About HutScanner

What it is

HutScanner reads hut availability across the Alps and finds chains of huts with beds on consecutive nights, connected by walking routes you can actually do in a day. That combination is the hard part of a hut-to-hut trip. Any single hut is easy to check on its own; the difficulty is the sequence, across several booking systems in several languages.

It works in a browser at hutscanner.com/app and as an app on Android and iOS, with the maps, the hut network and your routes bundled onto the phone so a plan survives a valley with no signal.

What it is not

• It does not book anything. HutScanner never holds a bed and never takes a payment. It finds the nights that work and sends you to the hut's own reservation page. Booking, payment and any change to it stay between you and the hut.
• It is not the source of truth. Availability is read from the huts' own booking systems once a day. It can be out of date, and a hut can change its mind. Confirm with the hut before you rely on it.
• It is not a navigation app. It plans the trip and exports a GPX file. On the hill, carry a map and a navigation app you trust.
• It does not cover every hut. Coverage is best where a hut books online and thinner where bookings go by phone or email. Every hut page says which it is.

Who builds it

HutScanner is made by Robert McLeod, an engineer in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, in the UK. He builds it in his own time, outside a day job in aerospace engineering, and he is not a professional software developer.

The first version was a spreadsheet, built to plan a hut-to-hut trek in the Vanoise in 2024: a tab for each hut, a column for each night, and the whole thing started again every time one hut turned out to be full. That spreadsheet was doing by hand exactly what HutScanner now does automatically: matching huts with beds on consecutive nights to legs you can walk between them. The spreadsheet became a private prototype, worked on with no public sign of it, and the prototype grew a hut network, a routing engine and a set of availability readers, and by early summer 2026 it was an app. The first working version ran on 6 June 2026 and it launched a month later.

One person builds it, and one person reads the post. Every message to [email protected] is read by him.

When it launched

• The first version was a planning spreadsheet for a hut-to-hut trek in the Vanoise in 2024: the same search, done by hand.
• The app took shape over the first half of 2026: the hut network and routing first, then the availability readers.
• The first complete working version ran on 6 June 2026.
• It launched publicly on 6 July 2026, on Android and iOS together.
• The web planner has cost nothing to use since 9 July 2026, and stays free this season.
• The public daily Tour du Mont Blanc availability page has been published every morning since 13 June 2026. See the current day's page.
• Availability alerts by email, on a whole route rather than one hut, have run since 25 August 2026.

Where the numbers come from

The availability figures on this site are read from the huts' own booking systems: the alpine club portal used across Austria, Germany, Switzerland and South Tyrol, the Italian Alpine Club portal, the Tour du Mont Blanc booking platform, the French club system, and a number of individual hut booking pages. Each hut page shows when that hut was last checked and links to the calendar the figure came from, so any single night can be checked by hand in a few seconds.

The reading is done by two named bots, on a fixed and gentle schedule, both of which identify themselves and carry a contact address. HutScannerAvailabilityBot does the once-a-day pass. HutScannerUserBot fetches on demand, only when someone presses "re-check now" for the huts on their own route. A hut warden or booking platform operator can ask for either one to stop, or be corrected, or be shown differently. The wardens page sets out exactly what each bot does and how to reach us.

Hut positions and details come from refuges.info and OpenStreetMap contributors, and walking routes are computed over real trail data with terrain grades, so a line that crosses a glacier is labelled as one rather than quietly offered as a shortcut.

How it is paid for

HutScanner is free this season on the web, on Android and on iOS. There is no advertising, no user account and no sale of anyone's data. A paid tier is planned so the thing can keep running, and the intention is that the map and the routing stay open to everyone without paying.

Get in touch

Email [email protected]. The most useful messages are the ones that say a hut is wrong: a dead booking link, availability that does not match what the hut says, or a place that is a day restaurant rather than somewhere you can sleep. The help page has the details worth including.