Mobile apps

Phone apps for everyday life, from maps and food delivery to giving things away and looking after your mental health. With ethical mobile apps, the questions are who makes the money and how, what the app collects, and whether it’s built to grab your attention.

Our top picks: CoMaps, free offline maps built on OpenStreetMap by a not-for-profit community that says it collects no data; it’s young and runs on modest donations. And CoopCycle, a federation of courier-owned bike delivery co-ops whose software is licensed to co-ops only; it only works in towns with a member co-op, mostly in Europe.

How we choose: we check every app against the 6 principles in our manifesto (who owns it and how it makes money, what it collects, how it treats people, honesty, openness and staying power). This list was last checked on 13 October 2026.