Is the bergfex App Free? Costs and PRO Explained

By Best:in Editorial Team · Updated September 2026

Yes. As of September 2026 every bergfex app downloads free on the App Store and Google Play, and the free tier includes piste maps, snow reports, lift status, forecasts and automatic descent tracking. The paid layer is bergfex PRO, an in-app subscription that renews annually after a 7-day trial: the US store sheet lists the ski tier at USD 4.49 per year, while the tours subscription is reported at about EUR 24.

Is the bergfex app free to download in Austria?

Yes, the download costs nothing. Apple's App Store lists bergfex: Skiing & Tracking as "Free · In-App Purchases", and bergfex: Hiking & Tracking carries the same label. On Google Play the ski app shows more than 1 million downloads and a 4.2 rating from roughly 13,100 reviews, tagged "Contains ads" and "In-app purchases". Without paying anything you get piste maps, snow depths, lift status and the multi-day forecast for resorts in ten countries.

The ski app is not a new arrival: store data puts its release at 27 November 2013, and the Android build in circulation in 2026 is version 4.13.0. Free use has two trade-offs. Advertising runs in the free tier, and the deeper data layers sit behind bergfex PRO, the in-app subscription. There is no countdown on the free features themselves, so a casual skier can use the app for a full season without a purchase.

What can you actually do in bergfex without paying?

In the ski app the free tier covers the planning basics: a winter map with all slopes and lifts, high-resolution piste maps, snow reports, lift ticket prices and lift status. Weather comes as short-term, daily and weekly forecasts plus snow forecast and precipitation maps, with panorama cameras from the Alps. Tracking is also free: the app records every descent automatically with speed, distance and elevation gain, stores the day in a ski diary, and shows leaderboards for kilometres and vertical metres against friends.

The hiking and ski touring app is stingier. A German app test published in 2026 found that without a subscription the map is reduced to a restricted online-only view, in-app route planning is locked, and only a few Austrian layers (Basemap Österreich, orthophotos) stay open up to a set zoom level. You can still browse the catalogue of more than 500,000 tours and record your own activity.

What does bergfex PRO cost?

Prices sit inside the app stores, not on an invoice from bergfex. The US App Store listing for the ski app shows two in-app purchases: bergfex Ski PRO 1 Jahr at USD 4.49 and bergfex Ski PRO 3 Monate at USD 2.49, and a paywall tracker records the app's purchase range as USD 2.49 to USD 4.49. Austrian buyers are billed in euros; bergfex states in its terms that consumer prices are quoted in euros including statutory VAT. Check the exact figure on the store sheet before you confirm.

The tours subscription is the pricier one. A 2026 German buying guide puts bergfex Pro at around EUR 24 per year, and an Austrian outdoor magazine piece places the Pro tiers of the main alpine apps at 25 to 30 euros per year. For comparison, alpenvereinaktiv charges EUR 29.99 a year for Pro. PRO renews automatically for one year unless cancelled.

How do you start and cancel the free 7-day PRO trial?

  1. Install the free app

    Download bergfex: Skiing & Tracking or bergfex: Hiking & Tracking from the App Store or Google Play. Both are free downloads with in-app purchases. No subscription is needed for piste maps, snow reports or activity recording.

  2. Register and open the trial

    bergfex ties the trial to an account: you register in the app and then test the PRO functions for 7 days free of charge and without commitment. In the tours app that unlocks peak names, 3D maps, higher map zoom, official avalanche warnings, off-route alerts and licensed maps such as ÖK50 and SwissMap.

  3. Know what happens on day 8

    bergfex is explicit about the conversion: if the subscription is not cancelled during the trial period, the trial automatically becomes an annual subscription. PRO subscriptions are sold as auto-renewable subscriptions for one year and renew unless cancelled before expiry.

  4. Cancel inside the store, not with bergfex

    Subscriptions are managed in the store that sold them. On iOS: Settings > [Your name] > Subscriptions, select the subscription, then Cancel Subscription before the end of the current billing period. bergfex notes that subscription settings can only be changed by the user in the respective store, so support cannot cancel for you.

Which bergfex app do you need for a ski week?

For lift-served skiing, install bergfex: Skiing & Tracking. It carries resort data for Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, France, Slovenia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Croatia: ten countries, with more than 5,000 webcams including over 500 video streams in earlier store listings. The free layer answers the questions you ask on a ski morning, namely how deep the snow is, which lifts are turning and what the day pass costs.

For ski touring, the tours app is the relevant one. Its PRO layer adds slope-steepness shading at 30, 35, 40 and 45 degrees, official avalanche warnings from regional services, 3D terrain, access to over 9,500 webcams and official map series. It also pairs with Apple Watch, syncs activities to Garmin Connect and Polar Flow, and imports or exports GPX files. Two separate PRO purchases, two separate price tags.

What are the alternatives if you refuse a subscription?

The bergfex website itself stays free and covers snow depths, webcams and resort pages, so a phone browser replaces much of the app on a one-week trip. Among app rivals, alpenvereinaktiv keeps a free Basic tier and sells Pro at EUR 29.99 per year and Pro+ at EUR 59.99, with Pro+ discounted to EUR 49.99 for Alpine club members; the term runs 12 months and is cancellable yearly. Alpenverein members also get the digital AV maps with Pro.

Costs across this category cluster in a narrow band: an Austrian magazine survey of Bergfex, Outdooractive and the Alpenverein app put annual Pro versions at 25 to 30 euros. If you ski one week a year, the 3-month ski PRO tier (USD 2.49 on the US store sheet) is the cheaper route than a 12-month commitment.

What do skiers get wrong about the free version?

Three assumptions cause most complaints. First, people expect offline maps: in the tours app the usable map and the planner moved behind PRO, which matters in valleys without mobile coverage. Second, they treat the 7-day trial as a sample, then find an annual charge, because bergfex converts the trial into a 12-month subscription automatically. Third, they email support to cancel, but cancellation only works in the App Store or Google Play account settings.

One hardware note from the store listings: continuous GPS recording in the background can significantly reduce battery life, so a power bank belongs in the ski jacket. And the ski and tours apps are billed separately, with the ski tier priced from USD 2.49 for three months and the tours subscription reported at roughly EUR 24 a year in 2026.

Official sources

For inquiries, partnerships, or corrections and changes, use the contact form.