What to Look For in a Campsite Cancellation Checker

You pay for a camping setup. Maybe it’s a simple tent or a shiny new RV. Then, you research and collect all of the required gear. Finally, you load up the park’s booking website … and everything is sold out.

Seeing a Reserved mark next to every campsite sucks. Some get mad. Others feel defeated. Most aren’t that easily dissuaded. They go searching for alternatives, and many find out about campsite cancellation checkers.

There are a few ways to get notified about campsite availabilities. Some parks have notification features built into their booking systems. There are also numerous free scripts you can try. Then there are tools like the one we built. It’s called Campnab.

When exploring your options, we recommend prioritizing for these benefits:

Wide variety of parks and systems

It’s important to avoid getting stuck with a tool that only monitors a small number of campgrounds. It’s a drag to need multiple tools to accomplish the same task.

You can use Campnab to scan a lot of parks (more than 7,000 campgrounds at over 3,200 parks). We focus on state, provincial, and national parks as those are the places most want to visit.

Planning a road trip? You can use Campnab to scan parks in both the United States and Canada. This is particularly handy, as you can manage all of your campsite availability scans in one place.

Ease-of-use

There’s nothing to stop you from downloading a free script and using it to scan parks for cancellations. For some, this might work quite nicely. Not all of us are so handy with configuring code, though. Me? I prefer the easy way.

Many appreciate the streamlined user experience of Campnab. I think they feel this way due to how important these details are to us. There are no passwords to remember, the app is easy to navigate.

Campnab is all about making it easier for you to find an available campsite. We put a lot of effort into making your experience pleasant—and we never bug you with information you don’t need.

Useful campsite filtering

Some folks are super-chill about where they camp. They just need somewhere flat to plant their tent/RV for the night. I dig these folks and their laid-back attitude when it comes to enjoying the outdoors.

Not everyone is as flexible, though. Some folks need a long pad for a big rig. Some campers only want waterfront campgrounds. Differently-abled visitors might need an ADA campsite. In each of these scenarios, filtering is a godsend.

Campnab offers two types of filters. The first allows you only to get notified of openings for certain campsites. This might be the type of campsite, RV length, or certain amenities. The second only alerts you when there’s an opening at the specific campsites you select.

Here’s a video on filtering your campsite scans:

Power-user features

The longer you work on a product like Campnab, the more members tell you what they want. With each request, we dig into why folks are asking for a feature—and consider how we can best deliver that functionality.

Over the years, we’ve added the ability to scan using flexible dates, get notified of site set to unlock, copy scans for reuse, and scan for backcountry permits. We’ve also added park reviews so members can help one another determine which parks are most worthy of a visit.

Psst… we have some neat new features in the works and will be unrolling them in the weeks and months to come. 🤐

One-on-one support from humans

Customer support is time-consuming. Some groups outsource support to third parties. Others use chatbots, which are rarely ever helpful. A few organizations fail to offer support altogether. Personally, I expect to see a chat area right on the website—and I love when a real human answers my questions.

This mindset shapes how we offer support at Campnab. Members seem to like how we offer one-on-one support whenever they have a problem. If you contact Campnab needing help, one of us will lend a hand. Seriously. Give it a try. You might be surprised by how hard we work to offer wicked-awesome support.

One note: We generally reply immediately, but there are only two of us. So, if we’re outside you might have to wait a little while for a response. We will absolutely, totally, 100% get back to you, though.

Not a side project

Since starting Campnab, we’ve seen some folks build similar products. At first, this was frustrating, but we’ve come to accept this as part of the deal. There’s Campalert, another Campalert, Available Camping, and a handful of others. These things come and go, largely because they’re side projects for developers who want to fiddle with an interesting problem.

Campnab isn’t a side project. Nor is it an add-on feature that only gets occasional attention. We work on Campnab around the clock. We only monitor parks for canceled campsite reservations. We don’t book campsites, offer campground discounts, or produce handy map overlays. We put all of our time into offering members the most accurate campsite availability data we can.

Regular system patches and updates

What most folks don’t realize about booking systems is that they’re constantly changing—and there are glitches. Eric S. (he came up with the idea for Campnab) is continually refining, tweaking, and fixing our system so our scans run smoothly. Since many members support our service, we’re able to put a lot of time into this.

Paying members tend to let us know—sometimes explicitly—when there’s an issue. (Like this one.) Some problems get fixed in minutes. We’ve also had bugs that required hours, days, and even months of investigation. Sometimes this isn’t much fun, but it does make our alerts more accurate.

Wrapping up

Admittedly, the above is a bit of a pitch for Campnab. Our campsite cancellation checker does all of these things—and we’d be thrilled to have you join Campnab. So, we’re a bit enthusiastic. We love when campers find campsites through our little app!

That said, we’re even keener to see you get out camping with your family. This is why we’ve compiled a list of alternatives to Campnab, as well as some free campsite checkers. We make no guarantees for those services and tools, so YMMV.

Good luck, and happy camping!

Back to Blog index