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In 2025, there are so many apps designed to make life easier, but not all of them live up to our expectations. I’ve moved at least 12 times across several states and countries, so I know how frustrating it can be to keep track of all your things, figure out which option is legitimately the cheapest and which option has some hidden costs, and budget your time and money accordingly– all while balancing your family and your mental health.
So, for me, I was blown away by the number of apps I could use on our last move that made life a lot easier and ended up saving us a lot of money.
Top Picks
My top picks for the best moving apps 2025 are:
#1: MoveBuddha
Start here to compare estimates for different types of moving services and to generate a list of the number and type of moving boxes you need.
#2: Evernote
Use this to keep track of everything, including a personalized moving checklist, receipts for reimbursement, and your inventory notes.
#3: Sortly
Sortly is where you can start generating that inventory list for all of your personal goods and then save it in Evernote.
#4: TaskRabbit
This is where you can find reliable labor to help you with DIY moves.
#5: NextDoor
Hit or miss on this one, either a godsend or a dumpster fire.
#6: Updater
A great final option for making sure the nitty gritty things are done like your change of address.
MoveBuddha
There’s a ton to love about MoveBuddha. For me, it’s the moving calculator section.
MoveBuddha has two kinds of calculators:
- The cost calculators
- The box calculators
The cost calculators are one of my absolute favorite moving apps this year. They have you put in your current city and your destination, the size of your home, and when your move date is. Remember that moving companies charge different rates for weekends versus weekdays, as well as different rates for different seasons and holidays.
So MoveBuddha takes the cake because it breaks down all of your potential estimated costs for comparable moving options, like:
- Full-service movers
- Freight shipping
- PODS
- Moving van rentals
The best part? Unlike a lot of other companies, including Allied Van Lines, this isn’t a lead generation form, so it doesn’t require an email address or a phone number. The goal isn’t to capture your data and sell it to a bunch of moving companies or have their sales staff harass you day and night.
Not only can you get this information without giving away your personal information, I really like that by using the Move Buddha calculators, you can potentially save money on your move, making it easier for you to get the best value for the type of move you are doing and the size of your home.
The box calculators are there to help you determine:
- How many boxes you need for your move
- What size boxes you need for your move
I cannot stress enough how many people think that they only need a few boxes, and then they start packing and realize, “Whoa, what? How did I acquire so much stuff?”
And let me tell you that as the person typically in charge of our family moves, there’s nothing more frustrating than having to stop in the middle of delegating and managing all the preparations to go back to the store for another round of moving boxes and packing supplies.
Evernote
With the right kind of checklist, you can take the information you get from MoveBuddha and cross-check it with things like:
- Would you save money renting a trailer and driving it to your new location versus using a container shipment and only taking your car? This would take into account the cost of renting or buying the trailer, the time it would take to register the trailer in your current location, and when you get where you are going, if you are purchasing, the extra gas and time to drive with a trailer as opposed to driving without.
- Would you save money on labor/materials using a full-service move rather than a DIY move? This would take into account the estimated number of boxes you need from the box calculator on MoveBuddha, the type of packing materials you might need, including things like moving blankets, and the cost of day labor, either from companies like U-Haul, TaskRabbit, or NextDoor. Then you would have to compare this and the time it would take to the cost of a full-service move.
As you can see, there are endless comparisons that you have to cross-check before you make your final decision, and EverNote is one of the easiest places to keep all your findings/estimates/PDFs/receipts in one place.
If you are doing a military move or a move for work that offers relocation reimbursement, you’ll need to keep track of all your receipts, and that includes the physical receipts you get from the gas station and the official invoices you get from hotel stays or airlines, and everything in between.
You also need to keep track of documents that might be shared with you, like the MoveBuddha estimates for comparable services or a PDF for the number and type of boxes you need, so that you can then cross-check their respective costs and catalog the receipts you get after making your purchases.
I use Evernote for everything. It has work things, school things, Church things, move things, home things, kid things, and all the other things. I can add goals for the move, like saving time or saving money, as well as the next steps, so I have a personalized moving checklist.
