The best free moving apps are the ones built for a single job: Google Keep or Todoist for the moving checklist, Sortly for a photo inventory with QR box labels, Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp for selling furniture off before the truck, the official USPS site for the address change, and – for New Yorkers – the NYC 311 app for alternate side parking and collection days. Skip the “moving apps” that exist to resell your move: a booking marketplace is a lead generator wearing an app icon.
Every list of moving apps has the same problem: half the entries are marketplaces that make money selling your move to whoever pays for the lead, and the other half were dead or renamed a year after the list was published. The 2021 version of this very page recommended one of each, which is why it has been rewritten from scratch.
This version is organized by job, not by app – six things a phone can genuinely take off your plate during a move – and every app named here was checked and working in 2026. All of them are free, none of them wants to sell you anything on commission.
Six Jobs a Free App Can Actually Do During a Move
The Checklist
Google Keep for speed, Todoist for structure: shared lists both movers-in-residence can tick off, with reminders tied to dates. The moving checklist itself matters more than the app.
The Inventory
Sortly photographs everything, groups it by box, and prints QR labels the free tier includes. Minimum viable version: photograph every box’s contents on the box top with your camera before taping it shut.
The Sell-Off
Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp move furniture fastest in NYC; Nextdoor catches the neighbors. Every sold bookcase is subtracted from your moving quote before it is written.
The Give-Away
donateNYC – the Sanitation Department’s own donation directory – lists nonprofits by what they accept, including pickup options. Sell first, donate second, curb last. See our eco-friendly moving guide for more on reducing move-day waste.
The Address Change
Do it once, at the official USPS change-of-address service, for the small official fee – and only there. Search results for “change of address” are crowded with lookalike sites charging many times the real price for the same form.
The Will-It-Fit Check
Apple’s Measure app or Google’s AR measuring does in thirty seconds what a tape measure does in ten minutes: sofa dimensions against the new living room before you pay to move a couch that cannot turn the stairwell corner.
The Two Apps Only New Yorkers Need
The NYC 311 app earns a place on the home screen for one feature alone: live alternate side parking status. If a car is part of your move – yours, or the one you borrowed for small runs – 311 answers whether tomorrow’s street cleaning is suspended before you plan around it. Collection days and bulk pickup schedules for the move-out purge live in the same app.
The second is less an app than a habit: your building’s portal, if it has one, is where the freight elevator gets booked and the move gets registered. No third-party app replaces it, and the buildings that use them will not schedule a move any other way.
Both are free, both are official, and neither will ever email your “moving quote” to four strangers.
The Kind of Moving App to Skip
Any app whose real product is your phone number. Booking marketplaces and quote-comparison apps present as tools, but their business is selling your move as a lead – the “quotes” that follow are from whoever paid for you, not whoever is best. Several of the best-known ones have also quietly declined or shut down over the past few years, taking their booking histories with them.
The tell is simple: a genuine tool works without asking where you are moving. A checklist, an inventory, a measuring app – none of them needs your move date and phone number. The moment an app’s first screen is a quote form, it is not a tool; it is a form. When you do want a real number for the move itself, get it as a written, itemized quote from the mover who will actually show up – that document beats every estimate an app can generate. How to find and compare moving companies in NYC
Free Moving Apps – Frequently Asked Questions
Pick by job, not by brand: Google Keep or Todoist for the moving checklist, Sortly for photo inventory and QR box labels, Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp for selling furniture beforehand, the official USPS site for the address change, and the NYC 311 app for parking and collection schedules if you are moving within New York. All have free tiers, and none of them is in the business of reselling your move.
No single app genuinely does, and the ones that claim to are usually quote marketplaces with a checklist bolted on. The working setup is three small tools – a checklist app, an inventory app and a calendar – plus the one document no app produces: a written, itemized quote from your mover. The plan lives in the quote; the apps just keep you on schedule around it.
Sortly is the standout free option: photograph items, group them by box, and print QR labels so any box’s contents can be checked without opening it. The free tier covers a typical apartment. The no-install alternative works nearly as well – photograph each box’s contents on its lid before sealing, and the camera roll becomes the inventory.
Understand what it is first: a lead generator. The app sells your details to movers who pay for them, and the calls that follow are from whoever bought the lead. Nothing about that process finds the best crew for your move. The alternative takes the same ten minutes: contact two or three movers you have actually vetted and get written itemized quotes to compare like for like.
Once, at the official USPS change-of-address service on usps.com, for the small identity-verification fee – and nowhere else. Sponsored lookalike sites charge many times that for filing the same form, and they sit at the top of search results precisely because people search instead of going direct. Then update banks, employer, DMV and subscriptions from your own list, not through a third party.
The city’s own NYC 311 app shows live alternate side parking status – including holiday suspensions – plus trash, recycling and bulk collection days by address. During a move it does double duty: parking answers for any vehicle involved, and the bulk-pickup schedule for whatever the sell-off and donation passes leave behind.
The utilities in this guide – checklists, inventories, measuring tools – don’t need your move details at all, which is the point. Be deliberate with anything that asks for your move date, addresses and phone number up front: that is lead-generation data, and submitting it typically triggers calls from multiple companies. Give move details to the mover you chose, not to an app that chooses for you.
It can produce a number; it cannot produce your number. Real moving prices are built from inventory and access – what is moving, and how it gets out of one building and into another – which is why we quote in writing after seeing the job. Use the apps for what they are good at: shrinking the inventory before the quote, which is the one estimate input you fully control.
