A Navionics Alternative for the One Job of Saving Spots
If you want a Navionics alternative just to save your spots, you do not need another chart subscription. Wakelog does the one job — remember your marks and point you back to them — for $12.99 a year or $49.99 once, offline, with everything stored on your phone. It is a memory aid. You keep navigating with your charts. So run Navionics or your chartplotter for the actual charts, and let Wakelog hold your numbers.
This guide covers what Navionics is really built for, why holding a list of spots should not cost a yearly chart fee, and how to run both together without giving up anything.
What Navionics is actually built for
Navionics is a chart app. Its job is showing you where the water is deep, where the rocks are, where the channel runs, and how to get from the ramp to the inlet without touching bottom. The depth contours, the SonarChart shading, the dock-to-dock routing, all of that is the product, and it is genuinely good at it. The subscription pays for keeping those charts current. Surveys change, shoals move, markers get repositioned.
Saving a spot is a side feature over there. You can drop a mark on the chart, sure, but the whole app is built around the chart itself. Your marks just ride on top of it. That is why so many people asking for a Navionics alternative are really after one thing: their saved spots, without paying for a full chart app every year.
Why a Navionics alternative shouldn't need a chart subscription
A saved spot is a pair of coordinates and a note. A depth reading, a tide stage, what you caught. None of that needs a survey-grade chart under it to be worth keeping. The chart tells you how to reach the general area safely. Your own eyes, your sounder, and your saved mark do the last hundred yards.
The frustration behind the search is real and recent. Navionics moved to a yearly subscription, and the US and Canada region climbed to around $50 a year, with a lot of grumbling every renewal. Miss the renewal and your charts stop updating. Paying that much forever to hold a list of GPS points you already earned feels backwards. Current charts are worth paying for when you need current charts. Your honey holes are not the thing that should rent themselves back to you every spring.
The one job: remember your spots, offline
Wakelog does one thing. You drop a pin the moment you are sitting on a fish, a wreck, a grass edge, or a clean sandbar, and it holds that spot with whatever notes you add. When you want to go back, "Take me back" shows a live bearing and distance to the mark, and it updates as you idle in. It points; you drive.
The part that matters out there is offline. Save an area once and the map, your pins, and dropping new pins all work with zero bars, three miles out, in a dead cell zone. You are not watching a chart crawl in over a single bar of signal while you drift off the spot.
A few things are worth logging with each pin, because the dot alone rarely tells you enough later:
- Depth and what the bottom read on the sounder: hard, soft, structure, bait.
- Tide stage and direction, and the time. Plenty of spots only fire on one stage.
- Wind and the conditions that day.
- What you caught, how many, and on what.
Over a season those notes turn a scatter of pins into a pattern: this ledge on the last two hours of the outgoing, that flat on a morning high. The pattern is the real catch. Any single mark is just a dot on the map.
What it does not do: charts and navigation
Being straight about this is the whole point. Wakelog is not a chart app and it is not a chartplotter. It does not show depth contours, channel markers, hazards, or a safe route. "Take me back" points a straight bearing to your saved spot. It does not route you around a shoal, a closed area, or a lee shore. Treat it as a memory aid and nothing more.
So keep your charts. Navigate with Navionics, your Garmin or Lowrance plotter, or paper, whatever you already trust to keep you off the bottom. Wakelog rides alongside that. It remembers the numbers, and your charts keep you safe on the way to them.
Run charts and Wakelog together
This is the setup that actually works. Your chartplotter or Navionics handles the water: depth, routing, hazards, getting you from the ramp to the general area. Wakelog handles your private list of spots, on the phone already in your pocket.
The good part is you are not tied to one helm. Marks on a fixed plotter live and die with that unit. If you fish off a buddy's boat one weekend, a kayak the next, and the surf after that, the phone is the GPS that comes with you every time. Run in on your charts, then let Wakelog point you the last stretch to the exact spot you saved last fall.
Export to GPX so nothing is locked in
A logbook you cannot get your data out of is a trap. Wakelog exports everything to GPX and JSON whenever you want. The GPX file drops your saved spots straight into a Garmin, Lowrance, or Navionics, so the marks you build in Wakelog can live on your plotter too. The JSON is a plain copy you keep for backup.
That answers the quiet worry with any on-device app: what happens if you lose the phone. You keep your own export somewhere safe, and your spots survive a dead battery or a new phone. Nobody else holds them, and you are never locked into one app.
What you actually pay
Here is the plain comparison. A chart subscription renews every year because charts have to stay current, and the US and Canada region runs around $50 annually. That is fair for charts. It is a lot for holding a list of coordinates.
Wakelog is 14 days free, then $12.99 a year or $49.99 once for life. There is no monthly plan. Buy it once and your spot logbook is yours, with no renewal clock on your own numbers. You still pay your chart app for charts. You just stop renting your honey holes back every spring.
Common questions
Is Wakelog a replacement for Navionics?
No. Navionics is a chart and navigation app; Wakelog only saves your spots and points you back to them. Most people run both — charts for getting there safely, Wakelog for remembering the exact numbers.
Can I use Wakelog without any cell signal?
Yes. Save an area once and the map, your saved pins, and dropping new pins all work offline with zero bars.
Will my saved spots stay private?
Yes. Everything is stored on your phone. There is no account, no server, and no feed, so nothing about your spots leaves the device unless you export it yourself.
Can I move my spots to my chartplotter?
Yes. Wakelog exports to GPX, which imports into Garmin, Lowrance, and Navionics, and to JSON for a plain backup.
One tool that does this
Wakelog is a private logbook for your spots on the water, built for the single job of remembering them and getting you back. You drop a pin in two taps, tag it (Fish, Snorkel, Dive, Sandbar, Anchor), and add your notes, and "Take me back" points a live bearing and distance when you want to return. It points; you drive. Everything stays on your phone, with no account, no server, and no feed, and it works offline with zero bars. Export to GPX and JSON anytime, so your marks are never locked in. It's on the App Store for iPhone now: 14 days free, then $12.99 a year or $49.99 once for life.