2026 Buyer's Guide
The best driving log apps for teen permit hours
Four ways to track supervised driving — reviewed honestly, ranked by how little work they leave you.
Four ways to track supervised driving — reviewed honestly, ranked by how little work they leave you.
Your teen just got their learner's permit. Somewhere in the fine print, your state says they have to log supervised driving — 40, 50, sometimes 65 hours, often with a set number of those after dark — before the road test. For the next several months, your job is to track every one of those hours accurately enough that the DMV accepts the record.
That's the whole job. Some apps are built for exactly this. Some can sort of do it. And plenty of families still keep a paper log in the glovebox. Here's an honest look at the options in 2026 — and why GoTime comes out on top.
GoTime does one thing and does it completely: it turns a state's supervised-driving requirement into a DMV-ready record without the busywork. Tap Start Driving and GPS logs the time and distance automatically. The app sorts each session into day or night on its own, and captures the conditions that used to mean a paper logbook — then rolls everything into a running total for each teen.
The most complete option here — free on both platforms, with automatic day/night logging, full condition tracking, family sync, and DMV-ready exports. For the actual job of getting through permit hours, it's the one to beat.
Ready to start logging? GoTime is free on iPhone and Android.
Get GoTime free →RoadReady has been in the teen-driving space for years and logs supervised hours with separate student and supervisor accounts. It gets the fundamentals down, but it hasn't kept pace with what modern families expect.
A serviceable free logger, but GoTime is free too — and does the automatic parts RoadReady leaves to you. If you're switching, GoTime can import your existing RoadReady log from a PDF.
Switching from Road Ready? See our complete Road Ready to GoTime migration guide.
Read the migration guide →OtoZen isn't really a permit-hours app. It's a family driving-safety platform — driver scoring, speed alerts, geofencing — that happens to log hours too. A different mission.
Great for watching how your teen drives once they're licensed. Overkill, and overpriced, if you just need to bank permit hours.
The classic method: write down the date, start and end time, conditions, and supervising driver for every single drive.
Fine if you're unusually organized across 6–12 months. Most families drift away from it within a couple of weeks.
| Feature | GoTime | RoadReady | Moda | OtoZen | Teen Driving Log | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, all features | Free | $4.99 one-time unlock | Free tier; paid plans for safety features | $1.99 one-time | Free |
| Platforms | iOS + Android | iOS + Android | iPhone only (iOS 18+) | iOS + Android | iPhone only | Any |
| Built for permit hours | Yes | Yes | Yes | No — safety platform first | Yes | — |
| Automatic GPS time + distance | Yes | Yes (telematics) | Yes | Yes (logs in background) | No — manual timer | No |
| Auto day / night | Yes | No — manual tagging | Yes | Yes | Yes | By hand |
| Weather + road type | Both, logged | Both, entered manually | Weather automatic | Both, automatic | Both, logged | By hand |
| Multiple supervisors, one synced total | Unlimited, merged automatically | Multi-device, but totals don't merge | Up to 6 family members | Logs from the teen's phone; no supervisor merging needed | No — export and merge by hand | No |
| Multiple teens | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes, on a 2/4/8-member family plan | Yes | By hand |
| DMV-ready export | Generic log | Printable log / affidavit | Official forms for 7 states, generic log for the rest | DMV-ready PDF, not state forms | CSV only | Fill by hand |
| Import an existing log | Yes, from RoadReady or any PDF | No | No | No | No | — |
| Ads | None | None | None | None | None | — |
One reason families stick with an app they don't love is not wanting to lose the hours they've already banked. GoTime solves that: import your existing driving log straight from a PDF — pick your file and GoTime pulls in every session automatically. No re-entering months of drives by hand. You pick up right where you left off.
It's the only option here that's completely free, runs on both iPhone and Android, sorts day and night driving automatically, and captures the conditions your DMV asks about. Add unlimited family members, support for more than one teen, one-tap PDF import, and DMV-ready exports, and it quietly removes almost every bit of manual work that makes permit tracking a chore.
If you just want the straightest path from permit to license, GoTime is the clear winner — and it costs nothing to find out.