The MileIQ Price Increase, Explained
MileIQ's Unlimited plan costs $13.99 per month as of mid-2026, up from $8.99 earlier in the year, and from $5.99 before that: a bit more than a doubling in under a year. The free tier still caps automatic tracking at 40 drives per month. The increases followed MileIQ's 2025 acquisition by Bending Spoons and arrived without a comparably sized change in what the product does. Here's the timeline, the math, and what the options look like if you're re-evaluating, including, in the last section, where our own product fits, since we make one of the alternatives.
The timeline
- Before 2026: MileIQ Unlimited at $5.99/month. For years this was the price that made "just pay for the mileage app" an easy call.
- Around the turn of 2026: the first increase, to $8.99/month.
- May 2026: the second increase, to $13.99/month, or $11.66/month billed annually ($139.92/year).
- Verified today (July 28, 2026) against MileIQ's own pricing page: $13.99 monthly, $11.66/month annual, free tier at 40 drives/month.
The context
In July 2025, MileIQ was acquired by Bending Spoons, the Milan-based operator of a large app portfolio. Repricing acquired apps upward is a well-documented part of that playbook across its portfolio, and MileIQ followed the pattern within a year. The increases did not coincide with a major feature expansion; App Store reviews since have shown sustained pushback from long-time subscribers, and search interest in "MileIQ alternative" and "MileIQ price increase" has risen enough that most competing mileage apps now publish switch-away comparisons.
None of this makes MileIQ a bad product. Its automatic drive detection is mature, and the swipe-to-classify flow remains one of the simplest in the category. The question the price change raises is narrower: is drive tracking alone worth $139.92 to $167.88 a year to you?
The annual math
| Plan | Monthly | Effective per year |
|---|---|---|
| MileIQ Unlimited (monthly) | $13.99 | $167.88 |
| MileIQ Unlimited (annual) | $11.66 | $139.92 |
| MileIQ Free | $0 | $0, capped at 40 drives/month |
Forty drives a month sounds like a lot until you count round trips: 20 client visits, and the cap is gone before mid-month for most working freelancers. The free tier is a trial in practice, which is fair, but it means the real price of using MileIQ as a business tool is the Unlimited number.
What the alternatives look like
The mileage-tracking market now splits into three shapes:
- Dedicated mileage apps (TripLog, Driversnote, Everlance, and others): comparable single-purpose tools, most priced below MileIQ's new number, each with its own free-tier limits and detection trade-offs.
- Do-nothing options: a paper log or spreadsheet meets IRS substantiation rules at $0, at the cost of doing it manually every drive. This is a real option and worth naming honestly.
- Business toolkits that include mileage capture, tools where mileage is one surface of a broader freelancer money product. This is the category we're in, so read the next section knowing that.
Where Savi Tools fits
Savi Tools makes mileage capture free, with no drive cap. Capture, mileage, expenses, receipt scans within monthly limits, is free forever on our free tier; that isn't a trial window. What's paid is the output layer: the tax-ready mileage report, exports, invoicing, Accountant Mode, and sync, which start on Solo at $9/month.
Said out loud, so you're not surprised after switching: if you want the mileage report your accountant files from, that's a paid feature here. A MileIQ switcher who wants report-grade output lands at $9/month, below MileIQ's $11.66–$13.99, and Solo includes invoicing, receipt OCR, profitability reports, and the Tax Set-Aside Calculator alongside mileage. If all you want is to capture drives and look at them, the free tier does that with no cap and no 40-drive ceiling. And your history comes with you: export a report from MileIQ, import the CSV free on any account, and every business drive is valued at the IRS rate for its date, even across midyear rate changes.
That's the honest comparison: MileIQ is a mature single-purpose tracker at $139.92+/year; Savi Tools is free capture plus a $108/year toolkit when you want the outputs. Which one fits depends on whether mileage is your whole problem or one piece of it.
Savi Tools helps you track deductible mileage; it does not provide tax advice. Mileage deduction rules and substantiation requirements are the IRS's, talk to your accountant about your situation. Never get surprised at tax time.