Bounded app review: how it compares with Geostay

Bounded or Geostay: which to pick

Both apps record your country each day by themselves, rebuild past trips from photos and keep your history on the phone with no account.

Bounded fits you if you also use Android, keep trips in a TripIt or .ics calendar, or want to review every rebuilt stay before it is saved.

Geostay is the stronger pick when tax residency is the reason you are counting: its tests follow each country's own rule, and for the UK it works through your ties as well as your days.

We make Geostay.

Does Bounded track your days by itself?

Yes. Bounded uses the iPhone's location, set to Always, to log which country you are in each day, and it updates your counts without you opening the app. It resolves each location to a country with offline maps bundled in the app, and it does not count a country you only fly over or connect through as a day there.

Geostay records which country the iPhone is in, day by day, even while the app is closed. It doesn't need a connection for that, because it looks the country up on a map stored in the app, so days with roaming switched off or the phone in flight mode are still recorded. Flights don't count as visits to the countries below, and neither do points close to a border, so a road that runs along a frontier won't add a day in the country next door.

Timeline shows every stay as a list or on a calendar. In the list, each stay gets one row with its country, dates and day count, and the one you're on now shows that it is still being recorded. If a day is wrong, you change its country, delete it or add a trip, and your edit takes precedence over what the phone recorded. Bounded handles edits the same way: a manual entry outranks GPS.

Can Bounded rebuild your past trips from photos?

Both apps can fill in the years before you installed them. Bounded reads only the GPS tags in your camera roll and skips screenshots, saved images and photos taken from a plane. When a stay is a guess, such as a single photo in a country, it asks you to confirm or fix it, and it shows every stay it found before saving anything.

Geostay reads the date and place stored with each photo and turns them into stays. You can give it access to all photos or only to the ones you select.

Besides the photo library, Geostay imports a Google Maps Timeline export, a Flighty flight export, or a spreadsheet saved as CSV with dates and countries, and the files are read on the iPhone. Bounded takes the same kinds of files and also reads TripIt or any other .ics calendar.

A rebuild can only find the trips you took photos on, so look through the rebuilt years in Timeline once and edit any day that is off before you rely on the count.

How each app counts Schengen 90/180

Both apps count the Schengen short stay as 90 days in any rolling 180-day period, counted back from each day of the stay. Because the window moves every day, a count kept by hand is easy to get wrong.

Geostay uses the window that ends on each day, and any part of a day in the Schengen Area counts as a day. The card tells you how many days you have used, the date you need to leave by, and when all 90 days will be available again. You can add your visa or residence permit to the card with its validity dates, the duration of stay and the number of entries.

Bounded tracks the same rolling window and shows the days you have left and your last safe day before an overstay. It can project a planned trip into the count, and it lets you exclude the country where you hold a residence permit. For Schengen alone, either app gives you the number you need.

How each app counts tax days and the UK SRT

Countries set their 183-day rules differently. Spain treats you as resident when you stay more than 183 days in the calendar year, while the UK counts over a tax year that starts on 6 April.

Geostay has tax residency day tests for 184 countries, plus 27 US states and New York City. Each test counts days the way that country's rule states it: the number of days, the year or period it runs over, and how a day of arrival or departure counts. Each one is shown with its legal source and the date it was checked. To follow a country, use "Add a counter" and pick it; its card then appears on the Today tab.

Bounded offers ready-made presets for 100+ countries, covering 183-day rules, Schengen, visa limits and citizenship timelines. Its tax counters include named country rules, such as the UK, Spain and Germany, each with a Learn more link, and a generic counter you set yourself that allows 182 days and warns on day 183 by default.

Under the UK's Statutory Residence Test, 183 or more days in the tax year is one of the automatic UK tests, but fewer days can still make you resident through a UK home, full-time work in the UK or the sufficient ties test. A day counts as a UK day when you are in the UK at midnight.

Geostay counts UK days the way the SRT does, over the tax year that starts on 6 April. It applies the automatic tests and the sufficient ties test. Questions about a UK home, work in the UK and your other ties come up only when your answer could change whether you count as resident. The card links to HMRC's manual. Bounded counts the same tax year, including the sufficient ties day bands, and leaves the ties themselves for you to assess.

Where your data is kept, and whether you need an account

Neither app asks you to create an account. Bounded keeps your travel history on your device, and it has no server that stores your travel data.

Geostay keeps your travel history, locations, photos and documents on your iPhone. The country is worked out on the phone from the map stored in the app, so locations are not sent to a server or a mapping service. Photos are read there and never uploaded, and the same goes for a permit you scan with the camera.