The Short Version

Moda costs $4.99 one-time. Both parents log drives from their own phones, sessions back up to the cloud automatically, Apple WeatherKit pulls weather at session start, and GPS calculates actual sunset and sunrise for night detection. For Indiana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, North Carolina, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, Moda fills out the official state DMV form. Student Driving Logger is free with ads ($2.99 to remove them), single-user only, stores everything locally, and runs Google AdMob and Firebase Analytics. The $2 between ad-free SDL and Moda covers family linking, cloud backup, 7-state DMV forms, automatic weather, and night detection that has been in production since March 2026 instead of May 17.

What Is Student Driving Logger?

Student Driving Logger was built by a high school student in Virginia as a Congressional App Challenge entry in 2020. It tracks driving time via GPS, shows your total hours, and exports a PDF log. It has 4,264 ratings at 4.7 stars, making it one of the most-reviewed driving log apps on the App Store.

It’s free with ads. Removing ads costs $2.99.

What it does well:

GPS tracking with route recording
Heat map showing where you’ve driven across all sessions
PDF export with running totals and signature lines
Night hours goal with an activity ring on the home screen
Kilometer display for international users

What it doesn’t do:

No family linking. Single-user app. No parent dashboard.
No DMV form auto-fill. Generic PDF only.
No Live Activity or Dynamic Island.
No cloud backup. Drives are stored locally. If you lose your phone, you lose your hours.
No weather auto-detection via a weather API.
No tamper-evident sessions. Logs can be edited without any verification trail.
No curfew alerts.
No idle auto-end.
No skills tracker.

Night detection was just added on May 17, 2026 (version 3.2.1). Before that, users had to tag night drives manually. The implementation is brand new with three bug-fix releases in three days.

What Is Moda?

Moda is purpose-built for families logging permit hours. $4.99 one-time. No ads ever. No subscription.

It does everything SDL does (GPS tracking, time logging, PDF export) plus:

Automatic night detection since day one. Moda calculates actual sunset and sunrise times for the teen’s GPS coordinates on the specific date of the drive. Not a fixed clock time. Sunset in Wichita is 5:05 PM in December and 8:58 PM in June. Moda handles that automatically.

Weather tracking via Apple WeatherKit. Temperature, condition code, precipitation probability. Some states require bad-weather practice hours. Moda tracks those without the teen thinking about it.

Family linking. Parents generate a code. Teens enter it. Now both parents see every session, total progress, and hour breakdowns from their own phone. If Dad logs a Saturday drive and Mom logs a Tuesday drive, the hours add up automatically.

DMV form auto-fill. For Indiana, North Carolina, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, Moda fills out the actual official DMV form. Not a generic log. The real form with every field populated.

Live Activity. The session timer shows on the lock screen and Dynamic Island while driving. Check progress without opening the app.

Cloud backup. Sessions sync to the cloud automatically. Switch phones, reinstall, lose your device. Your hours are safe.

HMAC-signed sessions. Every session is cryptographically signed at save time. A teen can prove to a skeptical DMV examiner that the records weren’t modified after the fact.

Feature Comparison

Feature	Moda	Student Driving Logger
Price	$4.99 one-time	Free + $2.99 to remove ads
Ads	None	Yes (AdMob banners)
Night auto-detection	Sunset/sunrise GPS calculation (since launch)	Added May 17, 2026
Weather tracking	Apple WeatherKit (automatic)	Unclear implementation
Family linking	Yes (parent-teen shared dashboard)	No
DMV form auto-fill	7 states (IN, NC, NJ, NV, NY, OH, PA)	No (generic PDF only)
Live Activity	Yes (lock screen + Dynamic Island)	No
Cloud backup	Yes (automatic sync)	No (local only, manual file export)
Skills tracking	20 driving skills	No
Tamper detection	HMAC-signed sessions	No
Curfew alerts	Yes	No
Idle auto-end	Yes (45 min)	No
Heat map	No	Yes
Background tracking	Full background GPS	Requires “Always” location permission
CSV export	Yes	No
States supported	All 50 + DC + Australia	User sets manual target
Privacy	No third-party analytics, no ad tracking	AdMob + Firebase Analytics
App Store ratings	5.0 (newer app)	4.7 (4,264 ratings)

Two Things SDL Has That Moda Doesn’t

SDL has 4,264 App Store reviews. Moda launched in March 2026 and has far fewer. The gap is six years of head start. SDL has been in the store since 2020. Review count reflects time on the market, not quality.

