Looking for an Expedition alternative?
People search for an Expedition alternative for one of two reasons: the price, or the fact that the software assumes a navigator they do not have. SailTac answers both — it runs the instruments, the routing and the start for a crew with nobody spare, and then writes the debrief nobody else writes. That last part is not only for boats without a navigator: it is the analysis a navigator-led program would otherwise do by hand, or not at all. Every claim about Expedition on this page was read from Expedition's own published pages, and there is a section further down on when Expedition is the better buy.
What you get
What SailTac is
SailTac is a complete race platform for programs where nobody's only job is the software. It runs live instruments for the whole crew on the phones and tablets already aboard, routes the course against 10 forecast models with the disagreement between them drawn leg by leg, charts on NOAA and CHS ENC data cached for offline use, takes the GRIB files you already get by Iridium, and runs the start sequence.
Then it does the part that usually never happens on these boats at all: it writes the debrief. Time lost, attributed and evidenced. Every forecast model scored against the wind you actually got, kept for the life of the boat. A lifetime record for every sail in the wardrobe. That is the reason to buy it, and it is a job the rest of the category leaves to you.
It is focused rather than exhaustive, and the focus is deliberate: everything above is aimed at boats that want to get faster season over season. That works two ways. A crew with nobody spare gets a nav station that runs itself. A program with a navigator gets the analysis that person never has time to do by hand between races — and they are the reader who will actually go through it line by line, argue with a number, and change something because of it.
Fairly, about them
What Expedition is
Expedition is professional navigation and racing software that has been in development since the mid-1990s, and it is the official supplier software for the Volvo Ocean Race, the America's Cup and SailGP. That is not a courtesy on our part — it is what the boats at the very top of the sport actually use.
It is deep in the places a professional navigator needs depth: full ENC and C-MAP charting including encrypted S-63, a very wide instrument compatibility list, multiple routing algorithms with ensemble routing and wave corrections, America's Cup race management, radar, and logging, stripchart and polar tools for working through the data afterwards.
If you want the most capable tool in the category and you have someone aboard whose job is to drive it, that is Expedition, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise.
Side by side
From each product's own published pages
There are no ticks and crosses in this table, on purpose. Proving from the outside that a product does not do something is not possible, so every cell below is a positive statement about what that product publishes, and nothing is inferred from silence.
| Capability | SailTac | Expedition |
|---|---|---|
| How it's licensed | $299 per boat per year (Racing); $129 (Cruising) | €1,250 to purchase a licence, plus €275 to upgrade one bought before 1 January 2024 |
| Runs on | Windows 10 and up, and macOS 11 and up · Apple silicon and Intel | Windows 11 or 10 with at least 16 GB memory; an ARM build for ENC, RNC and Navionics charting |
| Charts | NOAA and CHS ENC layers, cached offline for the whole course, plus import your own unencrypted S-57 cells anywhere else — tactical reference, not an official chart | S-57 and S-63 ENCs, BSB RNCs, Navionics, C-MAP X and C-MAP 4D |
| Instrument inputs | NMEA 0183 over the network or a serial adapter, NMEA 2000 through a gateway, and Expedition's own UDP broadcast | A very wide list including B&G, Ockam, NKE, A+T, Tacktick, Sailmon, Nexus, Yacht Devices, NMEA 0183 and NMEA 2000 |
| Weather sources | 10 forecast models fetched together with cross-model agreement shown per leg, plus import any GRIB 1 or 2 file you already have — no connection needed | A broader set again — ECMWF, GFS, ICON, AIFS, ENS, NBM, HRDPS, HRRR and more, plus Saildocs, Squid, NetCDF and integrated WRF |
| Radar | Not supported | Navico radar under a separate per-radar licence, €1,150 or €1,850 with Doppler |
| Track record | Raced on customer boats as well as the founder's, across more than ten races — the highlight a 283 nm Port Huron to Mackinac, the race the published sample report comes from | In development since the mid-1990s; official supplier software for the Volvo Ocean Race, the America's Cup and SailGP |
Expedition figures were read from expeditionmarine.com on 25 August 2026. Products change and prices change — check Expedition's own sales page before making a decision based on ours.
