TrailGearList vs LighterPack, compared by the guy who built one of them
The verdict first. If LighterPack does everything you need, stay on LighterPack. It's free, it's what every shakedown thread on r/Ultralight expects, and after some very quiet years its developer is working on it again. Switching to TrailGearList makes sense if you do most of your list editing on a phone, want a gear library you can reuse across trips, or want people to be able to copy your shared lists instead of just looking at them.
One thing before any of that: I built TrailGearList. I'm Jop, it's a one-person project, and a comparison written by the competitor deserves your skepticism. So every claim about LighterPack below is something I checked in August 2026, on the live site or in its public GitHub repository. Where I couldn't verify something, I left it out.
What's different, feature by feature
This table only has rows I could confirm on both sides this month.
| LighterPack | TrailGearList | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, donations via Ko-fi | Free, no list limit |
| Login | Username and password | Email code, no password |
| Categories, quantities, worn and consumable flags | Yes | Yes |
| Weight summary | Total, consumable and base weight, plus per-category totals | Base, worn, consumable and total, plus per-section weights |
| Item photos | Yes | Yes |
| Gear library | A searchable pool of everything you've entered | Brand, weight, price, tags, categories and photos per item |
| CSV | Import and export | Import (LighterPack's format) and export |
| Share links | Random id, like /r/0y9x6l | Readable public slug, or a private hash link |
| Copying a shared list | No viewer copy button that I could find | One click into your own account |
| Install on your phone | Browser tab only, no PWA manifest | Installable as a PWA |
The rest of this page is the part a table can't show: how those differences behave in use.
Maintenance, with commit dates instead of vibes
Every LighterPack alternative used to open with "LighterPack is abandoned", and for a stretch that was close to true: the public repository shows no commits at all between March 2021 and March 2024. It isn't true anymore. July 2026 alone saw 76 commits land, among them press-and-hold reordering of item rows on phones. Galen Maly is clearly putting real time into it again, and that's good news for everyone with a /r/ link in their post history.
So I won't sell you the abandonment story. The honest difference is rhythm. LighterPack has moved in bursts with quiet years in between for as long as its history goes back, and it stays deliberately minimal. TrailGearList is what I work on continuously; new features ship regularly because building this is what I do with my working week. You're trading a tool with years of inertia behind it for a younger one that moves faster and has a smaller community. Which side of that trade bothers you more is the real question of this page.
Phone use, where the gap is widest
LighterPack works in a mobile browser, and those July 2026 commits show genuine attention going to phone use. It's still a website in a tab, though. The page carries no PWA manifest, so there's nothing to install, and the interface started life on a desktop.
TrailGearList is built the other way around. Pages are server-rendered and light, the layout is drawn for a phone first, and you can install it as a PWA so it opens from your home screen like an app. My own last edits before a Pieterpad section happen on my phone at the kitchen table, and mid-trip I mostly check consumable weights before a resupply. That's the situation the whole product is shaped around.
A fair counterweight: neither tool lives in an app store. If you want a native app, look at Packstack or MetaGear instead; both are covered in my roundup of LighterPack alternatives.
Sharing, and what a viewer can do with your list
Sharing on LighterPack requires an account and produces a link like lighterpack.com/r/0y9x6l. The public page holds up well: full weight breakdown, unit switching, worn and consumable markers. What I couldn't find is a way for a viewer to take the list home. There's no copy button on a shared page, so borrowing someone's setup means rebuilding it by hand.
TrailGearList gives every list a public page with a readable slug, or a private hash link if you'd rather keep it unlisted. Anyone viewing a shared list can copy it into their own account with one click, which changes what sharing is for: a shared list stops being a screenshot and becomes a starting point. The summary shows base weight the way r/Ultralight expects it; if the term is new to you, I explain it in what base weight means.
Moving over, without burning anything down
LighterPack exports any list as a CSV file. TrailGearList reads that file and rebuilds the list: sections, items, weights, structure. Your LighterPack account keeps working, nothing gets deleted, and you can run both side by side for as long as you like. Import one list, poke at it on your phone for an evening, and decide with your own thumbs. The import from LighterPack page walks through it step by step.
Where LighterPack wins
The community. On r/Ultralight, a LighterPack link is the expected format for a shakedown request, and its pie chart is recognized at a glance. Years of public lists live there, and most gear discussion assumes it.
The code. LighterPack is open source under the GPL, so you can read it, patch it, or self-host it. Its funding is donations through Ko-fi, which means there's no business model to second-guess.
The zero-commitment start. You can use LighterPack without any account; your data sits in your browser until you register. TrailGearList asks for an email address before anything else.
If those three paragraphs cover everything you care about, you have your answer, and it isn't my product.
The short version
Stay if the community workflow and the minimalism are the point; both are real, and LighterPack is in better shape in 2026 than it's been in years. Switch if your thumbs do the editing, if you want your gear in one library instead of scattered across lists, or if you want shared lists people can copy. Trying costs you one CSV export and a few minutes, and your old lists stay put either way. If PackWizard is also on your shortlist, I compared that one separately in TrailGearList vs PackWizard.