Garmin Pilot

• Free to download
• In-app purchases

Last verified 31 Jul 2026

4.7 4126 ratings · App Store

1. 5/5Recent Covert to Garmin Pilot

   I used a competitive product for almost 15 years. Had no incentive to change to Garmin Pilot until Smart Charts. I tried Garmin Pilot during the 30 day free trial period and I was blown away: Smart Charts is so much better than Dynamic Procedures and, after using Garmin Pilot for a few weeks, I have found other great features like engine monitoring and data recording after each flight. If you experience an engine anomaly, you can play it back and determine potential causes. You need a Garmin EIS capability in your panel to do this, but wow, it is worth it. Other features like weight & balance are well integrated into flight planning and easy to use. I could go on and on, but my last observation is the financial bottom line - it is less expensive for a much better product.

   Hoagie43 · 31 Jul 2026

2. 3/5Comparing with Foreflight….

   Very different from my Foreflight experience. Initial chart downloads was a hard fail due to UI issues. Uploading my Foreflight logbook to Garmin was absolutely horrible. Garmin has obviously not thought about trying to win over Foreflight users since transitioning is totally manual and an unbelievable pain in the &$@#. Currency tracking is a hard fail. I manually input ALOT of data and it went from showing me fully current to then rejecting everything… why??? Originally I wanted to use Garmin but the flight school I was at used only Foreflight. So, I used that for the first year. Garmin should be easier to transition to because of how many Garmin systems are being used or upgraded into by Pilatus and Cessna jets plus Cirrus. Unfortunately so far my 30 day trial period is turning out to be a total fail due to the horrible transition from Foreflight. I do like the slightly cheaper prices and 2-tier subscription rather than more expensive 3-tier with Foreflight. Lots of interesting features with Garmin and I’m hoping this will work as a Foreflight replacement but does not look good right now.

   CRMDigital · 31 Jul 2026

3. 1/5I gave Garmin $145,000 and they still put the one feature I need behind a $200 annual paywall

   I recently upgraded my panel with 2 G500 TXIs, GTN750xi and 650XI and the one feature that I really wanted to use was the database concierge so I could wirelessly update my avionics. I even paid the extra US$1700 for the Flight stream 510 only to find out that I have to have a $200 per year Garmin pilot subscription in order to update them and that is on top of the $1200 a year I’m paying for the database updates…. Garmin, it is things like this is why you are losing so much market share to companies like Dynon, your endless greed sickens me and I can assure you I will never put another Garmin product in any of my aircraft again. Maybe if you got some actual developers and not just a bunch of random people you found off the street to update and maintain your Garmin Pilot app then I would consider switching but as it is now, Garmin pilot is clunky, slow, and not intuitive in any way shape or form to use. ForeFlight has you beat in just about every aspect. The only cool thing your app had was smart charts but ForeFlight has their own version now and it’s honestly just as good.

   LBZnation · 31 Jul 2026

4. 3/5Garmin Pilot Review

   Garmin continues to add features and improvements to their GP app. Overall this is a very good product. I can only imagine the complexities behind the curtain. This being said, app still drops off line regularly, especially when connected with a 510 card inside the nxi or 3000. I do really like the availability of charts to any airport being at your fingertips. I am still having trouble loading aircraft into the garmin database , as I did this past weekend when operating out of KVGT. The database will not accept my entry due to it not matching some pattern based on aircraft home base location. This is Extremely annoying. Also, when I enter a garmin visual approach as are in the garmin database, the approach will not show up on my iPad, even though my iPad is joined with the 510, or the gdl60. Visual approach courses need to show up on the display as this is a matter of orientation and safety. Please address this issue. Thank you for your dedication.

   Truly yours. · 31 Jul 2026

5. 5/5Garmin Pilot is great

   I have used it for at least 6 years. Great app. Constantly improving it. Has always had better map readability than ForeFlight, and even with FF’s improved vector based maps Garmin Pilot still is superior. Too numerous to count features. ADS-B weather and traffic works great. I like that they generally add features without adding multiple pricing levels. The only weak area in my opinion is the weather briefing which still just gives an DAA standard briefing, and is the sole reason I keep my ForeFlight subscription. I suspect ForeFlight will improve the preflight weather brief in the future. It even works with my flight simulator that I use to practice instrument approaches.

   justingraff · 31 Jul 2026

Privacy

Accessibility

No accessibility labels collected yet.