5 Must-Have Apps For Exploring So Paulo

São Paulo is South America’s largest and busiest city, and getting around is no easy feat. Visitors and residents alike are always searching for ways to make life in this city a less cumbersome experience. Culture Trip’s list of the most helpful São Paulo apps is designed to help you see more with less hassle, whether you’re after bus and bike routes to learning how long the wait is for entry to popular nightspots or restaurants.

Pedala SP

For discovering the best bike routes in the city

Pedala SP offers complete and up-to-date information about São Paulo’s cycling infrastructure. The user is able to discover bike lanes (permanent, recreational and preferential), parking spots (indoor and outdoor bike racks), and parks with bike lanes. The app also lets users create routes between two locations, and shows the elevation of each route, so you can choose the best one to suit your mood and level of fitness on any given day.

Pedala SP is free and available on Google Play and iTunes in Portuguese and English.

Moovit

For finding your way around the city

In a city the size of São Paulo, one of the must-have apps concerns public transportation. Moovit uses a combination of official transit information and crowd-sourced live updates to provide accurate information about São Paulo’s public transportation at any given moment. The user is privy to detailed routes to destinations, with bus and train schedules, arrival forecasts and service alerts to know exactly how to get anywhere in the São Paulo Metropolitan Region. Moovit will even alert users once you’ve arrived at your stop and need to exit the bus or train.

Moovit is free and available in more than 40 languages. It can be downloaded from iTunes and Google Play

Viapp

For making plans and meeting your friends

For those who like parties and nightclubs, the free VIAPP app is a must. The app will send usernames to club lists, sell invitations, make reservations for private rooms at nightclubs as well as show the profile of an establishment along with menus, photos and travel itineraries to the location. In addition, it shows the user how many friends from their social networks – and connected to Viapp – will be at the event.

Viapp is free and available on iTunes and Google Play in Portuguese and English.

Tem Fila?

Tired of waiting in line at restaurants, nightclubs or even bank branches? This free app can help you deal with those problems. The Tem Fila? app is a service that helps individuals find nearby places and view their reputation, enter their own rating and write comments. The user views locations near them. To see the status of local lines, simply click on the name of an establishment to receive information if there is too much of a wait time for a table at the chosen restaurant or in line at the nightclub.

The application is free and available for download from iTunes and Google Play in the English and Portuguese versions.

Cool Tours

For discovering the incredible sites around the city

Cool Tours is an app that invites you to take advantage of all the culture, art, shows and architecture São Paulo has to offer. It lets you discover all the options around you with complete cultural itineraries, updated information in real time and for free. Find out all the basic information of an event: price, payment options, and times, before heading out. The app also suggests points of interest based on the rating of other users. One can share and comment on Facebook on the tours they liked, or a specific place or exhibition not to be missed.

Cool Tours is available for free download from the iTunes and Google Play in English and Portuguese versions.