Sortly
Moving should be made as easy as possible and Sortly makes your inventory part of the move a lot easier. It was originally designed for companies to manage their inventory by location and type, but it can also be used to help you manage all of your personal goods during a move.
You have to pay for it, but it makes it very easy to organize all of your household items so you can keep track of things that have been packed and unpacked or things that haven’t yet been delivered, which is particularly important if you are dividing your move across several areas like:
- A POD that gets shipped with the heavy and bulky stuff
- A few specialty items, like pianos and guns, that are shipped separately
- Personal items you put in a trailer
- Personal items you load in your car
I promise that if you are trying to keep track of things you have put in a trailer versus things you have put in your storage unit versus things you kept in the car, it can be a nightmare when you are under a time crunch and you need to remember exactly where that toolbox was shipped so that you can start hanging things and assembling furniture upon arrival.
TaskRabbit
If you decide that some combination of freight or DIY shipment is best, you still need to get help with your move, usually packing, hauling, or assembling/disassembling furniture.
Some tasks are simply better done with multiple people, especially strong people who have the tools that you might have buried some place in one of a thousand boxes.
That’s why I like TaskRabbit. It is a way for you to connect with on-demand help, particularly for day-of moving when you are loading something like a U-Pack container or unloading a POD. Many of these freight shipment services have a time limit, so you only have so much time to load or unload your shipping container, and having extra help on demand can make that easier, particularly when you don’t know anyone in the local area.
NextDoor
I will start this one with a warning: NextDoor is as good as the community using it, and not all communities are built the same.
Two moves ago I moved to a new state. I joined NextDoor and was immediately met with kind greetings from my neighbors and a lot of easy access to recommendations. It was a tightly knit community that worked together and used NextDoor to communicate natural disaster information, HOA updates, and other services/general information. It was a great moving app because it let me find out information about things like:
- Guest passes
- Clubhouse hours
- Links to nearby services
- Local labor
- The best companies for homeowners insurance
- Local hikes
The list goes on and on.
So this proved very helpful in giving me a direct look at what the parking rules were and what our driveway looked like for the movers.
It also connected me to local kids (teens) who were actively looking for work and would help with the moving day unloads, as recommended by neighbors and parents in the area.
Now, having said all that, I don’t guarantee that NextDoor will work for every family because our most recent move exposed me to an “upside-down” version of NextDoor full of security camera footage of lost packages, complaints about local services, and a lot of presumably old people with nothing else to do.
We never did find local labor that way or gain insight into privatized trash services and where to sign up, or what the rules were on mailbox heights.
So my best word of advice is, sign up if you haven’t already, see what the majority of the discussion is about, and decide if you have the right Nextdoor or the “upside down” version.
Updater
When you move, you have to be very particular about how you schedule updates to your change of address, not just with the postal service, but with all other services you might have, including things like bills, subscriptions, and packages.
During one of my longer moves, I was doing most of it myself, keeping track of inventory and loading a POD. I hired help for the day I was loading everything heavy, but otherwise spent nights and weekends in preparation, loading the boxes against the back wall. But I was also driving across the country for my move and making several stops at national parks along the way.
So I needed to make sure that my mail was no longer delivered to my old address but was also held at the new location for pickup. This was a bit of a tricky process, and it didn’t catch all my mail and all of my subscriptions either.
I wish I had used Updater. You put in your email and your move date and it helps you with things like securing renters insurance, setting up internet and TV when you get where you are going, forwarding your mail, and arranging for self storage at your new location or a handyman to help you improve the new location.
This can save you a lot of time and money, making your move a lot easier.
Summing Up
Lots of great apps out there, but a lot of redundancy or missed opportunities, too. So if you are planning a move in 2025 or beyond, consider these:
- MoveBuddha as one of the only (if not the only) non-lead-gen providers of estimates for different moving services
- Evernote as the primary place to keep track of all documents, notes, and to-dos
- Sortly to keep track of personal inventory
- TaskRabbit to find local packers or movers for DIY help
- Nextdoor to potentially find connections and get involved with your new area
- Updater to help you process your new internet/TV connections before you arrive, transfer your subscriptions, and confirm new change of address forms