OneBusAway

Review by eFreeware

If you ride the bus or light rail somewhere like Seattle, San Diego, Tampa Bay or Washington, D.C., and you mostly want to know when the next vehicle is coming, OneBusAway is built for exactly that. It is a free, open-source app that pulls real-time transit information from local agencies and puts it in front of you with as little fuss as possible. There is no purchase to make; you install it, find your stop and read the arrival time.

What appeals to me here is the narrowness. This is not trying to be a full trip-planning suite or a social layer over your commute. It shows nearby stops on a map, lets you keep a list of favorites and set reminders for trips you take often. For someone who catches the same two or three routes most days, that is a sensible set of tools.

The catch is geographic. The developer lists seven service regions: Rogue Valley in Oregon, San Diego, the Seattle and Puget Sound area, Spokane, Tampa Bay, Washington, D.C. and York Region in Canada. If you do not ride transit in one of those places, the app is not aimed at you. That is worth checking before you install.

Real-time arrivals, and where the numbers come from

The core of the app is real-time arrival information, and the developer is upfront that those times come from your local transit agency rather than from OneBusAway itself. That matters when a bus is late or a prediction is wrong: the data originates with the agency, and the app gives you a way to flag it. You can tap an arrival time and choose the report option to tell the agency what went wrong, or reach them through the help menu.

Recent updates have reshaped how arrivals are presented. They are now grouped by route, which should make a busy stop easier to scan than a flat chronological list. Tapping a stop reveals the routes that serve it, and zooming in on the map brings nearby routes into view. Those are small changes on their own, but together they turn the map from a picture into something you can interrogate.

The developer also added live notifications for tracking a bus, plus vehicle locations that are extrapolated and animated between reported positions. If you are waiting at a stop and want to watch your vehicle approach, that combination is the part of the app I would expect to use most. It is a more active way to wait than refreshing a static list.

Favorites, shortcuts and trip reminders

Around the arrival screen sits a set of conveniences for regular riders. You can browse nearby stops on a map, keep a list of favorite stops for the ones you use constantly, and add shortcuts to your phone's home screen so a specific stop is one tap away. For a daily commute, that shortcut is probably the fastest path into the app.

There are also reminders for trips you take frequently, which the developer presents as a way to avoid missing a departure. I read that as a nudge rather than a full alarm system: you set it for a trip you already know, and it prompts you around the time you would need to leave. It fits the app's overall posture, which is about the trips you already make rather than the ones you are planning from scratch.

The trip planner has seen what the developer calls significant improvements in a recent release, and the bike overlay now includes micromobility options. I would treat the planner as a supporting feature rather than the reason to install. The arrival board and your saved stops remain the heart of the app.

What it asks of you, and what it costs

OneBusAway is free to download. That is a rare combination, and it follows from the app's open-source nature: the developer invites people who like tinkering to get involved with the project, and there is a beta program for anyone who wants early builds. The arrival information is there when you open the app.

The real requirement is location. You need to be riding transit in one of the supported regions for the app to have data to display. More regions are planned, but the current list is what you get today, and it covers specific areas rather than the whole world.

The second requirement is patience with data quality. Because arrival predictions come from the transit agency, the app can only be as accurate as the feed behind it. The report-a-problem path exists precisely because predictions sometimes go wrong, and using it is the practical way to get a bad arrival time looked at rather than simply tolerated.

Getting the most from it day to day

My advice would be to set the app up once and then lean on the shortcuts. Save the stops you use most as favorites, and put the one or two you check every morning on your home screen. That turns a map-based app into something closer to a glanceable departure board, which is the whole point of real-time transit information.

If you take a regular trip, the reminder feature is worth configuring for it, and if you are watching a specific vehicle, the live tracking notifications are the tool to reach for. When an arrival time looks wrong, tap it and use the report option so the agency hears about it. That loop between rider and agency is part of how the predictions improve.

The app is rated 4.1 from just over 10,000 ratings, with more than a million installs. I read that as a well-established tool with a solid but not flawless reputation, which is roughly what you would expect from a free app whose accuracy depends on someone else's feed. The most recent update arrived in October 2026 and brought the grouped arrivals, the stop-to-routes view and the notification tracking.

A focused tool for riders in the right cities

OneBusAway does one job. For a regular rider in Seattle, San Diego, Tampa Bay, Washington, D.C., Spokane, Rogue Valley or York Region, the combination of real-time arrivals, saved stops and home screen shortcuts is a practical everyday tool.

The limits are plain. It covers a fixed set of regions, and its arrival predictions are only as good as the agency feed behind them. If you ride transit outside those areas, there is nothing here for you yet. If you ride inside them and want a quick answer to when the next bus comes, this is worth installing.

What's new

• Bold new look for a bold new era • Arrivals are now grouped by route • Micromobility added to the bike overlay • Tap a stop to see its routes • Zoom in to see nearby routes • Vehicle locations extrapolated and animated • Track your bus with live notifications • Significant improvements to the trip planner • Several small bug fixes