The Dyrt Pro Review: Easy Campground Finder App

With road trip travel at an all-time high, trip planning and finding campgrounds can be a headache between navigating clunky websites, finding trusted reviews and accurate photos, and planning where to sleep each night. Instead of relying on separate websites and apps for all of these things, we’ve found a solution to make finding campgrounds and planning your camping trip easier – The Dyrt Pro. This review of The Dyrt goes over all its features, why we’ve been loving it for finding campsites, and more.

The Dyrt is a website and app with more than 45,000 campgrounds across the US in its database. While the free version of The Dyrt will allow you to search for campgrounds, there are tons of perks that come with upgrading to a premium The Dyrt Pro membership. In this blog post, we outline the benefits of becoming a Pro member and our personal experience using The Dyrt Pro.

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Learn the benefits of The Dyrt Pro membership with this complete review, plus how it will save you time (and money!) planning your next camping trip.

What is The Dyrt?

The Dyrt dubs itself as “the Yelp of campgrounds”. Created by campers for campers, The Dyrt relies on community contributions for trusted user reviews (with photos!) that allow you to quickly search for campgrounds and read first-hand experiences. The Dyrt is currently the #1 camping app in the US and features a variety of campgrounds from National Parks, State Parks, County Parks, Bureau of Land Management, to KOA, Good Sam, Thousand Trails, and tons of private campgrounds.

Users can choose between accommodation site types such as tents, cabins, RVs, yurts, or dispersed camping. There are also options to select how you plan to get to your campsite – whether drive-in, hike-in, or even boat-in.

You can sort campgrounds by top-rated, price, or most reviewed, while also filtering to campgrounds with special features such as pets allowed, phone service, showers, and more. Once you’ve found the perfect campsite, you can either book directly within The Dyrt or from the listed contact information to book directly with the campground.

The Dyrt Pro Membership Benefits

With the free version of The Dyrt, you have access to search all of the campgrounds in the database, but upgrading to The Dyrt Pro membership gives you all of that plus a road trip planner, access to dispersed camping maps, offline access, and exclusive discounts. At $35.99/year, this is a pretty solid deal (and remember – Bearfoot Theory readers get a 30-day free membership by signing up here with the code “Bearfoot”)!

Here are our favorite Pro membership benefits:

Trip Planner

This Dyrt Pro membership perk takes the guesswork out of planning where to stay each night. Using the Trip Planner, you can input your start and end point and customize your results based on the following:

• Planned stops: input any detours or planned sites to visit
• Vehicle information: type (RV/camper/car/etc.), miles per gallon, fuel, towing
• Options: avoid highways, avoid ferries, avoid tolls
• Driving length: how far you prefer to drive between campgrounds

Using the above information, the app will automatically put together a suggested route with campground recommendations, or you can click the search tab to see all campground options along your route and completely customize your campground choices from a “blank trip”. Once you have your trip planned out, you can export the map to Google Maps for easier navigation.

Map Layers

If you are a camper who prefers free, dispersed campsites over paid, established campgrounds, The Dyrt Pro Map Layers feature is a gamechanger. You can filter to see boundaries for US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and National Park land. Why is this important? Sometimes we like to take unmarked dirt roads or go down long forest service roads in search of solitude, but it’s not always easy to tell if the spot you’ve found to camp at is a legal camp spot. 

We always follow Leave No Trace guidelines and proper camping etiquette, so the Map Layers feature makes it incredibly easy to quickly pull up your app and check if the spot you’ve found lies within Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management land, both of which are typically free to camp on. This is our favorite perk of using The Dyrt Pro!

Camping and Gear Discounts

Included in The Dyrt Pro membership are discounts on over 1,000 campgrounds and dozens of outdoor brands, such as Keen, Cruise America, and HybridLight. For campgrounds offering a Premium Discount, you will receive 40% off your first stay (Sun-Thurs only), and 10% off all other nights. Campgrounds offering a Standard Discount have a 10% discount all the time. 

If you mostly camp at free, dispersed campsites (like us!) this perk might not be a big deal, but if you typically stay at paid campgrounds, these savings will definitely add up over time.

Offline Access

The Dyrt Pro membership means not needing to worry about cell service during your trip. When you become a Pro member, download the campground database for offline use. You will be able to search for campgrounds, access your saved trips, and see all downloaded maps even when you lose cell reception during your trip. 

This is an amazing perk of the Pro membership, however, you will need to remember to download offline maps ahead of time in order to take advantage. One thing to note is that the offline campground database doesn’t include photos (this saves storage space!), so we always recommend going into your trip with a preplanned campground plan, and use offline maps as a backup to help you navigate to your campground, in case your plans change or the campground you want is full. 

The Dyrt Pro – Is it Worth It?

Planning a car camping trip can sometimes feel like a daunting task. As part of this review of The Dyrt, we’ve outlined the pros and cons of the app below to help you decide if it’s the right tool for finding campgrounds for your next trip:

Pros of The Dyrt

• Has more campsite reviews than any other app
• Straightforward and easy to use
• Map layers show you Bureau of Land Management, National Forest, and National Park boundaries (The Dyrt Pro membership only)
• Ability to “save” campgrounds for later
• Trip planning feature can be helpful for road trip planning (The Dyrt Pro membership only)
• Can download campground database and map for offline use (The Dyrt Pro membership only)

Cons of The Dyrt

• Not many free, dispersed car camping sites listed (yet!)
• Hard to decipher on the map if a campsite is free or paid (use the filters!)
• Campground search can feel overwhelming with so many options (ditto – use the filters!)
• Most campgrounds cannot be booked directly in the app

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We’ve found that The Dyrt Pro is best for casual car campers and road trippers, who prefer to use one reliable website/app to plan a camping trip and typically stay in paid campgrounds. There are not many free, dispersed campsites listed on the app yet, so if you are looking for ways to find free camping, read our guide here.

Since most campgrounds cannot be booked within the app, we recommend doing a blank search (without setting trip dates) to narrow down your favorite campground options within the app, and then book direct with the campground, since the app can’t show availability. Luckily the campground contact information can be found within the app, so booking is a breeze. Plus, The Dyrt is continuing to work on getting more campgrounds available to book in-app, so we expect this to become more seamless over time.

Overall, we think The Dyrt is a solid resource for finding campgrounds and one of the easiest, most functional camping apps out there. Whether or not to upgrade to The Dyrt Pro or stick with the free version comes down to how often you camp, what kind of campsites you like to stay at, and how much preplanning you like to do. Luckily, you can test out The Dyrt Pro free for 30 days and decide for yourself!

We hope this review of The Dyrt has given you a good idea of all its features and whether it’ll work for you!

Have you tried using The Dyrt for planning a camping trip? Do you have anything to add to this review? Let us know in the comments below!