Best Self Hosted Alternatives to Google Maps Timeline (Location History)

Dawarich is a self-hosted location history application for collecting, importing, and visualizing where you have been over time. It focuses on turning raw GPS data into a searchable timeline and map views so you can explore trips, places, and daily movement patterns.

Key Features

• Import location history from common formats (e.g., GPX) to build a personal movement timeline
• Interactive map visualization of tracks and recorded points
• Timeline-style browsing of location history by date/time
• Multi-user support for separate accounts and datasets
• Designed for privacy-focused, self-managed personal analytics of mobility data

Use Cases

• Maintain a private “location history” similar to Google Location History
• Import GPS tracks from phones/watches and review hikes, rides, and trips
• Personal travel journaling and recalling visited places over time

Dawarich is a practical choice if you want an owned, self-managed record of your movements with map and timeline exploration. It is especially useful for users already exporting GPX tracks and wanting a unified, private archive.

Wanderer is a self-hosted travel tracking app for recording places you’ve been and trips you’ve taken, then exploring them on an interactive map. It focuses on keeping your travel history private while still providing a visual timeline and useful summaries of your journeys.

Key Features

• Interactive map to view visited places and logged trips
• GPX import to add tracks from GPS devices and fitness apps
• Trip and location management (create, edit, organize entries)
• Travel statistics and summaries to analyze activity over time
• Multi-user support for separate accounts and datasets
• Docker-based deployment for straightforward installation and upgrades

Use Cases

• Maintain a personal travel diary of countries/cities/places visited
• Import hiking/cycling GPX tracks to build a private archive of routes
• Visualize family travel history with separate user accounts

Limitations and Considerations

• Mapping features depend on external map tile/geocoding providers unless you supply your own services.

Wanderer is a good fit if you want an easy-to-run, map-centric travel log with GPX ingestion and basic analytics. It provides a lightweight alternative to hosted travel timelines while keeping control of data and deployment in your own environment.

OwnTracks Recorder is the server-side component of the OwnTracks ecosystem for collecting and storing location updates published by the OwnTracks mobile apps (typically via MQTT/HTTP). It persists location points and transition events so you can review historical movement, audit geofence enter/leave activity, and integrate location data into other systems.

Key Features

• Ingests OwnTracks location publishes and stores them for later retrieval
• Records geofence transition events (enter/leave) alongside location history
• Web interface for browsing users/devices and viewing recorded data
• HTTP API for querying stored locations/events for automation and integrations
• Works with common OwnTracks deployments using MQTT brokers for transport
• Designed as a focused “recorder” backend (separate from the mobile clients)

Use Cases

• Personal/family location history archive with geofence activity logging
• Fleet/asset track logging for small deployments (vehicles, bikes, devices)
• Feeding recorded location data into dashboards or home-automation workflows

Limitations and Considerations

• UI and analytics are intentionally minimal compared to full fleet-tracking suites; many users pair it with other visualization tools.

Recorder is a good fit when you want a simple, controllable store for OwnTracks data with basic browsing and programmatic access. It complements an MQTT-based OwnTracks setup by keeping durable history and events you can query or export as needed.