The Best Family Tracking Apps to Download Now

By AlfredCamera

August 11, 2023

Family tracker apps are an essential way to stay connected with your parents, children, siblings, and extended family members.

Aside from allowing you to better organize your daily life, a real-time location tracking app lets you instantly locate loved ones in an emergency.

Below, discover the best GPS tracker app for Android and iOS designed with families in mind, including a mixture of free family locator apps and paid options with digital management features.

Table of Contents

7 Best Family Tracking Apps of 2024

AlfredCircle

Available to download for Android and iOS. Free.

Introducing the latest contender for best free family locator app for Android and iOS: AlfredCircle.

Brought to you by the brilliant team behind AlfredCamera, the home security app with more than 70 million downloads, AlfredCircle streamlines the best GPS tracker features into a super easy to use app.

Locate your kids or other loved ones by adding them to your Circle, which displays real-time location information on a private map.

Add Places to the mix to get instant arrival and departure notifications—homes, schools, and workplaces are all handy locations to keep an eye on for families.

✅ Completely free to use.
✅ Streamlined design gives users easy access to the most essential family tracking features.
❎ Currently doesn’t support advanced features, like car crash detection.

Comprehensive Protection Courtesy of Alfred

AlfredCamera has been protecting peoples’ homes and small business places for the best part of a decade, and it continues to grow as its services and product offerings evolve.

AlfredCircle was born out of the same mission: to increase peace of mind for everyone, regardless of their financial circumstance and technical expertise. With Circle, Alfred heads out into the world so that users now have complete protection, both inside and outside the home.

Life360

Available to download for Android and iOS. Free, with subscriptions starting at $4.99/month.

The Life360 app is one of the most popular family tracking apps. It offers real-time location sharing, driving behavior analysis, crash detection, and an emergency panic button.

It’s a feature-rich choice for families looking for something more than regular GPS location tracking.

Whether you’re monitoring a teen’s driving habits or ensuring quick assistance in emergencies, the Life360 app provides parents with almost exhaustive family safety features.

✅ Loads of unique features.
✅ Useful for keeping an eye on driving habits, including teens driving for the first time.
❎ Some features, including subscription-only features, aren’t essential at all.

Is there a better app than Life360?

AlfredCircle is a new, streamlined family tracking app from the team behind AlfredCamera, the successful home security camera app. It’s completely free to use, and emphasizes ease of use around the most essential features of a family tracker: private live maps and arrival/departure notifications.

Qustodio

Available to download for Android and iOS. Free, with subscriptions starting at $54.95/year.

Image via Qustodio.

Although it’s known for parental control features, Qustodio also has excellent family tracking app features.

Real-time location tracking and alerts work well, but of particular interest is the flexible geofence feature, which allows for geofences to cover areas of varying sizes.

While this can be used as a location tracking app free, Qustodio’s subscriptions will be way out of the price-range for most families, with some plans costing upwards of $130.

That being said, if money’s no object and you’re looking to not only keep tabs on your child’s whereabouts but also to manage their digital activity, Qustodio is worth considering.

✅ Useful for parents also interested in online safeguarding their kids.
✅ Geofence radius can be changed.
❎ Subscription is expensive, and won’t be within everyone’s budget.

Is there a free family tracking app?

While many family tracking apps require a subscription, AlfredCircle is a new family tracking app that’s free to download and use. Available on the App Store and Google Play.

Find My Kids

Available to download for Android and iOS. From $2.99/month per device.

The Find My Kids app emphasizes children’s safety, so if you’re looking for a family locator app for the sake of elderly care or for staying connected with adult children, look elsewhere.

For parents of young children, however, the Find My Kids app provides real-time location tracking as a phone tracker app.

Geofence alerts notify parents when a child enters or leaves specific areas. Like Qustodio, Find My Kids also has smartphone usage monitoring (like app screen time stats) and panic alerts.

It’s a pretty well-rounded safety solution for families with young children. Although pricing is affordable, Find My Kids is not a free family locator app.

