ParkMateKnow before you owe.
ParkMate notices when you've pulled into a privately enforced car park and tells you when you need to leave — before a Parking Charge Notice lands on your doormat.
Android · Free · In closed testing on Google Play
How it works
Detect, remind, assist. ParkMate doesn't take payments or hold your card — it makes sure you never find out about a charge from a penalty letter.
You park
ParkMate checks your position against a database of enforced car parks. It waits for two GPS fixes inside the site before it commits, so driving past never counts.
It starts the clock
Each site has a stay plan: a free maximum stay, pay-and-display, or pay-on-exit. ParkMate works out your leave-by time, including the grace period the operator has to give you.
You get the nudge
A heads-up when you arrive, a warning with 15 minutes left, and a final alert when the maximum stay is up. Drive out and everything cancels itself.
Where it works
ParkMate's database covers thousands of privately managed car parks across Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands — supermarkets, retail parks, motorway services, hospitals and town-centre sites — and it refreshes itself every week without an app update.
Operators
ParkingEye, Euro Car Parks, APCOA, Smart Parking, UKPC, Horizon, GroupNexus, NPE, Premier Park and Civil Enforcement, with accreditation and appeal routes recorded for each.
Site types
Free maximum-stay car parks, pay-and-display, and pay-on-exit sites like hospitals, each with its own reminder plan.
Grace periods
Alerts are built around the single Code of Practice: a 5-minute consideration period on arrival and a 10-minute grace period after your stay ends.
Signs are the law
Car-park terms change and our data can't see them change. On-site signage is always the authoritative record — ParkMate is a reminder, not a defence.
Built to be trusted
A reminder app only works if you can believe its alerts. Everything in ParkMate is designed to keep false alarms out and real ones in.
No phantom exits
A wider exit boundary than entry boundary means GPS jitter at the edge of a site won't cancel your reminder and start it again.
Tap to navigate
Every car park in the list opens in Google Maps for directions.
Foreground by default
Detection runs while ParkMate is open or in your recent apps, with background location switched off unless you turn it on.
Over-the-air database
Sites are pulled from a public, weekly-refreshed database, so new car parks appear without waiting for a release.
Private by design
Location is processed on the device. No account, no analytics, no ads, nothing uploaded.
Free
ParkMate is free. If it saves you a parking charge, you can leave a tip.
Questions
Straight answers about what ParkMate does and doesn't do.
Does ParkMate pay for parking?
No. It tells you when your time is running out and, for pay-and-display sites, reminds you to buy a ticket. Paying — and reading the signs — is still down to you.
My local car park isn't in the app
Tell us through the support page with the car park name, operator and postcode and we'll add it. The database is largely built from OpenStreetMap, so gaps exist, especially outside town centres.
The max stay shown is wrong
Entries are researched, not surveyed, and operators change terms. Report it and we'll correct it — and always go by the sign in the car park.
Does it work in the background?
Only if you turn background location on in Settings. By default ParkMate detects while it's open or recently used, which keeps the permission footprint small.
Can I get a PCN cancelled with it?
ParkMate isn't an appeals service. If you do receive a charge, the operator's appeal route and the independent appeals body are listed in the app's operator details.
ParkMate is free.
If it saves you a charge, you can say thanks with a tip. It goes towards the running costs and the next feature.