Petra
Group Safety
Open the app
For groups who travel together
Blood type, allergies, medication, insurance, next of kin, and roughly where you were last seen — agreed before the trip, carried by everyone on it, and there even when a phone is lost, broken or out of signal.
Petra is not an emergency service, and it is not a tracker. Positions exist only while a trip is running, only inside the group you joined for it, and only between that trip’s dates.
Last fix 14:05 · 2 min ago
Chamonix
Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
My groups
Mont Blanc traverse
No signal
needed for the emergency number, your card or your group’s cards
Everyone
in the group can answer for someone who cannot
30 days
before every recorded position is deleted
Per group
you decide what each trip sees, before anyone joins
None of these are rare. All of them are worse when the answers are on a phone nobody can reach.
Everything about that person — their insurer, their medication, their sister’s number — went with it. In Petra, the people they travel with already have the parts of the card that were shared, on their own phones, offline.
Blood type. Allergies. What they take every morning. Whether they are pregnant. Their friends want to help and can only guess. The card answers in the local language, so a paramedic reads it without translating.
A policy number, an EHIC, a certificate. Petra will not replace the real documents, but it gets the first phone call started: the numbers are read out, the photo is sent, and the group knows which papers are missing and where they were left.
A wrong turn on a ridge, a missed meeting point in an unfamiliar city. With trip mode on, the group can see the last position each phone recorded and when it was recorded.
A long run, a solo ride, a night hike. Ask one friend to follow along for the day: they see where you are, and they notice when you stop moving.
Petra was built for groups who are responsible for each other for a few days at a time.
Hiking and mountain groups
The group agrees before setting off what it shares. If someone is injured, unconscious or separated from their phone, anyone in the group can give the ambulance and the insurer what they ask for, and show where the person was last seen.
Travelling abroad
Passport and ID scans, insurance certificates, tickets, accommodation confirmations and maps live in the group instead of scattered across four chats, readable with no signal and no roaming. They do not replace the real papers — they mean nobody is stuck because the person holding them is elsewhere.
Trail runners, solo hikers, cyclists
Make a group with one friend, set it for the hours you are out, and they can follow along. They see roughly where you were and when — enough to know you are moving, and where to start looking if you stop.
Guides and city tours
Guests join the group with a code or a QR before you set off, and bring their own emergency contacts, conditions and insurance with them. You are not carrying a folder of photocopies, and you are not asking strangers about their health in front of a group.
Schools, clubs, ski trips
Twenty families fill in their own details instead of twenty forms coming back half empty. Leaders see what the group agreed to share, and the list stops being out of date the moment somebody changes a phone number.
The group
Members join with a code or a QR. The group carries its own dates, its own people, the papers everyone might need, and the route for the map — and it all works once it is on the phone, signal or not.
Group
Kyoto, 8 days
Files everyone can open
Invite
Balázs Szilágyi
Emergency card
Show in
The card
One screen: blood type, allergies, conditions, medication, insurance and who to call. Tap a language and the labels and the answers you picked from a list are translated. Anything you typed yourself is shown as written, and marked as your own words.
Scans and photos in Petra do not replace the real documents. They are not valid as a passport, an identity card, a licence, an insurance card or a prescription. What they do is get the first questions answered and the first phone calls made — carry the originals with you.
Eight short steps, in the order you meet them.
The first screen shows where you are and the emergency number of the country you are standing in. No account, no signal and no card needed: the number comes from borders stored in the app, not from the network.
Name, blood type, allergies, conditions, medication, insurance and who to call. Every field is optional, and a blood type with one phone number already helps. It is encrypted on your phone, and nothing leaves it until you join a group.
Passport, insurance certificate, EHIC, driving licence. They stay encrypted on the phone and are only shared with a group that is allowed to see that part of your card.
Share a code or a QR, and the organiser accepts who comes in. The group has its own dates, its own files and its own route, and it ends when the trip does.
Sharing is set when the group is made. A hiking club can see medical details; a work trip sees a name and a phone number. Nobody joins without knowing which it is.
Trip mode
Trip mode is the only time Petra records where anyone is, and it is the part people ask about first — so here it is in full.
It is for people who agreed to look after each other for a few days — not for keeping an eye on somebody.
Trip mode is on
Mont Blanc traverse · 4 sharing · last position 14:05
Petra is in testing. Tell us about your group and we will send you an early build.
Your card and your documents are encrypted on the device. Nothing is uploaded until you join a group that is allowed to see it.
Medical details go only to the groups you turned them on for. A tour guide does not become someone who knows everything about you.
Positions exist only while trip mode is on, during the trip’s dates, and they are deleted after 30 days.
Leave a group and your card is removed from the other phones. Delete your account and everything goes.
Petra is being tried by hiking groups, a ski school and a walking-tour guide.
Placeholder. These are examples of where real quotes will go, not things anyone said. Replace them with quotes from your testers, with their permission, before the site goes live.
Example quote: what a group leader says about collecting everyone’s details before a trip.
Example quote: what someone says about the moment a phone was lost or someone was hurt.
Example quote: what a solo runner or cyclist says about having one friend follow along.
The emergency number, your card, your documents and trip mode are free — for two groups of up to eight. Pro is for the people who organise more than that: a club, a school year, a season of tours.
Free
€0always
Start with FreeNo card, no account needed to start.
Pro
Most room€5.99per month, or €59.99 a year
Get Pro in the appCancel any time in the App Store or Google Play.
What to put on a card, what to agree on before a group hike, and which papers to carry twice.
The six things a paramedic asks for, and what to leave out.
Read →What to agree on in the car park, and what to do if someone does not arrive.
Read →What to photograph before you fly, and where to keep it so it is there without signal.
Read →The parts of their card they shared are already on the other phones in the group, encrypted and readable offline. Their own copy is gone with the phone, but they can sign in on a new one and their groups and cards come back.
Yes. A group holds files everyone can open — insurance certificates, accommodation confirmations, tickets — and a route file for the map. Once downloaded they work with no signal.
Only if the group was set up to share them, and that is fixed when the group is created, before anyone joins. You always see what a group shares before you accept.
No. Positions are only shared inside a group, only while that group’s trip is running, and everyone in the group is told when it starts and stops. Leaving the group ends it immediately.
Rough, and on purpose. A phone reports every so often rather than constantly, to save battery, and a fix can be out by a long way under trees, in a valley or between tall buildings. Treat it as where to start looking, not as where someone is.
No. Positions are recorded only while trip mode is on, only between the trip’s dates, and only for that group. They are deleted after 30 days.
Yes, for the things you need when it is going wrong: the local emergency number, your card, the cards your group shared, group files and a downloaded route. Only sending a position and syncing changes need a connection, and those wait for one.
No. It helps you gather and show information, and it helps with the first questions and the first phone calls. It is not an identity document, a medical record or proof of insurance, and a scan of a passport is not a passport. Carry the originals as well.
A single screen: blood type, allergies, conditions, medication, insurance and who to call, in the language they tap. Anything you typed by hand is shown as you wrote it and marked as your own words.
The app is in English, French, German, Dutch, Japanese and Korean, and a card can be shown in further languages so a medic can read it in theirs.
It is not in the App Store or Google Play yet. Write to us if you want to try an early build with your group, or if you run a club, a school trip or tours and want to talk about it.