Best Offline Ski Map Apps for Austria

By Best:in Editorial Team · Updated September 2026

As of September 2026, only a few apps genuinely cache Austrian piste maps for use with no signal. Skiresort.info leads: saved favourites, including the piste map, open offline from a library of 3,500 maps, free. bergfex covers Austrian slopes, lifts and snow data in depth, and Outdooractive saves whole regions with official BEV mapping. iSKI Austria and Slopes record offline but still want a connection for maps.

Best Offline Ski Map Apps for Austria, ranked

1.

Skiresort.info App

The only app in this list whose own documentation promises the piste map itself offline for saved favourites. Behind it sits 3,500 high-resolution piste maps and data on about 6,000 resorts, with filters across 2,200 countries and regions, so "all ski resorts in Tyrol" or "all open slopes in Austria" can be cached in one go. Free to download. Snow reports refresh daily, weather four times a day. Tracking is not its job.

Best for: Offline piste maps across every Austrian region

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2.

bergfex: Skiing & Tracking

Built by bergfex GmbH, the reference point for Austrian snow depths. The winter map shows all slopes and lifts alongside high-resolution piste maps, lift status and ticket prices, and descents record automatically. Pro adds 6-hour snow forecast maps, a 7-day snow analysis, an avalanche and slope-steepness layer, 200-plus weather stations and official GeoSphere reports for Austria. The sibling bergfex tour app carries full offline map material for navigation with no connection.

Best for: Austrian snow, lift and avalanche data in one app

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3.

Outdooractive

Not a piste-map app: a topographic platform that saves whole routes and regions offline, which is what you want above the marked runs. Pro unlocks official BEV mapping for Austria plus a gradient view for checking slope steepness against the avalanche bulletin, and syncs with Garmin, Strava, Suunto and Polar. Vorarlberg alone lists more than 200 ski tours on the platform. Weak on lift status and ticket prices.

Best for: Ski touring and off-piste orientation

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4.

iSKI Austria

Intermaps built this as the Austrian edition of iSKI, and its offline claim is specifically about tracking: runs record with no internet connection and upload later. Interactive resort maps, lift and slope status, snow forecasts, webcams and avalanche risk cover 2,200 resorts worldwide, with Sölden, Ischgl, Obertauern, Hintertux, Saalbach-Hinterglemm, Lech Zürs, Kitzbühel and Nassfeld all included. Some areas add parking and traffic data. The season-long iSKI Trophy is the hook.

Best for: Logging runs where there is no reception

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5.

Ski amadé App

Listed on Google Play as Ski amadé Guide, this is the region's own app, and its photorealistic 3D piste maps are the most detailed rendering of Austrian terrain reviewed here: trees, paths and links between pistes are visible. Smart routing plans a day across the area, and the Friend Tracker places connected friends on the same 3D map. Free. Coverage stops at the Ski amadé boundary, and offline caching is not advertised.

Best for: Navigating one large Austrian ski region

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6.

Slopes

Strongest as a tracker: smart recording separates lifts from runs across ski, snowboard, monoski, sitski and telemark. Interactive 2D and 3D maps now reach more than 2,000 resorts including the European Alps, after an OpenStreetMap integration tripled the map collection, but they sit behind Premium at USD 29.99 a year (USD 49.99 family). Resort auto-detection assumes cell reception, which is the caveat for an offline-first shortlist.

Best for: Season stats and trips beyond Austria

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What does "offline" actually mean in a ski map app?

Three very different things get sold as offline. The first is a cached piste map: the app stores the resort's panorama or slope map on the phone so it opens in a lift queue with no bars. Skiresort.info does this for saved favourites, drawing on a library of 3,500 high-resolution piste maps across roughly 6,000 ski resorts. The second is offline recording: iSKI Austria logs a run with no connection and uploads it later over Wi-Fi, but that is tracking, not navigation.

The third is a full offline basemap, where topographic tiles for a whole region sit on the device. Outdooractive covers this case by letting you save routes and regions ahead of time, which also saves battery in flight mode. Check which of the three you are buying before you pay, because a January morning at 2,000 m in the Zillertal is a bad time to find out.

Which apps hold Austrian piste maps without a signal?

