The 5 Best Mountain Identifier Apps in 2026, Compared Honestly

Full disclosure: Mountain Identifier is our app, and it's in this comparison. To keep ourselves honest, every competitor fact on this page — ratings, prices, features — comes from each app's own public US App Store listing, checked on July 11, 2026, and every listing is linked below so you can verify in one tap. Our own store rating is 3.0★ from just 2 ratings — far too few to mean anything yet, and we'd rather print that than hide it. The other apps here have real rating histories, and we show them.

First, the thing most roundups skip: there are two kinds of app

"Mountain identifier" apps split into two genuinely different tools, and knowing the difference matters more than any star rating:

• Panorama apps (PeakFinder, PeakVisor, AR AlpineGuide) compute the skyline from your GPS position and a 3D terrain model, then label every summit around you — often fully offline. They shine when you're standing in front of the mountain, but they don't analyse your photo: you match the drawing to the view yourself, and they need to know where you're standing.
• AI photo apps (Mountain Identifier — ours — and a wave of lookalikes that appeared in late 2025) recognise the peak in a picture. That works on the photo you took last summer as well as the view in front of you, and it returns one answer with details, rather than labelling a whole skyline.

If you want the full field-craft version — maps, bearings, landmarks and when to trust an app at all — read our guide to how to identify a mountain.

All 5 apps at a glance

The pricing trap to watch: weekly subscriptions

Most AI identifier apps are free to download and monetise with a subscription — and the category's habit is a cheap-sounding weekly plan next to a pricier annual one. A $6.99/week plan costs about $363 a year if you forget to cancel. That warning applies to us too: Mountain Identifier's own $5.99 weekly plan works out to roughly $311 a year if left running — it exists for a single trip, and if you're keeping the app, the $24.99 annual plan is the only price that makes sense. And if you want no subscription at all, PeakFinder's $4.99 one-time price is the honest benchmark this category should be measured against.

Each app, honestly

Mountain Identifier (ours)

Mountain Identifier: Peak identifies the mountain in a photo — using AI recognition cross-checked against real nearby peaks via your location and compass heading — then shows a detail card with its elevation, prominence, range and country, saves it to your scan history, and lets you ask the built-in AI mountain guide follow-up questions. It's free to download with a $24.99/year plan for unlimited scans, and it's localised in 33 languages — the most in this comparison. The honest trade-offs: it needs a connection to identify, it launched in January 2026, and its rating base is tiny (3.0★ from 2 ratings as of July 11, 2026) — try it free and judge the results yourself rather than taking either number seriously.

PeakFinder

PeakFinder by PeakFinder GmbH — 4.7★ from 11,527 ratings, on the store since 2010, last updated 2026-07-06 (v4.8.81).

• Good: The reference app of the category — on the App Store since 2010, 4.7 stars across 11,527 US ratings.
• Good: Fully offline panorama rendering with a database of over a million peaks — ideal on a summit with no signal.
• Good: $4.99 once. No subscription, no in-app purchases, no ads — the cheapest way to own a peak identifier outright.
• Consider: It draws a computed panorama from your position rather than analysing your photo — you match the drawing to the skyline yourself.
• Consider: Paid up front: there's no free version to try first (Mountain Identifier and PeakVisor are free downloads).

Hiking and Skiing - PeakVisor

Hiking and Skiing - PeakVisor by Routes Software SRL — 4.6★ from 13,000 ratings, on the store since 2016, last updated 2026-07-08 (v5.101).

• Good: The most-reviewed dedicated peak app in this comparison — 4.6 stars across 13,000 US ratings.
• Good: Genuinely beautiful 3D terrain maps, plus trails, ski runs, huts and GPS tracking — a whole outdoor suite, not just an identifier.
• Good: Free to download and try before subscribing.
• Consider: PeakVisor Pro costs $39.99/year — 1.6× Mountain Identifier's $24.99 annual plan — and the $9.99 monthly compounds to ~$120/year.
• Consider: Its In-App Purchases list also shows a '3D Maps & AR Peak Finder' item at $159.00 with no billing period stated — check the paywall carefully.
• Consider: It's a big app (about 191 MB) built around live terrain — if you only want to name a peak in an old photo, it's a lot of machinery for the job.

