PlugShare and the Best EV Charging Apps in Australia

PlugShare is the one app every Australian EV driver should install: a free, crowd-sourced map of virtually every public charger in the country, across every network, with driver check-ins that tell you whether a charger actually works before you drive to it. What PlugShare won’t do in Australia is start or pay for a charge. For that you need each network’s own app, so the practical setup is PlugShare as your map plus two to four network apps as your wallets.

What is PlugShare and why does everyone recommend it?

PlugShare is the world’s biggest community-built charging map, covering stations from every major network across more than 200 countries, with Australia well represented. It’s free, and it doesn’t play favourites: Chargefox, Evie, Tesla, bp pulse, Ampol, JOLT and Exploren chargers all appear on the same map, which no single network app will ever show you.

Three features do the heavy lifting:

• Check-ins. Drivers report successful and failed charges, often with photos and notes (“left bay offline, right bay fine”). A charger with a successful check-in from this morning is a safe bet; one with three failure reports this week is not.
• PlugScore. A reliability rating distilled from those check-ins, scored out of 10. Anything above 8 is dependable; treat low or unrated chargers as maybes.
• Filters. Show only chargers that match your plug (CCS2, CHAdeMO, Type 2), minimum speed, or preferred networks, which matters if you drive something older or CHAdeMO-only.

There’s also a trip planner and in-app messaging between drivers. PlugShare does offer payment at participating networks overseas via Pay with PlugShare, but in Australia you’ll be starting sessions in network apps, so think of PlugShare as reconnaissance.

Which apps do you actually need to pay for charging?

Australian public charging is app-by-network, so your phone needs the apps for the networks you actually plug into. The field guide:

Two of these punch above their weight. Chargefox is itself an aggregator, a network of networks, so one account covers chargers owned by hundreds of organisations. And Evie runs the fast-charging sites you’ll most often want on a highway run, with Autocharge making the app nearly invisible after setup.

What’s the best app for planning an EV road trip?

A Better Route Planner (ABRP). Tell it your exact car, your starting charge and your destination, and it calculates where to stop, for how long, and what state of charge you’ll arrive with, using consumption models specific to your vehicle, not generic estimates. It’s the closest thing to the trip computer EVs should ship with, and the free tier handles occasional trips; a paid tier adds live data and extras.

The winning workflow is ABRP plus PlugShare: ABRP picks the stops, then you vet each one in PlugShare for recent successful check-ins and a healthy PlugScore, swapping out anything that looks flaky. Tesla drivers can lean on the car’s built-in trip planner for Supercharger routing, which remains the most polished in-car experience going.

Once you know where you’re stopping, make sure the matching network apps are installed, with payment set up, before you leave home. Doing account signup in a dead-reception car park is a rite of passage nobody needs. Our guide to public EV charging in Australia covers the on-the-ground side of road-trip charging.

How do you get the most out of PlugShare?

A few habits separate the relaxed EV drivers from the stressed ones:

1. Read the last three check-ins before relying on any charger, especially regional ones. Recency beats the overall score.
2. Filter by your plug and a minimum speed so the map only shows chargers that are actually useful to you.
3. Check photos for the practical stuff: bay layout, cable reach, whether a tradie’s ute habitually parks there.
4. Check in yourself. The map is only as good as its community; thirty seconds of karma helps the next driver.
5. Use it at home, not just on trips. It’s the easiest way to discover a free council AC charger or a new JOLT site near you.

So which apps deserve space on your phone?

A realistic Australian stack: PlugShare for the map, Chargefox and Evie as your everyday wallets, ABRP when a road trip is coming, then one or two extras based on geography, the Tesla app if you want Supercharger access, JOLT if you’re near its free kerbside chargers, bp pulse or Ampol if your routes run past their servos. That’s five-ish apps, set up once, and between them they remove almost every payment and where-do-I-charge surprise Australian EV ownership can throw at you.