As a vegan with celiac disease, I know how stressful traveling can be.

Feeling prepared requires a lot of research on specific restaurants and sometimes even how to communicate your needs in another language. You can’t just stop at any restaurant you pass.

A great way to make the process easier is to use apps designed to find restaurant reviews and help you communicate your dietary needs. In this article, I am going to share all of my favorite apps and how to use them.

These apps can help you find new and safe restaurants. You can also leave your own reviews to share your experiences to help other gluten free vegans.

I am not sponsored. All of these are apps I personally use while traveling.

Woman smiling and looking at her smart phone in a city.

What are the best apps for traveling as a gluten free vegan?

There are a number of apps out there that let you search for restaurants and read reviews. There are only a few that are designed specifically for vegans or people with celiac disease or other gluten intolerances.

Apps to find restaurants and reviews

HappyCow
Find Me GF
Google Maps
Foursquare

Communication apps

Gluten Free Card

V Cards
Google Translate

While there isn’t an app that lets you communicate both yet, there are individual apps that display information on your vegan and gluten free dietary restrictions and what foods you can’t eat in different languages.

Both of these apps are free to use. There are also options out there to purchase physical cards if you prefer.

How do you use these apps?

HappyCow

Happy Cow is an app designed for finding vegan and vegetarian restaurants. You can use the buttons on the search page to find dedicated vegan restaurants or restaurants with vegan options.

You’re also able to filter for restaurants with gluten free options. The filter doesn’t specify if a restaurant is dedicated gluten free but you can learn more by going to the restaurant’s website, which is linked in their listing, or reading reviews.

You can search for a city you are planning to visit to find restaurants before you go or you can use your location to find restaurants close by.

Find Me GF

Find Me Gluten Free is an app designed to help you find gluten free restaurants. It lets you search by location and by category.

Find Me Gluten Free is my favorite app to find gluten free restaurants. If a restaurant is dedicated gluten free, the listing will be clearly marked. It will also include if the restaurant has a gluten free menu or not.

The star ratings represent reviews for the restaurant and food. The heart rating is for how safe people thought the food or preparation was.

When you create a profile, you can specify if you have celiac disease or an intolerance. This can be helpful to know since it is displayed next to your name when you leave a review.

One thing to keep in mind is that not every listing in Find Me Gluten Free is a gluten free restaurant. People also add listings for restaurants they recommend staying away from. Just be sure to always check the ratings and reviews.

To find vegan options, you can type vegan into the category bar when you search. Any results that have been labeled with this category will show up. I still recommend checking their menu to make sure they have vegan and gluten free options that overlap.

Google Maps

Google maps can be helpful when looking for restaurants that might not have a listing in other apps and for additional reviews.

I typically will search for “gluten free restaurants”, “vegan restaurants”, and “vegan and gluten free restaurants” to see all of the possible results.

When you search for these keywords, Google Maps will spotlight any reviews that contain them in the review summary section.

You can search for a specific city or use your location to find restaurants near by. You can also use google maps to find grocery stores in the area.

Foursquare

Foursquare is another resource you can use to help cross reference reviews. I typically search for the city I am going to and a combination or “gluten free” and/or “vegan”.

Foursquare can be helpful when looking for restaurants that aren’t listed in Find Me GF or HappyCow yet.

Gluten Free Card

Gluten Free Card is a very helpful app for when you are traveling to a country where you do not speak the language fluently and don’t feel confident communicating your need to eat gluten free with the restaurant staff.

There are currently 10 different languages available including English.

Even if you’re traveling to a country where you know the language, you can still use Gluten Free Card to help communicate what you can and can’t eat.

Gluten Free Card does state that meat and animal products are gluten free so you will have to specify that you also cannot eat animal products.

V Cards

V Cards lets you quickly display information to restaurant staff about what you can and can’t eat as a vegan. The information can be displayed in over 100 languages.

Currently, the V Cards app is only for IOS. If you are an android user, like me, you can screenshot the card you need from their website or download it as a PDF.

Google Translate

Google translate can be helpful when attempting to read menus that aren’t in English. I love using the Camera tool, which lets you translate everything without having to type it out.

You can take a picture to save the translation, or use the screen to see a live translation of everything in front of you. This is especially helpful when reading ingredient labels at grocery stores.

Other tips

Not every restaurant is listed in every app. Typically I will cross reference information I can find across multiple apps to find the best options. There are even some restaurants with vegan and gluten free options that aren’t in any of these apps.

If you go to a new restaurant that isn’t included in one of these apps, consider creating a listing so other gluten free vegans can find and support their business!

If the restaurant listing already exists, type out your review and copy and paste it into each app. Even if you have a negative experience, that information can be very helpful to other people like you.

For additional information, check out my article for how to find vegan and gluten free restaurants.

Best Apps for Traveling as a Gluten Free Vegan