park4night, Campercontact and CaraMaps compared for motorhome trips in Europe: overnight spots, water and waste services, offline areas and verified stopovers.
A campervan trip is not a hotel search: you need a place where overnight parking is legal, a tap for fresh water, a point for grey and black waste, and ideally a flat surface. Google Maps barely knows that layer exists, so motorhomers rely on databases maintained by the community. The 2 apps in this guide are the two that dominate European travel. park4night contributes the continent's largest traveller community with recent photos and comments, while Campercontact brings a long-running verified database with precise service information; we chose both because experienced travellers genuinely use them together, one for ground truth, one for reliability, rather than crowning a redundant winner.
park4night is Europe's largest camper community — around 9 million travellers rating overnight spots with photos, facilities and recent comments.
The essential app of the van world: nearly 9 million travellers share and rate places to spend the night, from official aires and campsites to quiet corners in nature, each entry listing available facilities — water, waste disposal, electricity — plus photos and comments that reveal whether a spot is still open, level or quietly tolerated. Those recent notes are the real product, because a published database cannot say that a car park filled with cars last month. The best filters and the offline mode are paid features, popular spots get crowded once they become public, and legality is the user's responsibility — local bans change, and the app flags expressly permitted sites. For anyone touring Spain or wider Europe it is the first download; pair it with Campercontact's verified data.
Campercontact is the verified, long-running stopover database: precise service data — water, dump, power, price, overnight permission — and offline areas.
One of Europe's oldest motorhome-stopover databases, Campercontact lists tens of thousands of spots and distinguishes itself through structured, verified information: every entry states clearly whether drinking water, a dump station and electricity are available, what staying costs and whether overnight parking is permitted — the boring facts that prevent a wasted detour. After downloading an area's data, the app works fully offline, which matters on rural routes. Access to those offline features requires payment, rural parts of Spain are thinner than the coasts, and the interface looks its age compared with park4night's busier, photo-led screens. Use it as the reliable reference, and park4night for the human commentary; most motorhomers keep both installed.
Pros
Large database of verified European spots
Exact services: water, dump, power, price
Offline after downloading the area
Cons
Offline functions are paid
Thinner coverage in rural Spain
Interface feels dated
Download price only. In-app purchases and subscriptions may cost extra.
Questions & answers
Can you park up overnight anywhere in a motorhome?
No. Spain distinguishes parking from camping. Parking is allowed wherever any vehicle may legally park, provided nothing extends beyond the vehicle's footprint — no chairs, awning or levelling legs out. The moment you deploy equipment it counts as camping, which depends on municipal or regional rules and is banned in many coastal and protected areas. The apps indicate sites where overnight stays are expressly allowed; a quiet side street is not automatically legal.
Which is the best camper-spot app?
park4night for most travellers: the largest number of registered spots in Europe and, more importantly, recent comments and photos warning when a site has closed, been blocked off or filled with cars. Campercontact is the more reliable source for structured service data — whether water, drainage and power actually exist — which is why a lot of motorhomers run both, using one for discovery and the other for verification.
Do these apps work without signal?
Only in their paid versions. park4night, Campercontact and CaraMaps all reserve offline use for subscribers, yet offline is precisely the feature you value in unpopulated areas with no coverage. On a long cross-country route, one subscription usually pays for itself the first time it prevents an arrival at a closed, unserviced spot; for a single weekend near the coast, mobile data may suffice.
Where can I empty tanks and fill with water?
At dedicated motorhome service areas, at many petrol stations with a camper point, and at practically every campsite, which usually permits emptying and refilling for a small fee even to non-residents. Both apps filter the map to show only points with drinking water or grey- and black-water disposal, so plan the next service stop before the tank dictates the route. Carry the app's offline data for rural stretches where stations are sparse.
More related apps
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