Free Essential Apps to Ease Your Tehran Trip

First-time visitors have their own anxieties and rightfully so when the destination happens to be the Iranian capital, Tehran, which has been misrepresented for decades by the vested western media. 

Home to 12 million people, Tehran is a vibrant place with immense historical and cultural attractions. The city offers much more than just sustenance in its museums, shopping centers and coffee shops. Cuisines served by its restaurants, ranging from the traditional to the trendy, can satisfy any foodie.

The ever-expanding metropolis has a way of growing on you, but who says you can’t help speed things along? 

Listed here are five smartphone apps—all free and available in English—that can help enhance your travel experience in Tehran. Some are well-known worldwide, while others are more obscure but just as handy.

  Tehran Metro

Tehran’s ever-expanding subway network has helped make important locations accessible and reduce travel times by avoiding the inescapable nuisance of modern life: road traffic. Developed by Fardad Co, the smartphone app Tehran Metro helps you find the closest metro station and provides key information about each station. Available on iOS and Android, the app has surprisingly accurate train schedules for every station. Furthermore, it lists the amenities of each station, such as public restrooms, newspaper stands and fast-food joints. Interestingly, it also mentions the ATM machines installed at any particular station.

Another feature of this app is that it has a list of important sites around every station, though the Persian names have not been translated into other languages yet.

  Google Translate 

This free translator can be a useful tool to support your own, more serious language learning.  Its precision is not up to the mark but realistically, it’s most useful on a practical level, quickly translating day-to-day words you come across on your travels.  While you cannot yet use your camera to translate Persian text, the app allows you to draw the words you see and does a fairly good job at guessing the word before translating it. If confronted with a person who doesn’t speak English, you can simply translate what you want to say via the app and hold up your phone so the other person can read the Persian translation.

  Foursquare

Foursquare does not need an introduction. It is one of the most popular city guide apps in the world—including Iran, which sets it apart from the competition.

Iranians are very active on Foursquare, rating cafes and restaurants frequently and uploading photos of exotic drinks and colorful foods. There are plenty of reviews in English by both Iranians and foreign tourists, so choosing the right café shouldn’t be too difficult.

  Google Maps

Google Maps upgraded their service a few months ago to highlight traffic density, making it an absolutely necessary application for anyone visiting Tehran.

Standstill traffic is a hallmark of the Iranian capital and knowing which streets to avoid and what shortcuts to take is essential to getting to your destination quickly and with your sanity intact. The data provided by Google Maps is accurate and in real-time.

  Date Converter

Unlike most other countries, Iran uses a completely different calendar. While Gregorian dates are commonly used when the information is thought to be of interest to tourists, it does not hurt to have an easy-to-use app to convert dates.

Enter Date/Calendar Converter: a free, Android-only app developed by NoM to help convert a variety of calendars, including the Iranian one. What makes this app stand out is that it provides a transliteration of Persian month and day names, making their pronunciation easy for the non-Persian speaker.

  Honorable Mentions

A handful of useful apps had the potential to make it onto the list, but couldn’t for the same reason: They are all available only in Persian. Popular ridesharing app Tap30, which has proven to be just as controversial as its American counterparts Uber and Lyft, has taken the city by storm.

Elsewhere, popular food delivery apps Zoodfood and Reyhoon provide easy access to hundreds of restaurants across the city, provide you have somebody at hand to help translate the Persian info.