The community water app with about 880,000 water sources worldwide now covers 2,918 across New Zealand, and plans the water stops along any .gpx route.
ZÜRICH, Switzerland, 20 September 2026. droply, the free community app for finding drinking water outdoors, is now ready for New Zealand. The team has brought together 2,918 water sources across the country from open data, from city taps to backcountry springs. With droply PRO, trampers share a .gpx file and get every water source along the track as an ordered list of stops, with the distance and climb between them. It runs on iOS and Android, and works offline.
Built on the trail, grown by hikers worldwide
Water is the one thing a topo map does not answer. The useful question is not how long the track is, but how far it is between the last tap and the next stream. droply was built around that question by Micha and Nathalie, who walked the Continental Divide Trail, about 5,000 km from Mexico to Canada, in 2024. Micha started at the Mexican border carrying 6 litres and poured half of it out 3 km later.
Today droply maps about 880,000 water sources worldwide, 408,538 of them flagged as drinking water. Hikers have added photos to 4,577 of them, so the next person knows what to look for.
New Zealand, from day one
Before launching, the team imported New Zealand’s water information from open data sources. The map holds 1,565 taps, 176 natural springs, 126 piped springs, 235 creeks and 3 hot springs, with Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland and Rotorua best covered.
Now droply wants the people who walk these tracks to make the map their own, and every contribution counts. Checking in at a water source, adding a photo or mapping a new source earns droply points, and 100 points unlock a full year of droply PRO for free.
“droply is a piece of hiking equipment to me. I always carry it, and it tells me where the water is,” says Nathalie, co-founder and product designer at droply. “I also like photographing water sources and beautiful fountains along the way. It’s a bit like a game.”
“The trail taught me that the total distance tells you almost nothing about how much water to carry. The longest gap between sources does,” says Micha, co-founder of droply. “We put the work into bringing New Zealand’s water information into droply. Now we’d love trampers to make it theirs. Every check-in helps whoever walks through next, and it earns you points towards a free year of PRO.”
droply does not test water. A drinking-water flag shows what a source was mapped as, and recent check-ins show what hikers found there.
How the route planning works
droply scans a corridor around the imported track and lays the sources out as stops along an elevation profile, coloured by water coverage, so dry stretches are visible before you leave. A downloaded route keeps its water data, map and stops without reception, which matters in places like Tongariro National Park where coverage is patchy.
Availability and pricing
The map is free and needs no account to browse. Adding a source, checking in, adding a photo and commenting all cost nothing, in eight languages including English.
Route planning from a .gpx file, offline maps and an ad-free app are part of droply PRO: NZ$14.99 a year, or NZ$49.99 once, which never expires. Contributors can also get a year of droply PRO free with 100 droply points.
About droply
droply is a free community app that shows where to find drinking water outdoors. It maps about 880,000 taps, springs, wells and creeks worldwide, drawn from open data and updated by the people who use them. droply PRO plans the water stops along any .gpx route and works offline. Made in Zürich, Switzerland.
Further reading
Water, huts and planning on the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, droply’s own guide, live from 20 September 2026:
https://droply-app.com/blog/tongariro-alpine-crossing-water-huts-guide/
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/nz/app/id6742996650
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.droply.app.v1
Media Release on 23 September 2026
Media contact
hello@droply.ch
https://droply-app.com