Roundup · updated August 2026
Best concert tracking apps
Six apps, and not one of them is best at everything. The useful question isn't which app wins — it's which job you're trying to do. Discovery, setlists and history are three different problems, and the apps that solve one tend to be weak at the others.
We make one of these apps
Afterglow is ours. That's an obvious conflict of interest and pretending otherwise would insult you, so here's how we've handled it: Afterglow appears last in the list, wins exactly one category, and has more listed weaknesses than any other app here. Not false modesty — it's the newest and smallest thing on this page, and that comes with real gaps.
If you only take one recommendation from this page, it will probably be Bandsintown, because for the most common problem — finding out that a band you like is playing near you — it's the best answer and nothing we've built competes with it.
Everything below is free. There's no affiliate money in any of these links and no paid placement. Try two, keep whichever fits.
Start with the job, not the app.
If you're in a hurry, this is the whole page. Find the sentence that sounds like your problem and use that app.
Bandsintown. Biggest database, best alerts, streaming integrations. Not close.
Setlist.fm. Decades of crowd-sourced setlists. Nothing else is in the same league.
Concert Archives. Built for exactly this. Deep venue pages, and apps on every platform.
Afterglow. The only one with GPS-verified check-ins and a friends feed.
JamBase. Editorially strong in a scene the mainstream apps handle badly.
Still works, but read the ownership section below before you add another decade to it.
Most people who go to gigs regularly end up running two: one for what's coming up, one for what's already happened. They're genuinely different products and there's no prize for loyalty.
All six, compared
Scroll sideways on a phone. "Self-declared" means you tick a box and the app believes you.
| App | Strongest at | Log past shows | Verification | Artist alerts | Social | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bandsintown | Discovery & alerts | ~ Basic | ✗ Self-declared | ✓ Best in class | ~ Limited | iOS · Android · Web |
| Setlist.fm | Setlist data | ~ Only shows with setlists | ✗ Self-declared | ✓ Yes | ~ Contributor community | iOS · Android · Web |
| Concert Archives | Exhaustive history | ✓ Any show, fast entry | ✗ Self-declared | ✗ Announcements only | ✓ Follows, feed, meetups | iOS · Android · Web |
| JamBase | US festival & jam scene | ~ Limited | ✗ Self-declared | ✓ Yes | ✗ Minimal | iOS · Android · Web |
| Songkick | Discovery (legacy) | ~ Basic | ✗ Self-declared | ✓ Yes | ✗ Minimal | iOS · Android · Web |
| Afterglow | Verified passport | ✓ Any show, one at a time | ✓ GPS check-in | ✗ Not built yet | ✓ Friends feed | Android · Web (no iOS app) |
Every app on this list is free to use. None of them charges for the features described here.
The six apps
Ordered roughly by how many people they suit, which is not the same as how much we like them.
The default for most gig-goers, and deservedly. It connects to your streaming accounts, works out who you listen to, and tells you when they announce a show near you. The artist-side tooling means tour dates land there early and reliably.
- Largest event and artist database of anything here
- Alerts that actually fire in time to get tickets
- Integrates with the major streaming services
- Solid apps on both mobile platforms
- Attendance tracking is an afterthought
- The feed is busy and commercially driven — it exists to sell tickets
- Notification volume can get heavy without tuning
Best for: Never missing an announcement. More in our Bandsintown comparison
A fan-built wiki holding song-by-song records going back to the 1950s. It's one of the great achievements of community internet infrastructure and it isn't going to be replicated. Owned by Live Nation Entertainment, though largely left to run itself.
- Setlist coverage nothing else approaches
- Tells you what a band is opening with on this tour
- Attendance stats as a bonus feature
- Free, open API
- You can only log shows that already have a setlist entry
- Rules out club nights, DJ sets and most small local gigs
- Community of contributors, not a social feed
Best for: Anyone who cares what was played. More in our setlist.fm comparison
Running since 2013 and the most complete concert diary in existence, though plenty of people have never heard of it. It will log anything — no setlist required, no popularity threshold — and it has setlists, bucket lists, friend follows and anniversary reminders on top.
- Genuinely built for logging every show you've been to
- Millions of documented concerts, bands and venues
- Setlists, bucket lists, favourites, flashback reminders
- iOS and Android apps as well as the web
- Independent, long-running, free
- Reviewers report bugs and crashes in the apps
- Adding festivals can pre-select the whole bill
- No verification — attendance is self-declared
Best for: Completists who want the deepest archive going. More in our Concert Archives comparison
Long-running and editorially strong in a corner of live music the mainstream apps handle badly: jam bands, festivals and the US touring circuit. If that's your world, it's better than its size suggests.
