Waze is a GPS navigation software that can be used on smartphones and tablets that support GPS. It provides turn navigation information, travel time and route details submitted by users, and location related information can be downloaded through the mobile phone network. Waze describes its application as a community driven GPS navigation application that can be downloaded and used for free.

The app was originally developed and promoted by waze mobile, an Israeli company founded by Ehud Shabtai, Amir Shinar and URI Levine, and funded by two Israeli venture capital firms, magma and vertex, and early US venture capital firm bluerun ventures. Waze mobile was acquired by Google in 2013.

Waze won the "best overall app Award" at the 2013 world mobile conference, beating Dropbox, Flipboard, etc.

Google acquired waze in 2013 for $966 million to add social data to its maps business. Waze's 100 employees received an average of about $1.2 million, the biggest reward for employees in Israel's high-tech industry.

In June 2013, the Federal Trade Commission began to consider whether Google's purchase of waze, one of the few Google Maps competitors in the field of mobile maps, would violate the competition law. FTC decided not to challenge Google's acquisition of waze. The UK Office of fair dealing and the Israeli antitrust authority have also investigated and allowed acquisitions.

Google filed a "10-Q" form with the securities and Exchange Commission, saying the acquisition of waze cost $966 million.

In March 2017, spotify announced to work with waze to provide an integrated experience so that wazers can play music directly from the waze app on spotify and get waze guidance on spotify app on Android platform. Six months later, the feature will be available on the IOS platform.

In May 2017, waze introduced the function of users recording their own voice navigation prompts