SDL also has a heat map: one visualization of all your drives overlaid on a map across every session. Moda doesn’t have this. It’s a nice thing to look at. It doesn’t affect your hour count, your night hours, or what you hand the DMV.

SDL is free with AdMob banner ads. $2.99 to remove them. Moda costs $4.99 with no ads, no ad network, no free tier.

Where Moda Wins

Family linking. This is the biggest gap. SDL is a single-user app. There’s no way for Mom and Dad to both log drives and see combined progress. If your family has two adults supervising, you’re either sharing a phone to log or keeping a separate tally somewhere. Moda syncs everything automatically across devices.

DMV forms. When you hit 50 hours and need to bring proof to the DMV, SDL gives you a generic PDF. Moda fills out the actual state form with every field populated. For families in Indiana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, North Carolina, Nevada, or Pennsylvania, this saves real time and stress on test day.

Cloud backup. SDL stores drives locally on the device. Multiple reviewers have reported losing all their data when the app crashed mid-drive or when they switched phones. Moda syncs to the cloud automatically. Your hours survive anything.

Privacy. SDL uses Google AdMob and Firebase Analytics. Your teen’s driving data sits alongside ad tracking. Moda has zero third-party SDKs. No ads, no ad tracking, no data shared with Google.

Night detection maturity. Moda has had GPS-based sunset/sunrise night detection since March 2026. SDL added night detection on May 17, 2026 and shipped three bug-fix updates in three days. Moda’s implementation has months of production use. SDL’s is days old.

Weather. Moda pulls conditions from Apple WeatherKit at session start. Actual temperature, precipitation probability, condition code. States like Pennsylvania and South Dakota require bad-weather hours. Moda tracks them without thinking about it.

The Privacy Question

This matters more than people realize. SDL uses AdMob (Google’s ad network) and Firebase Analytics. The app tracks your teen’s location, device ID, and usage patterns, then shares that data with Google’s advertising ecosystem.

Moda uses first-party analytics only. No Google SDKs. No ad network. No third-party tracking. GPS coordinates never leave the device.

For a $2 price difference ($2.99 for ad-free SDL vs $4.99 for Moda), you’re choosing between an app that shares your teen’s data with Google and one that doesn’t share it with anyone.

The Data Loss Question

SDL stores everything locally. The import/export feature (added in 2025) lets you manually transfer drive files between devices. But there’s no automatic backup. If the app crashes during a drive, that session can be lost. Reviewers have reported this happening.

Moda backs up to the cloud automatically after every session. Switch phones, reinstall the app, drop your phone in a lake. Sign back in and your hours are there. For a tool you use over 6-12 months while logging 50+ hours, that reliability matters.

The Design Gap

Student Driving Logger was built in 2020 for a congressional app challenge. Six years later, the interface looks like it. White background, system-default fonts, AdMob banner ad sitting at the bottom of the screen in the free version. The bones are functional. Nothing was redesigned along the way.

Moda was built for iOS 18 from the start. Dark mode native. Progress rings on the dashboard. A session screen that shows live weather conditions, actual sunset/sunrise timing, and who you’re driving with. The Live Activity on the lock screen was designed to look like it belongs there, not like an afterthought.

None of that makes the app track hours more accurately. But you’ll open this thing dozens of times a week for six months. SDL works. Moda looks like it was built for the phone you’re already using.

The Verdict

SDL has more reviews, a heat map, and a free tier. That’s the full list.

Family linking, DMV form exports, cloud backup, automatic weather detection, no Google ad network tracking your teen’s location. Those go to Moda. For families in Indiana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, North Carolina, Nevada, or Pennsylvania, Moda fills out the actual official DMV form when you’re done.

Two dollars more than ad-free SDL. For an app you’ll use almost every day for half a year.

Stop manually tracking hours. Moda logs driving automatically.

Auto-detects night driving, exports DMV forms, and syncs across family phones.