Which ForeFlight Plan Do You Need? Starter vs Essential

By Vincent Wu, founder of Ascent EFB. Last updated August 28, 2026.

TL;DR: ForeFlight publishes three personal plans: Starter $130 a year, Essential $260, Premium $390, read from foreflight.com/pricing on August 28, 2026. The line that matters is between Starter and Essential, and it is drawn at Geo-Referenced Approaches and Charts. The plates themselves are already in Starter, since that page lists IFR Terminal Procedures inside the US region. Starter just will not draw your airplane on them. VFR pilots are usually fine on Starter. Single pilot IMC wants Essential. Premium is turbine performance planning.

Which ForeFlight plan do I need?

Most instrument pilots need Essential at $260 a year, because that is the cheapest tier with Geo-Referenced Approaches and Charts, Synthetic Vision and Hazard Advisor. Starter at $130 covers VFR flying and still includes IFR charts and terminal procedures. Premium at $390 is aimed at performance planning. Prices read from foreflight.com/pricing on August 28, 2026.

Why this is confusing in the first place

Two things happened, and both of them broke people's mental model of the ladder.

First, the names changed. ForeFlight's pricing page carries a banner reading "We've updated our subscription plan names, but the prices and features remain exactly the same as before" (foreflight.com/pricing, read August 28, 2026), and their support article on the change says Basic Plus became Starter, Pro Plus became Essential, and Performance Plus became Premium (support.foreflight.com, read August 28, 2026). So half the advice in forum threads uses names that no longer exist on the buy page.

Second, prices moved. See the February 2026 r/Foreflight thread "After the recent layoffs, ForeFlight increases subscription prices" and the May 2026 Pilots of America price increase thread. Pilots in that POA thread describe moving down the ladder rather than up. One wrote: "The $250 version just went up to $260. As much as I like the profile view, I downgraded to the $130 version." Another: "I downgraded to their Basic offering at $130, just couldn't justify the new cost." Their words in that thread, not ours.

So people are re-deriving the ladder from scratch at renewal. Here is the map.

The three tiers as ForeFlight publishes them

All of this is from foreflight.com/pricing, read August 28, 2026.

Read that table once and the shape is obvious. Starter is a complete flight bag. Essential is the safety and situational awareness layer. Premium is a dispatch desk.

The one feature that actually splits Starter from Essential

This is the part people get wrong most often, and it costs them $130 a year in either direction.

Starter includes IFR charts. ForeFlight's pricing page describes the United States region as including FAA VFR Sectionals, TACs, VFR Flyway Charts, IFR High and Low Enroutes, IFR Terminal Procedures, IFR planning charts and more (foreflight.com/pricing, read August 28, 2026). IFR Terminal Procedures means the approach plates. They are in the $130 plan.

What is not in the $130 plan is Geo-Referenced Approaches and Charts, or Plates on Maps. Both are listed under Essential and Premium on that same page. Geo-referenced means your own-ship symbol drawn on the plate as you fly it. Plates on Maps means the plate laid over the moving map.

So the real Starter versus Essential question comes down to whether you want the airplane drawn on the plate. You get the plates either way, per that page. Reasonable pilots answer the own-ship question differently. It is a narrower question than the tier list makes it look.

ForeFlight bundles geo-referenced taxi charts with its geo-referenced approaches at Essential, per its pricing page read August 28, 2026. The diagram above is ours.

Pick by mission

Tier contents and prices from foreflight.com/pricing, read August 28, 2026.

VFR day cross country

Starter. You get the sectionals, the TACs, the weather stack, airport and FBO information, taxi charts, weight and balance, checklists and the logbook. Nothing in Essential is required to complete a day VFR flight safely.

The one argument for stepping up is Hazard Advisor, which colors terrain against your altitude. Worth it if your routes cross real rocks. If your cross countries are flat and clear, $130 is the answer.

IFR training

Also Starter, for most of the rating, and this is the money-saving one.

Terminal procedures are in the base tier per the pricing page read August 28, 2026, so you can brief and fly every plate your instructor assigns. What you will not have is your position drawn on the chart. Plenty of instructors treat that as a feature during training, because the point of the rating is flying the procedure off the numbers rather than watching a dot.

Buy Essential when you start flying approaches alone in weather, not while a safety pilot is still next to you. If you are earlier than that, our guide to choosing an EFB covers the same decision without the tier names.

IFR in actual, single pilot

Essential, $260. This is the tier the price is really for.

Geo-Referenced Approaches and Charts plus Plates on Maps means own-ship on the plate. Add ForeFlight's Synthetic Vision, Hazard Advisor with automatic alerts, and the icing and turbulence layers listed under Essential on that page, and the $130 difference stops being about convenience. If you are single pilot in IMC, this is not a close call, and I am not going to pretend otherwise just because I sell a different app.