- Deep coverage of festivals and jam-scene touring
- Real editorial rather than pure algorithm
- Good setlist data within its niche
- Weak outside the US
- Little in the way of personal history tracking
- Minimal social features
Best for: US festival and jam-band regulars
Founded in 2007 and for years the standard concert tracker. It still functions and the tracking features still work. What's changed is who owns it: Warner Music Group sold Songkick to the AI music company Suno in November 2025, and in April 2026 users were emailed to say Suno would become the controller responsible for their personal data.
- Mature artist tracking and alerts
- Long-standing gigography data
- Still free and still working
- Now owned by a generative AI company
- Years of your listening and location history transferred with it
- Little visible product investment for some time
Best for: Existing users who've weighed it up. More in our Songkick comparison
Ours, so weigh it accordingly. A concert passport: check in at the venue and the show gets a GPS-verified stamp, visibly distinct from shows you add yourself. Built mobile-first because the moment that matters happens while you're standing in a room.
- The only verified check-in on this list
- Logs any show — no setlist or ticket required
- See what friends are going to, and who else was in the room
- The Show Room — only people verified at that show can post photos
- Public passport page you can share, opt out of, or hide single shows from
- Independent, UK-based, free with no paid tier
- No artist alerts or push notifications yet
- No taste-based recommendations — discovery is through friends only
- No setlist data at all
- No iOS app; iPhone users get the web app
- Past shows are added one at a time — no bulk import
- Newest and smallest here, so the friends feed depends on who you bring
Best for: A permanent, verified record of the nights you were actually at
Three things worth thinking about
Beyond the feature grid, these are the differences that actually determine whether you're still using an app in five years.
What the app is for, commercially
Bandsintown and Songkick exist inside the ticketing economy — the product is good because getting you to a show is how the business works. That alignment is genuinely useful when you want tickets and less useful when you want a quiet personal archive. Setlist.fm and Concert Archives are essentially community projects. It's worth knowing which kind of thing you're handing your history to.
Whether the record needs to mean anything
Every app here except Afterglow works on self-declared attendance: you tick a box, it believes you. For personal stats that's completely fine — you know what you went to. It stops being fine the moment the list is something you'd show someone. A verified check-in is a different kind of claim from a ticked box, which is the one thing we'd argue we do that nobody else does.
How much history you're starting with
If you've got a decade of gigs in your head, be realistic: none of these apps import it for you. Ticket vendors don't give third-party apps access to your order history, so every one of these involves typing. Concert Archives has the biggest catalogue to match against. Before you start, it's worth reading our guide to finding every concert you've been to — most of your history is recoverable from records you already have, and it's easier to type up a finished list than to remember and type at the same time.
If the whole idea appeals but the framing doesn't
Some people click with "concert tracker" and some don't. If the version of this that makes sense to you is Letterboxd, but for gigs — a diary you keep because logging the thing makes you pay more attention to it — that's a fair way to think about the category, and we've written about where the analogy holds and where it breaks.
Concert tracking apps — FAQ
What's the best concert tracking app?
There isn't one, and any roundup that names a single winner is either lazy or selling you something. Bandsintown for discovery and alerts. Setlist.fm for what was played. Concert Archives for logging a big backlog. Afterglow for a verified, mobile-first passport with friends. Most regular gig-goers run two.
Which app has the best artist alerts?
Bandsintown, comfortably. Largest database, streaming integrations, and a mature notification system. If missing announcements is your problem, that's the answer — including over anything we make, since Afterglow doesn't have artist alerts at all yet.
Is Songkick still worth using?
It still works. The thing to know is that Warner Music Group sold it to the AI music company Suno in November 2025, and in April 2026 Songkick emailed users to say Suno would become the controller responsible for their data. Whether that bothers you is a personal call — but it's worth making that call deliberately rather than by default.
Which app verifies that you actually went?
Only Afterglow, through a GPS check-in made at the venue. Everything else on this list runs on self-declared attendance. Shows you add to Afterglow retrospectively aren't marked verified either — we weren't there to verify them, and the distinction only means something if we're strict about it.
Can I use more than one?
Yes, and it's the sensible setup. They're all free, none of them locks you in, and the combination most people land on is one app for what's coming up and one for what's already happened. Nothing here is a monogamous relationship.