AR AlpineGuide

AR AlpineGuide by NYANKO SOFTWARE — 4.6★ from 716 ratings, on the store since 2016, last updated 2026-07-07 (v4.62.2).

• Good: Genuinely free — its listing says all features are free to use, with only small ad-removal purchases ($0.99–$14.99).
• Good: Well rated (4.6 stars, 716 ratings) and actively maintained since 2016; its developer reports 2.5M downloads across platforms.
• Good: Can label peaks on photos you import — a rare feature among the panorama apps.
• Consider: Its listing shows three separate 'Ad-Free' prices ($0.99, $1.99, $3.99) without stating what period each covers — check before buying.
• Consider: The AR overlay depends on your compass and gyroscope being accurate; its own listing warns magnetic cases can break the direction reading.

Mountain Identifier: Peak Lens

Mountain Identifier: Peak Lens by EBUZER SIMSEK — 3.6★ from 16 ratings, on the store since 2025, last updated 2026-07-05 (v1.4.4).

• Good: The most-rated of the AI-photo 'Mountain Identifier' apps that appeared in late 2025 — and the closest in approach to ours.
• Good: Its listing is unusually transparent about its AI: it names Google Gemini as the recognition service.
• Consider: 3.6 stars from only 16 ratings — the weakest rating in this comparison, from a small base.
• Consider: Its In-App Purchases list shows two different 'Premium Weekly' prices ($1.99 and $6.99) — the $6.99 one compounds to about $363/year if left running.
• Consider: The $89.99 lifetime plan is the most expensive single purchase in this comparison.

Which app should you get?

• Naming every summit from a viewpoint, offline: PeakFinder. Its offline panorama rendering and million-peak database have been the category benchmark since 2010, and $4.99 once is the cheapest way to own any of these apps.
• A full outdoor companion: PeakVisor. The 3D maps, trails, ski runs and GPS tracking make it far more than an identifier — if you'll use all of it, the $39.99/year is buying a whole toolkit.
• Spending nothing: AR AlpineGuide. Genuinely free AR peak labelling with a huge database; you tolerate ads or pay a few dollars to remove them.
• Point-and-shoot identification from a photo — including the photos already on your phone — with details and follow-up answers: Mountain Identifier, ours. That's the one job we built it for; the apps above are better at theirs.

How we compared (methodology)

• All facts were read from each app's public US App Store listing on July 11, 2026 — ratings and counts as Apple displays them, prices from the listing's "In-App Purchases" section, features from each app's own description.
• We did not install and lab-test every competitor; feature rows are each app's own claims, marked as such.
• The App Store search for "mountain identifier" also returns several near-identical AI-photo apps released since September 2025. We included the most-rated of them (Peak Lens, 16 ratings) and excluded the rest, each of which had 4 or fewer ratings on July 11, 2026. We also excluded trail apps like AllTrails — great at trails, not peak identification.
• Ratings move and prices change. If you spot something outdated, check the linked listing — it always wins — and tell us so we can fix it.

Put any of them to the test

The best way to compare identifier apps is on mountains whose profiles you can verify. Start with our reference pages for Mount Everest, K2, Denali, Matterhorn — each lists the elevation, prominence and the visual signatures to check an app's answer against.

Related comparisons

• Mountain Identifier vs PeakFinder

Sources

Every fact on this page traces to a public App Store listing, checked July 11, 2026:

• Mountain Identifier — App Store listing
• PeakFinder — App Store listing
• Hiking and Skiing - PeakVisor — App Store listing
• AR AlpineGuide — App Store listing
• Mountain Identifier: Peak Lens — App Store listing