Where SailTac is different
What happens after the finish gun
Expedition publishes logging, replay, stripchart and polar analysis tools, so the data is there to work through. The difference is not access to the numbers — it is that SailTac writes the debrief for you, unprompted, and keeps the record across seasons. Which is worth most to whoever is going to read it closely: on a lot of boats nobody has the hours, and on a navigator-led program that is exactly the work the navigator wants and rarely gets to finish.
A debrief that shows its work
SailTac writes the post-race analysis for you rather than handing you a dataset to interrogate. Time lost is attributed across sail selection, helming, maneuvers, staysails and routing, and every figure carries the evidence it came from. Maneuver losses are measured from the real speed drop through each logged tack, not modelled — and where something genuinely cannot be measured, it says so instead of printing a confident number.
The forecast, graded against your water
At the gun SailTac freezes the forecast. Afterwards it scores all 10 models against the wind you actually recorded, and keeps that record for the life of the boat. Not which model is best in general — which one has been closest where you sail, at the lead time you plan from. It will not crown a winner until a paired test says the gap is real.
A lifetime record for every sail
Hours flown, load against each sail's own rating, wind exposure, and time spent over that rating. Staysails and primaries are compared like-for-like — the same sail with and without, in comparable wind — so whether it was worth flying gets an answer rather than an opinion. It prints to a page your loft will actually read.
Every device aboard, not just the nav station
SailTac serves its displays over the boat's own Wi-Fi, so the trimmer's phone, the tactician's tablet and the laptop below all show live instruments at once, each with its own saved layout. There is no per-seat charge — the licence is per boat and the crew is included.
The money
The price, with the arithmetic shown
A yearly subscription and a one-time purchase are different shapes, and comparing them honestly means showing both — what SailTac costs to start, where the two cross over, and what each side keeps paying for after that.
Year one
$299 for SailTac Racing, against €1,250 to purchase an Expedition licence — about $1,457 at the rate on 25 August 2026. That is roughly 21% of the purchase price, for a season on the water rather than a four-figure decision made up front.
Year 5
This is where the two structures cross: by year 5 the subscription has added up to more than the licence cost. Worth knowing before you start, which is why it is on the page — though neither product is actually frozen at its purchase price, as the next card explains.
What renewing buys
Every renewal includes the updates and the new features shipped that year — there is no separate upgrade fee to reach the current version. It also pays for the weather: 10 models per race come from a commercial forecast service SailTac pays for, rather than being billed to you per fetch. For comparison, Expedition lists €275 to bring a licence bought before 1 January 2024 up to the current version.
Both are fair ways to sell software, and which one suits you is genuinely a question about your program rather than about the products. If you already know this is the category you want and you will use it hard for a decade, a purchase is the tidier structure. If you want to find out whether this kind of analysis changes how your boat sails, $299 for a season answers that question for a great deal less.
Read this part
When Expedition is the better choice
These are capability reasons, not staffing ones — how a program is crewed says nothing about which tool suits it. If you need any of the following, buy Expedition. We would rather say so here than take a subscription from someone it was never going to serve.
- You need radar. SailTac has none.
- You need charts that meet carriage requirements, or encrypted S-63 cells. SailTac charts NOAA and CHS ENC data and imports unencrypted S-57, but it is recoloured for tactical reference and is not an approved ECDIS.
- You need America's Cup race management, or the routing depth Expedition publishes — multiple algorithms, ensemble weather model routing, optimal fleet routing, wave corrections and avoidance, and route sensitivity.
The option nobody mentions
You don't actually have to choose
SailTac can take Expedition's own UDP broadcast as a live input, and it imports Expedition mark folders with their groups and comments intact. So it can sit on the same network, read the same numbers off the same instruments, and do the debrief — while you go on navigating exactly the way you already do.
