career focused, willing to pay from hour one: LogTen.
• Already paying for ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot: use the logbook you own.

Whichever you choose, put a repeating reminder in your calendar to export a CSV every 3 months, and keep that file somewhere that is not the app. The regulation does not care where the record lives (14 CFR 61.51); the examiner and your future self care that it exists.

This article is educational and is not a substitute for the current regulations, the AIM, official weather briefings, or instruction from a CFI. Check the current text at the linked sources before you rely on any detail.