✅ Useful blend of location tracking and smartphone use stats for monitoring young children.
✅ Simple user interface.
❎ Not free to use.
❎ A separate app called ‘Pingo! Chat With Parents’ has to be installed on the child’s device.

Google Family Link

Available to download for Android and iOS. Free.

Google’s entry into the world of digital life management can also be used as a family locator and a phone tracker app.

The content filtering and screen time features are great, potentially making it more useful for tracking your digital lives rather than physical ones.

Still, real-time location tracking syncs with Google Maps, making it super convenient for families to monitor the locations of family members and, of course, children.

Though it won’t be of interest to everyone, the balance between online safety and physical security is strong, making it a logical choice for modern families.

✅ The only real-time location tracking app that syncs to Google Maps.
✅ Digital life management is useful for parents looking to protect kids online.
❎ The integration of digital and physical monitoring won’t be necessary for everyone.

Norton Family

Available to download for Windows, Android, and iOS. $49.99/year.

Image via Norton.

Norton Family has some of the most robust online safety features alongside its real-time location tracking—although it’s a bit of a pricey option for those only interested in the latter.

The app (which is dated and confusing compared to the desktop version) allows parents to keep an eye on their child’s physical location. But its primary focus, as one would imagine from Norton, is protecting children from online threats.

Parents acutely aware of the post-COVID era will probably be most interested in the homeschooling features, which allow parents to more easily monitor their child’s remote learning.

✅ Decent real-time location tracking of children’s mobile devices.
✅ Unique homeschooling features designed to give parents more control over their child’s remote learning.
❎ Expensive compared to alternatives, particularly if you’re interested mainly in family location tracking.
❎ iOS version is limited compared to Windows and Android versions.

T-Mobile FamilyMode

Available to download for Android and iOS. $10/month.

Image via Google Play.

T-Mobile FamilyMode offers a simplified family tracker that combines location tracking with device management.

Like other family tracker apps, FamilyMode allows real-time tracking of family members, as well as enabling parents to set screen time limits, filter content, and manage app usage.

The digital and physical safety features are nothing to shrug at, but parents should note that T-Mobile FamilyMode clocks in at 10 bucks a month, so it isn’t a free family locator app.

If you’re already a T-Mobile customer, however, you can add it to your plan easily.

✅ Great Internet-use management for T-Mobile users.
✅ Reward system is a unique way for parents to increase children’s daily limits and delay bedtimes.
❎ $10 a month.

FAQ

What is the most accurate family tracking app?

No family tracking app can promise 100% accuracy because mobile data connection tends to be a tricky beast, to say the least. Accuracy can be improved by keeping mobile data on, setting location sharing permission to ‘Always’, and allowing the family tracking app to run in the background.

What is the best app for tracking friends and family?

Great tracking apps for family and friends include AlfredCircle, Life360, Find My Kids, and Google Family Link.

What is the best app for finding friends’ locations?

AlfredCircle provides an excellent and reliable way to find your friend’s location. Simply add them to your Circle, and you’ll be able to see where they are in real-time on a private map.

How do I track friends and family?

You can use a family tracker app to track friends and family. AlfredCircle is a new GPS tracking app that connects you to family and friends with ease. Add friends and family to your Circle, and their location will be shared on a private live map. It’s available to use for free on iOS and Android devices.

What is the free family tracking app for iPhone?

AlfredCircle is a free family tracking app available for iPhone as well as Android devices. It provides users with private live maps as well as arrival and departure notifications, so that you can stay connected with your family wherever you are.

Conclusion

The world of family tracking apps provides plenty of choice for users—perhaps even a little too much, sometimes.

AlfredCircle is a free, user-friendly family locator app for Android and iOS devices that connects families through real-time location tracking.

By streamlining the features of a family tracker app, AlfredCircle lets families navigate life together with greater ease and efficiency and is the perfect companion to AlfredCamera, the ever-popular home security camera app.