Traveling as a vegan is so much better than it was even five years ago. The options have seriously expanded in most major cities, plant-based menus are more common than ever, and the days of showing up somewhere and eating plain pasta for a week straight are mostly behind us. Mostly.
Because it can still be hard. Really hard, depending on where you are. I want to be honest about that rather than painting some rosy picture of effortless vegan travel, because if you’ve ever tried to find vegan food in a small town in rural eastern Europe or navigated a traditional restaurant in a country where plant-based eating isn’t part of the food culture, you know that it takes preparation, patience, and occasionally just eating the same three things on repeat for a few days.
But the tools available now are so much better than they used to be. Here’s what I use when I travel.
HappyCow
Start with HappyCow. It’s the most important app for any vegan traveler and has been since it launched in 1999. With over 256,000 listings in 185 countries and more than 1.8 million reviews, it is by far the most comprehensive global database of vegan, vegetarian, and vegan-friendly restaurants, cafes, bakeries, health food stores, and markets anywhere in the world.
The key thing about HappyCow is the filters. You can choose to see only fully vegan restaurants (no animal products anywhere on the menu), vegetarian restaurants, or restaurants that have vegan options. That distinction matters a lot when you’re somewhere with limited options and you need to know whether the kitchen actually understands what vegan means rather than just having one salad that might be vegan if you ask the right questions.
The app is free to browse but has a small one-time cost to unlock all features, which could be worth it if you travel regularly. One honest caveat: the listings in smaller cities and rural areas can be patchy and sometimes outdated, so always cross-reference with recent Google reviews before making a trip somewhere.
Vanilla Bean (Future Maps)
Vanilla Bean (now known as Future Maps) is HappyCow’s strongest competitor, particularly for German-speaking parts of Europe. It has especially dense and well-maintained listings in Berlin, Munich, Vienna, and Zurich, cities where its community of users is very active. Berlin has been consistently ranked as one of the top three most vegan-friendly cities in the world (and I can attest to this, as I lived there for many years). Definitely worth having alongside HappyCow if you spend a lot of time in this region.
Google Maps
It obviously isn’t vegan-specific, but Google Maps is the best backup in places where HappyCow is limited, especially in smaller towns. Search “vegan” plus the city name, then open a restaurant and search the word “vegan” inside its reviews to see whether other travelers actually ate there. Travelers also upload photos of menus, which helps when a restaurant’s website is outdated or only in the local language. Check the dates on reviews, since restaurants change menus and close more often than you’d think.
VegVisits
If you like the idea of a self-catering stay, VegVisits is a home-sharing site where every host is vegan or vegetarian, with listings in more than 80 countries. You can book a private room or an entire place, and hosts are often happy to share their favorite local restaurants and markets. Since hosts can be vegetarian rather than vegan, read the listing carefully and check that the kitchen is fully vegan before you book.
VeggL
Airports are one of the hardest places to eat vegan, and there isn’t one app that covers them worldwide. VeggL has detailed vegan guides for many major US airports, broken down by terminal and gate. Everywhere else, start with the airport’s own website, which usually has a dining directory you can filter by terminal, then check Google Maps for reviews. Pack food either way. Solid snacks like bars, nuts, crackers, and fruit generally make it through security.
Is It Vegan?
Is It Vegan? is a barcode-scanning app that tells you whether a packaged food contains animal ingredients. It won’t recognize every product overseas, but it’s worth trying at the supermarket. For drinks, Barnivore is a website database of vegan-friendly beer, wine, and liquor. In Europe, look for the V-Label or the Vegan Society’s sunflower trademark on packaged foods, which saves you from decoding ingredient lists in another language.
The Vegan Passport
The Vegan Society’s Vegan Passport is a small multilingual phrasebook covering 79 languages, with a page for each explaining what vegans do and don’t eat in detail, plus pictures for when words don’t work. You hand it to the kitchen staff and they can see exactly what you mean. The app version is currently unavailable, so don’t be surprised if you can’t find it in the app store, but the physical book is still sold through the Vegan Society’s shop.
Google Translate camera function
Not a vegan-specific tool but one of the most practically useful things for vegan travel in countries where you don’t speak the language. Point your phone camera at a menu and it translates in real time. Combine this with learning a few key phrases in the local language (“I am vegan, I don’t eat meat, fish, dairy, or eggs” translated into whatever language you need) and you can navigate menus in places where no app is going to help you.
“Vegan-friendly” vs. Fully Vegan
One of the most important things I’ve learned traveling as a vegan is to be very specific when asking about food. “Vegan-friendly” can mean a lot of things, and in some food cultures it means very little. In countries where fish sauce, shrimp paste, or dairy are used as background ingredients in otherwise plant-based dishes, you need to ask specific questions rather than assuming. It’s worth preparing a small card in the local language that lists exactly what you don’t eat, which you can show kitchen staff rather than relying on a waiter to translate accurately.
The honest reality
Some places are hard. Rural Japan, traditional restaurants in central and eastern Europe, certain regions of South America and Southeast Asia where animal products are deeply embedded in local food culture. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. The approach I take is: prepare as much as possible before I arrive, identify at least two or three options near where I’m staying, carry snacks for the moments where nothing works out, and be patient with people who’ve never encountered a vegan before.
It also helps to stay somewhere with a kitchen when possible. Accomodation with a kitchen means you can shop at local markets, cook most of your own meals from beautiful local produce, save some money, and only really need to worry about finding vegan-friendly restaurants for the meals you want to eat out. This has absolutely transformed long-term travel for me.
It’s not always easy. But it’s always worth it.
