So you’ve got a brand new shiny iPhone and now you want GPS navigation… for free?

I’ve got some good news and bad news.

The good news – there are a few apps in the App Store now that provide GPS navigation for free… the bad news is that none are as good as Google Maps Navigation (and I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope of that app coming to the iPhone anytime soon given that Apple and Google aren’t exactly beer drinkin’ buddies these days).

Here are your choices:

Mapquest

In my opinion, this is currently the best free GPS app on the iPhone and one I’ve been wanting for quite some time (even if it wasn’t free).   You can learn more about it on Mapquest’s official blog.

Skobbler

Skobbler is an app that uses Crowdsourcing via the OpenStreetMap project.  It’s definitely an interesting app since you can correct errors and help give better directions – honestly, I don’t like a lot of trial an error when trying to get around places that I’m not familiar with.

Waze

Waze was the very first app to offer GPS guidance for free… yes, even before the mighty Google.  Like Skobbler, it uses Crowdsourcing for directions which can be great or terrible like I mentioned above.

The best GPS Navigation Apps for the iPhone are still the paid apps from the likes of Navigon, TomTom, and Copilot, but the free choices are certainly better than nothing and since they’re free, what have you got to lose?