GuideFroth surf guides
5 min readFroth vs OnTheSnow: Which Snow Report App Should You Use?
Quick answer
OnTheSnow collects official snow reports, forecasts, trail maps and webcams for more than 2,000 ski areas. Froth is a free app where skiers and snowboarders post timestamped reports with a photo or video from the mountain, share them privately with a crew, and see winter weather and avalanche warnings for the resort. Many riders use both: OnTheSnow to plan the trip, Froth to decide where to ride today.
Froth and OnTheSnow overlap more than Froth and a pure forecast app do, because OnTheSnow also carries firsthand reports and photos from skiers. The difference is what each app is built around. OnTheSnow is built around the resort's official snow report, with forecasts, trail maps and webcams attached. Froth is built around the report a rider posts from the chairlift, with a photo or video attached, and around who gets to see it.
Froth publishes this page. The useful disclosure is what Froth does not have: no trail maps, no hour-by-hour forecast, no powder alerts, and a resort list of about 600 against OnTheSnow's 2,000 plus. If those are what you are choosing on, OnTheSnow is the stronger product and this page is not going to argue otherwise.
| What you are comparing | OnTheSnow | Froth |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | OnTheSnow is free to download, and its App Store listing shows no in-app purchases. | Froth is free to download, and posting and reading reports is free with no paid tier for the core app. |
| Resorts covered | OnTheSnow's listing says it carries snow reports from more than 2,000 ski areas, browsable by state, region or pass (Ikon, Epic, Indy, Mountain Collective). | Froth covers more than 600 ski resorts in North America, Europe, Japan and the Southern Hemisphere, and a rider can request a missing resort from inside the app. |
| Where the report comes from | OnTheSnow's core report is the resort's official snow report, with firsthand ski reports and photos from other skiers alongside it. Video is not described in its listing. | Froth's report is posted by a rider: surface condition, snow depth, fresh snow, temperature, visibility and crowd level, with a photo or video of the run, and timestamped so you can see how old it is. |
| Forecasts and maps | OnTheSnow has hour-by-hour resort forecasts, interactive trail maps, a snow history graph and powder alerts when a favourite resort gets new snow. | Froth shows a snowfall strip on each resort page, what fell yesterday and a seven-day forecast, plus open runs, parks and lifts when the resort publishes them. Froth has no trail maps, no hourly forecast and no powder alerts. |
| Safety warnings | Winter weather or avalanche warnings are not described in OnTheSnow's App Store listing. | Froth shows winter weather alerts from the US National Weather Service and Environment Canada, and backcountry avalanche danger from Avalanche.org, Avalanche Canada and the European Avalanche Warning Services, on the resort page. |
| Webcams and contact | OnTheSnow shows live resort webcams inside the app. | Froth links to the resort's own webcam page from the resort screen rather than embedding the stream, and shows a tap-to-call resort phone number for the latest word from the mountain. |
| Crew chat | Private group chat is not described in OnTheSnow's App Store listing. | Froth includes private groups with built-in chat, so a report reaches only the crew you choose. |
| Coach | OnTheSnow's SkiGPT is an assistant for snow intel and trip planning. Technique coaching is not described in its listing. | Froth Coach analyses an uploaded clip of your skiing or snowboarding and returns technique feedback in minutes: 2 free analyses, one more per report posted (max 4 per 24 hours), then credit packs. In beta. |
OnTheSnow facts are taken from the OnTheSnow Ski & Snow Report listing on the Apple App Store (seller Mountain News LLC), checked 31 October 2026. "Not described in its App Store listing" means the listing does not mention it, which is not the same as the feature not existing. Froth facts were checked against the live Froth app and its resort list on the same date.
What is OnTheSnow best at?
OnTheSnow is best at breadth and at planning. Its listing describes snow reports from more than 2,000 ski areas, filtered by state, region or pass, with an hour-by-hour forecast, interactive trail maps, a snow history graph and powder alerts for the resorts you follow. If your question is which resort on your pass got the most snow this week, or what the trail map looks like before you arrive, that is the tool, and its webcams let you look at the mountain before you drive.
What is Froth best at?
Froth is best at the hour before you decide where to ride. Reports are posted by riders and timestamped, so you can tell a report from first chair apart from one posted after the sun hit the groomers, and each one can carry a short video of the actual run. The second thing it is built for is keeping that information small: a private group shares conditions with your crew instead of the whole mountain. The third is safety: winter weather alerts and backcountry avalanche danger sit on the same resort page as the reports.
Is Froth free?
Yes. Froth is free to download on iOS and Android, and posting and reading snow reports is free, with no paid tier for the core app. The one paid part is Froth Coach: each video analysis costs a credit, new accounts get 2 free credits, you earn one more each time you post a report (up to 4 per rolling 24 hours), and after that credits sell in packs of 2 for $19.99, 10 for $39.99, or 30 for $59.99.
Can you share snow reports privately with just your friends?
Yes, and on Froth that is a core feature rather than a workaround. You create a private group for your crew and share reports, conditions and plans only inside it, with chat built in for sorting out who is driving. Riders use it for the obvious reason: a stash that is still untracked at ten in the morning stays that way for longer if the whole resort does not hear about it.
Does Froth show avalanche and winter weather warnings?
Yes. Each resort page shows active winter weather alerts (winter storm, blizzard, extreme cold, high wind) from the US National Weather Service in the United States and from Environment Canada in Canada, plus the current backcountry avalanche danger rating from Avalanche.org, Avalanche Canada and the European Avalanche Warning Services. The avalanche rating is about backcountry terrain, not controlled in-bounds runs, and the section stays empty when nothing is active rather than showing a made-up number.
Do you need both apps?
Most riders who use Froth also use a resort aggregator or a forecast app, and that is the intended combination rather than a concession. Use OnTheSnow or a forecast app to decide which weekend and which resort, then check Froth to decide which side of the mountain and whether this morning's report still holds. If you are weighing other options too, the OnTheSnow alternatives roundup sorts them by the reason people switch.
The short version
OnTheSnow is a resort aggregator: official snow reports for 2,000 plus ski areas, forecasts, trail maps, webcams and powder alerts, with firsthand skier reports alongside. Froth is a free report app where riders post timestamped reports with photo or video, share them privately with a crew, and see winter weather and avalanche warnings on the resort page, plus Froth Coach for technique analysis. Froth has no trail maps and no hourly forecast, so the honest answer for most people is OnTheSnow for planning and Froth for the final call.