If you are looking for a LighterPack alternative, the short version is this: keep using LighterPack if you want the simplest free, shareable gear list. OutPack is for when you want that list to draw from one inventory and carry on into a real trip, with dates, route, weather, food and a packing checklist. My own gear lists have lived in spreadsheets and LighterPack. OutPack grew from wishing either one knew more about the trip it was for.
Which one should you use?
LighterPack remains hard to beat for a single public list and a quick shakedown. OutPack earns its keep when you manage the same gear across several packs, share a trip with other people, and want the planning to continue past base weight. The main differences are below.
What LighterPack gets right
LighterPack deserves the place it holds. It is free, open source, and completely without faff: no account needed to view a list, nothing to install, and a link anyone on any forum can open in a second. The weight breakdown by category, the worn and consumable split, the little pie chart — that is the shared language of every gear discussion on the internet, and LighterPack wrote it. PackWizard built well on the idea too, with a proper gear database and price comparisons, so you can plan a loadout you do not own yet.
If a single shareable list is all you need, you can stop reading here and lose nothing. LighterPack will keep doing that job admirably, for free, as it always has.
Where my lists started to creak
My gear lists started life as a homemade spreadsheet, all hand-typed weights and formulas I kept breaking. LighterPack felt like a leap forward for weights and sharing. But my trouble was never one list. It was the fifth one. Whether it lived in a spreadsheet or LighterPack, each list was its own copy of my gear. Replacing a tent meant fixing its weight everywhere and inevitably missing one. The lists also stopped before the walk began: they knew my base weight to the gram, but nothing about when I was leaving, what the weather held, or what I would actually eat on day three.
One inventory, and everything draws from it
OutPack starts by fixing the copies. You keep a single gear inventory: every item weighed once, with its brand, cost and photo. Add your own gear or start from the built-in database. Change the tent in your inventory and every kit, pack and trip that uses it is right.
On top of the inventory sit three small ideas that match how packing actually works. Kits are the physical bundles you already keep, like a first aid kit or cooking kit. Packs are full loadouts built from kits and loose items, such as your "3-season thru-hike" setup. Trips are the real dates you take a pack out. It is a digital model of your gear cupboard rather than a spreadsheet of it.
One inventory, weighed once. Every kit, pack and trip draws from here.
A pack still gives you everything a LighterPack list does, because that language is worth keeping: base weight, trail and total, the category breakdown, worn against carried, and what the whole thing cost.
The familiar numbers: base weight, worn and carried, and the breakdown by category.
Bring your LighterPack list with you
There is no need to type the cupboard out again. Export your list from LighterPack as a CSV, then upload it to OutPack. The importer understands LighterPack's names, weights, quantities, categories, prices, links, notes, and worn or consumable markers. You can review everything before it is saved to your inventory.
Start free, then import your CSVThe trip is the point
This is the part I actually wanted. A pack is a plan for your back; a trip is a plan for your days. Seed a trip from a pack, cherry-pick from your kits, and the trip gains the things a gear list cannot hold: dates, the route on a map, a day-by-day itinerary, the weather forecast for where you will be, and food with real macros so dinner on day three is more than a hopeful guess.
If you are not going alone, add everyone to the trip or invite them to plan with you. Shared tents, stoves and food can be allocated across the group, with pack weight and meal macros shown for each person.
Most of the screenshots in this piece are a demo account walking the West Highland Way, 96 miles from Milngavie to Fort William, and the gear in them started life as real public LighterPack lists. That felt right.
A trip knows things a list cannot: the camps on the map and the week's forecast.
And on packing night the same list becomes a checklist. Tick things off as they go in the bag and watch the packed weight climb; the quiet cure for the 11pm "did I pack the head torch" spiral.
All packed, the night before a real trip of my own. Generated from the trip, not written out again.
Afterwards, keep the trip as a report: the route, actual pack weight, and notes on what worked or stayed at the bottom of the bag. Those notes make the next pack a little better.
Shakedowns still work the same way
The shakedown ritual survives intact, because it is a good ritual. Make a pack or a trip public and you get a short link to drop into r/ultralight, a group chat, or wherever your people are. Whoever opens it sees the full loadout with weights and categories, no account and no app needed, and can tell you exactly which three items are cowardice. Everything stays private until you choose otherwise, and you can flip it back any time.
A short link for the shakedown thread. Private by default; public when you say so.
It comes up the hill with you
The other difference is in your pocket. OutPack has full iOS and Android apps that work offline, so the checklist, the itinerary and the food plan are still there when the signal is not. The web app is free; the mobile app is a one-off purchase with a 14-day trial, not another subscription.
The same trip and the same pack, on the phone that actually goes up the hill.
"LighterPack perfected the gear list. OutPack tries to honour that, then take it up the hill."
Whichever tool you count your grams in, I hope the pack sits light and the forecast holds.
— Andrew
