MileShield vs MileIQ.
Both apps track miles. They are built for different drivers. Here is an honest comparison so you can pick what fits your work.
MileIQ is one of the largest and longest-running mileage trackers on the App Store. Microsoft acquired it in 2015, spun it back out as an independent company in 2021, and Bending Spoons acquired it in 2025. Its core audience has always been sales reps, real estate agents and professionals who use a personal vehicle for client meetings, and it is good at what it does for that audience.
MileShield is built specifically for gig drivers. The difference shows up in three places: how miles are tracked, what you get at tax time, and where your data lives.
MileIQ pricing and features as listed on MileIQ's pricing guide and in independent reviews on October 2, 2026. Pricing and features change, so check current details before you choose.
The core difference: shifts vs trips.
MileIQ logs every drive as a separate trip and asks you to swipe it as business or personal, with work-hours settings and frequent-drive rules to automate some of that. It works well for someone with three client meetings a day. For a gig driver running 30 deliveries a shift, it means a long list of drives to review.
MileShield logs one continuous shift from when you start working to when you stop. Every business mile in between — the deadhead between fares, repositioning to a hot zone, fuel stops while dashing — is part of the shift. No swiping.
Those between-order miles are exactly the ones that slip through the cracks. In our deadhead miles guide, 6,000 uncounted business miles in 2026 are worth about $4,450 in deductions and roughly $1,000 to $1,350 in tax.
The Schedule C question.
MileIQ produces IRS-compliant mileage reports, which are useful. But a mileage report is not organized around Schedule C. You or your CPA still have to total your miles at the right 2026 rate, add your other expenses, and place them on the right lines.
MileShield's export is a two-part package: a PDF top sheet mapped directly to IRS Form 1040 Schedule C lines, plus a CSV audit trail. Hand it to a CPA, or use it to enter your totals in tax software line by line. For what each line means, see our Schedule C walkthrough.
Where your data lives.
MileIQ stores your drive history in the cloud. That is common among mileage trackers, and MileIQ says it never sells your data to third parties. It does mean your driving routes, work patterns and frequently visited places live in a company database rather than only on your phone.
MileShield keeps everything on your phone. Your trip history is in your iPhone's local storage, and if you use iCloud backup, it is backed up through your own iCloud account under Apple's privacy policy, not ours. We never see your data because we do not have a database to put it in. How on-device tracking works →
When MileIQ might be right for you.
If you are not a gig driver — a real estate agent showing properties, a sales rep with three meetings a day, or a consultant who classifies trips by client — MileIQ is genuinely good at that workflow. It also runs on Android and offers team plans for businesses that reimburse employees.
MileShield is not built for that work. It is built for the long-shift, multi-app, deduction-maximizing reality of gig driving. Pick the tool that matches your work.