Skiresort.info is the clearest case. Its own app page states that favourite resorts can be accessed offline, including the piste map, and favourites can be saved by country or region, so "all open slopes in Austria" or "all ski resorts in Tyrol" becomes one saved set. The catalogue behind it is large: 3,500 piste maps, 900 snow reports updated daily and 5,300 weather reports refreshed four times a day.

bergfex is the Austrian-built option. Its winter map carries every slope and lift plus high-resolution piste maps, lift status and ticket prices, and the sibling bergfex tour app ships downloadable map material for navigation with no active connection. For ski touring above the marked pistes, Outdooractive Pro shows official BEV mapping for Austria, the same survey data ski tourers use on paper, and those regions download in advance.

What will these apps cost for a week in Austria?

The cheapest useful setup is free. Skiresort.info publishes its app as a free download, and the offline favourites function sits in that free tier. Ski amadé's app is a free region app, funded by the lift company rather than by subscription.

Slopes is the clearest paid case: Premium runs USD 29.99 per year, with a family plan at USD 49.99, and the interactive 2D and 3D resort maps for 2,000-plus areas sit behind that paywall. Free Slopes users keep live location tracking and basic map visualisation. bergfex and Outdooractive both split features into a Pro subscription (bergfex Pro adds 6-hour snow forecast maps, a 7-day snow analysis, an avalanche and slope-steepness layer and 200-plus weather stations), with prices set in the app stores, so check the current figure before the trip rather than trusting a blog.

How do I set up offline maps before the first lift?

  1. Download and save favourites at home

    Do this on hotel or home Wi-Fi, not on roaming data. In Skiresort.info, search the resort (or the whole region, since the app filters across 2,200 countries and regions) and mark it as a favourite so the piste map and resort data are cached locally. In bergfex, open the resort's winter map and the high-resolution piste map once so the tiles land on the device. Austrian resorts are big: Ski amadé and the Arlberg both span multiple valleys, so save every sub-area you might reach on a day ticket, not just the base village.

  2. Add a second, independent map layer

    Resort apps stop at the piste boundary. If your plan includes ski routes, tree runs or a tour, save an Outdooractive region with the Austrian BEV map layer, or at minimum a topographic layer, before you leave the valley. Outdooractive's Pro tier also adds a slope-gradient view, which matters when the avalanche bulletin flags steepness thresholds. Two apps from two data sources is the practical minimum for off-piste days.

  3. Test the phone in airplane mode

    Switch the phone to airplane mode in the hotel room and open each map. Anything that spins is not cached. This also catches apps that pull an update package at launch, which is painful on a 4G-free ridge. Repeat the test after any app update mid-week.

  4. Plan for cold and battery drain

    Continuous GPS use cuts battery life sharply, a point both bergfex and iSKI Austria state in their store listings. At minus 10 degrees a phone can drop from full to unusable in a couple of hours, so carry a power bank, keep the phone in an inside pocket, and start recording only when you need the track. Save a photo of the paper piste map as a last-resort fallback: it opens with no app and no signal.

Where do these apps let skiers down?

Auto-detection is the first weak point. Slopes states that it works out which resort you are at assuming you have cell reception, so a data-free arrival in a side valley can start the day without a resort context. Region apps have the opposite problem: the Ski amadé app gives photorealistic 3D maps and a Friend Tracker inside its own area, and nothing at all when you drive two hours to Ischgl.

Second, live data dies offline by definition. Lift status, the avalanche bulletin and the fresh-snow forecast in iSKI Austria all need a connection, however well the app records your runs without one. Third, offline caches are quietly tied to app versions and seasons. Re-save favourites at the start of each winter, because piste numbering and lift names change: new gondolas open in Austria most seasons.

What are the alternatives if you would rather not rely on a phone?

The printed piste map is still free at every ticket office in Austria, and it does not freeze. Many resorts also print the map on the back of the ski pass wallet. For tourers, a 1:25,000 or 1:50,000 paper sheet plus a compass remains the standard backup, and Outdooractive's Austrian map layer is based on the same BEV survey mapping.

On the digital side, resort-run apps such as the Ski amadé app or Ski Arlberg's app give the most accurate lift and hut detail for their own area, and a general tracker like Slopes (2,000-plus mapped resorts, including the European Alps) covers travel beyond Austria. FATMAP, once the standard 3D backcountry map, was folded into Strava, so older recommendations for it are out of date. Pair one wide-coverage app with one local app and you have redundancy.

How is this ranking computed?

  • Offline piste map availability: 30%
  • Austrian resort coverage: 25%
  • Map detail and orientation: 15%
  • Cost and subscription clarity: 15%
  • Tracking and live data extras: 15%

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