For a lot of boats that is the right answer, and it is the one the home page has always given: if your program has someone who knows professional nav software cold, keep it, and run SailTac alongside for the part it doesn't do.
Questions
What people actually ask
Anything not covered here, just ask — scott@sailtacperformance.com. A real person who races reads it.
- Do I need a dedicated navigator to use it?
- No. SailTac is built so that whoever is running the laptop can also be trimming, driving or navigating, and it takes an afternoon rather than weeks to learn — there is a demo mode to practise on at the kitchen table before it goes near the boat. But it is not only for boats without a navigator, and it would be a poor tool if it were. If you do have one, the debrief, the forecast scorecard and the per-sail record are worth more rather than less: that is a person who will read all three closely and act on them, and who otherwise assembles the same picture by hand between races if there is time.
- Can I import my Expedition marks?
- Yes. SailTac reads Expedition mark folders and keeps the folder as a group, so a 300-mark club library stays filtered and out of your way until you actually put a mark on a course. Any comment attached to a mark comes across with it.
- Will it read my existing instruments?
- If your instruments already talk to a laptop, almost certainly. SailTac reads NMEA 0183 over the network or through a USB or serial adapter, and NMEA 2000 through an Actisense or Yacht Devices gateway. It can also take Expedition's own UDP broadcast directly as a live input, which means it can sit on the same network and read the same numbers off the same instruments.
- What charts does it use?
- NOAA ENC for United States waters and CHS ENC for Canadian, streamed and then cached so the whole course is available with no connectivity at all. Outside that coverage you import your own unencrypted S-57 cells — a .000 base cell or a zipped ENC exchange set — which most hydrographic offices publish free. Encrypted S-63 cells are not supported. SailTac's charts are recoloured for tactical reference and are not official charts, so they do not replace an approved ECDIS or up-to-date paper.
- Can I use the GRIB files I already have?
- Yes, and offshore that matters more than anything else in the weather stack. SailTac decodes GRIB 1 and GRIB 2, including files that mix both, and crops them to your course on import. A GRIB arriving by Iridium email at a few tens of kilobytes needs no connection of ours at all — which is how offshore navigation has worked for twenty years. Imported files are kept separate from the models SailTac fetched itself: they are never blended with them and never scored in the accuracy scorecard, because that scorecard only grades forecasts SailTac chose.
- Can I run both at once?
- Yes, and for a lot of boats that is the right answer. Because SailTac can read Expedition's UDP broadcast, it runs alongside on the same network without touching your existing setup — you keep the navigation and routing workflow you already know, and SailTac does the debrief afterwards. Installing it commits you to giving nothing up.
- Is SailTac cheaper than Expedition?
- In the first year, clearly — $299 against a €1,250 purchase. Over a long enough run the structures cross over, and the arithmetic for that is set out on this page rather than buried. Worth knowing on both sides: a subscription keeps paying for updates and for the weather service behind it, and a purchased licence is not permanently frozen either — Expedition lists €275 to bring a pre-2024 licence up to the current version.
- What can't SailTac do?
- Radar, for one — there is none, and if you need it this is the wrong tool. Encrypted S-63 chart cells are not supported. And the charts are tactical reference rather than official ones, so they are not a substitute for an approved ECDIS or current paper. If you already have nav software you know well, none of that has to be a decision: SailTac reads the same instruments over the same network and does the debrief alongside it.
- How do I try it without committing?
- There is a read-only browser demo with five real courses in it and nothing to install. Beyond that the trial is 30 days with every feature unlocked and no card required. You can also read a complete race report from a real 283 nm race, published in full on this site, before downloading anything at all.
See it on your own instruments
30 days, every feature, no card. Run it alongside whatever you already use for one regatta, and keep whichever earns its place.
Still deciding? Read the full feature list or the setup guide to see what connecting it to your boat actually involves.