Backcountry and mountain flying

Essential, $260, for a different reason than the IFR pilots. Terrain Profile View with Airspace, Hazard Advisor and Hazard Alerts, and ForeFlight's Synthetic Vision are the terrain awareness tools, and all three sit in Essential per the pricing page read August 28, 2026. Starter gives you the sectional and the elevation figures and asks you to build the picture yourself. In a valley on a hazy afternoon that is real work.

Terrain awareness is the other reason people step up a tier. This shot is Ascent EFB.

Weather out here matters as much as terrain, and it is in every tier. For the reasoning behind a proper mountain briefing, see our guide to aviation weather briefings.

Turbine and high performance

Premium, $390. Pre-built aircraft performance profiles, improved time and fuel calculations, optimized autorouting, takeoff and landing performance, Pre-Departure Clearance and D-ATIS, fuel load planning and JetFuelX prices are all Premium-only on that page. If you fly a piston single, none of that is for you. One pilot in that POA thread put it this way: "What FF/Boeing doesn't understand is that I don't WANT all those new capabilities."

Two things that catch people out at checkout

One region, three devices. ForeFlight's pricing page states that an annual subscription grants a license to one individual to use ForeFlight on 2 iPads and 1 iPhone, or 1 iPad and 2 iPhones, with one geographic region included (read August 28, 2026). If you fly to Canada or the Bahamas, or keep a spare tablet in the bag, price that in before you compare tiers.

You can try the tier above. ForeFlight's support site says each new download from the App Store to a new device comes with a 30-day trial of the Premium feature set (support.foreflight.com, read August 28, 2026). If you are unsure, fly the trial and watch whether you actually look at own-ship on the plate.

What pilots are saying about the ladder

These are quotes from those threads, not claims of mine. The January 15, 2026 r/flying thread "ForeFlight fires half its staff" drew 877 upvotes and 357 comments, and "So are we all switching to Garmin Pilot now?" the next day added 392 more. Background: Boeing agreed in April 2025 to sell Jeppesen and ForeFlight to Thoma Bravo for $10.55 billion.

On price, from the POA thread linked above: "At Foreflight's current rate of increases you can expect to pay $15,000 over a normal pilot's life time for this over priced product." On switching, from that same thread: "I'm so used to ForeFlight I'm having a hard time enjoying the demo period."

That second one is the part worth sitting with. Switching costs are real, and they cut against us as much as anyone.

If you are not staying with ForeFlight

Most people reading this will stay, and picking the right tier is worth more than a switch. If you are actually shopping, Ascent EFB is the app I build, and it is the single-plan option: $59.99 the first year and $89.99 a year after, with 3D terrain, geo-referenced FAA charts including IFR Enroute Low, High and Area, the full weather stack, live traffic, airport information, taxi diagrams and full offline caching in the one plan. iPhone and iPad only, US FAA charts only.

Before you consider it, the thing that should stop you: Ascent does not have geo-referenced approach plates. If you have read this far to decide between Starter and Essential because you fly approaches in actual, buy Essential. We do not have that capability at any price. Wider comparisons live in ForeFlight alternatives for 2026 and the best EFB apps of 2026, and the price math is in how much an EFB costs in 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Does ForeFlight Starter include approach plates?

Yes, the charts themselves. ForeFlight's pricing page lists IFR Terminal Procedures inside the US region under VFR and IFR Charts, which is a Starter feature (read August 28, 2026). Starter does not include Geo-Referenced Approaches and Charts or Plates on Maps, both listed under Essential and Premium.

Is ForeFlight Essential worth $130 more than Starter?

It comes down to whether you want your aircraft drawn on the approach chart. For single pilot IMC, most instrument pilots would say yes. For VFR, the terrain tools are the only other reason to step up.

Do I need ForeFlight Premium?

Probably not, if you fly a piston single. Per the pricing page read August 28, 2026, Premium-only features are performance profiles, improved time and fuel calculations, 3D View and 3D Review, optimized autorouting, takeoff and landing performance, Pre-Departure Clearance and D-ATIS, and fuel planning.

What were the old ForeFlight plan names?

Per ForeFlight's own support article on the change, read August 28, 2026, Basic Plus became Starter, Pro Plus became Essential, and Performance Plus became Premium. Their pricing page says prices and features did not change with the rename.

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Written by Vincent Wu, founder of Ascent EFB at Geospatios. Ascent competes with ForeFlight, so treat the Ascent paragraph as vendor copy. ForeFlight plan names, prices and tier contents were read from foreflight.com/pricing on August 28, 2026; trial and rename details from support.foreflight.com the same day. Community quotes come from the linked threads and are those posters' opinions, not statements of fact by us. Prices change without notice, so open the vendor page before you buy. Any EFB is a supplemental aid to situational awareness, and final authority rests with the pilot in command.