VanLife Beacon

Campgrounds & overnight networks — North America

Campground, dispersed-camping and overnight-stay networks for the US and Canada — a different market to the European aires/Stellplätze networks covered elsewhere on this hub. Curated from our vendor registry; provisional entries are marked as such rather than presented as verified.

iOverlander

Global crowdsourced overlanding POI database. Camping plus mechanics, water, propane, laundry, showers, border crossings and checkpoints. Human-moderated, explicitly never sponsored. The only one of these that works outside North America and Oceania.

NA / OC / Global Visit site →

Campendium

70,000+ US and Canada campgrounds with 150,000+ RVer reviews, including free and dispersed camping on BLM, USFS and National Park land. Reviews carry cell-coverage data, hookup detail and rig length limits. Also indexes dump stations.

US / CA Visit site →

FreeRoam

Free, non-profit US dispersed-camping app built by full-timers, with public-land boundary layers, cell-coverage overlays and crowd-sourced site reports. PROVISIONAL: widely used in the US boondocking community but its site was not verified in the July 2026 research pass.

US Visit site →

Harvest Hosts

US and Canada membership network of farms, wineries, breweries, museums and attractions offering free overnight stays to self-contained RVs, with an expectation of supporting the host business. Parent company of Boondockers Welcome; both searchable in one app.

US / CA Visit site →

Boondockers Welcome

3,675+ private hosts across the US and Canada offering driveway and property stays to self-contained RVs; over 70% of hosts offer hookups. Peer-to-peer rather than commercial, which makes it the closest US/CA analogue to France's France Passion.

US / CA Visit site →

The Dyrt

Large US campground and free-camping database with user reviews, offline maps and trip planning in the PRO tier. PROVISIONAL: appears as a peer app in store listings but its own site was not directly verified in the July 2026 pass.

US / CA Visit site →

Hipcamp

Marketplace for camping and RV stays on private land — the 'Airbnb of camping'. Operates in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. PROVISIONAL on market list: only its US and Canada Q&A pages were seen in this research pass. Note: Hipcamp's own Q&A content contained a factual error on BC Crown-land residency rules — use it as a booking channel, not as a legal source.

US / CA / AU / NZ Visit site →

Recreation.gov

Official booking channel for US federal campgrounds, permits and timed entry across NPS, USFS, BLM and USACE. The authoritative counterpart to the free dispersed-camping options; referenced directly by BLM and USFS camping pages.

US Visit site →

WikiCamps Canada

Canadian edition of WikiCamps with 9,000+ site listings covering campgrounds, dump points, POIs and water points. PROVISIONAL: URL taken from the app store listing's support link rather than a verified site visit.

CA Visit site →

Sources 2 sources on record · Tracked since 2026-07-29

Sources

What this page is based on — every source is verified, and links out whenever the document is still reachable.

  1. Recreation.gov — official US federal camping and permits booking channelofficial · 2026-07
  2. Campendium — US and Canada campground databaseverified · 2026-07