The renewal email is open in another tab, and you’re wondering whether there’s something better. There may well be, but which of the Life360 alternatives suits you depends almost entirely on why you want to leave. Someone leaving over the bill and someone whose fifteen-year-old has stopped speaking to them over it need different apps.
We make one of the apps on this list, Protego, so weigh what we say about it accordingly. We’ll also tell you where we’re the wrong answer, because for several of these reasons we are.
The short answer: the best Life360 alternative depends on why you’re leaving. For free, use Apple Find My if everyone has an iPhone, or Google Maps location sharing for mixed phones. For crash detection, look at OtoZen or stay on Life360. For a teenager who’ll keep it switched on, pick an app where sharing goes both ways.
The table gives you the whole field at a glance. The sections below it are sorted by reason, so you can jump to yours.
Life360 alternatives at a glance
Prices are in US dollars, as shown on each company’s own site on 3 October 2026. Some are introductory offers, so check the store before you pay. For GeoZilla, OtoZen and HeyPolo, the companies’ own pages didn’t make clear whether everyone in a circle sees everyone else, so the last column stays vague for them.
| App | Best if you’re leaving because… | Phones | Cost (US) | Who sees whom |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Life360 (for reference) | — | iPhone and Android | Free plan; paid from $9.99/month | Everyone in the circle, by default |
| Apple Find My | Cost, all-iPhone family | iPhone | Free | Each person chooses whom to share with |
| Google Maps location sharing | Cost, mixed phones | iPhone and Android | Free | Each person chooses whom to share with |
| Google Family Link | You want parental controls | Child on Android | Free | Parent sees child |
| Protego | Fights at home, data | iPhone and Android | Free for two; paid plan for more | Everyone in the circle, by design |
| Glympse | You only need it now and then | iPhone and Android | Free, with ads and paid extras | Whoever has the temporary link |
| iSharing | Cost, friends and family | iPhone and Android | Free basic plan; paid tiers | Everyone in the circle |
| GeoZilla | Driving and crash alerts | iPhone and Android | $59.99 per 3 months on its site | A family circle |
| Findmykids | A young child | iPhone and Android | Free basic plan; paid plans | Parent sees child, or a family circle |
| OtoZen | Crash detection | iPhone and Android | Free plan; family plans from $49.99/year (half-price offer) | A family circle |
| HeyPolo | Data, by its own description | iPhone and Android | Subscription; check the store | A circle you invite |
What Life360 costs in 2026
According to Life360’s pricing page, the free plan gives you live location, two place alerts and two days of history. Silver costs $9.99 a month and adds crash detection. Gold is $16.99 and adds roadside assistance and unlimited place alerts. Platinum is $24.99 and adds extras such as towing and identity-theft protection. Paying yearly works out about 17% cheaper, and one plan covers the whole circle.
If you signed up years ago, you may be on an older plan at a different price, so check your last receipt before you compare.
If you’re leaving because of the cost
If money is the whole problem, you probably shouldn’t be paying anyone. The free options are good.
Apple Find My
If every phone in the family is an iPhone, start here. It’s already on the phone, and it’s free. It can also tell you when someone arrives or leaves a place. The other person is told when you set one up, and an alert that repeats every time needs their approval. What it can’t do is include anyone on Android. We’ve compared it with us in Protego vs Apple Find My.
Google Maps location sharing
The free option that works across iPhone and Android. You choose who sees you and for how long: for a set time, or until you turn it off. Each person needs a Google account. One catch if you have teenagers: when Google’s systems think an account belongs to someone under 18, that person can’t share for more than 24 hours at a time. There’s no family map as such, just people in your Maps app, but for a lot of households that’s enough.
Glympse
Glympse is free to download and sends a live location link that expires on its own. It’s handy for “I’m on my way” and not built for a standing family circle.
Protego
We’re free to download and free for a circle of two. A bigger family needs the paid plan. So for a couple, or one parent and one child, we cost nothing. If you have four people to cover and cost is your only complaint, the built-in options above will beat us. There are more options in our free family tracking apps round-up.
If you’re leaving because of what happens to your data
Of all the reasons, this one has the clearest public record, so we can be specific.
In December 2021, The Markup reported that Life360 was selling precise location data from its users to about a dozen data brokers. In January 2022 the company said it would stop selling precise data to most of them. Its current privacy policy, last updated in August 2026, says it still shares precise location with select business partners for their own use. Adults can turn that off under “Your Privacy Choices” in the app’s privacy settings. The policy also says Life360 doesn’t share or sell personal information of members it knows are under 18.
So if you’re staying, switch that partner sharing off. If you’re going, bear in mind that every app makes a privacy promise, so look past the promise to how the company makes its money.
- Apple Find My. Apple makes most of its money selling hardware, and Find My comes with the phone.
- Protego. We don’t sell location data and we don’t pass it to brokers. Our money comes from the paid plan for bigger circles, and that’s all of it.
- Paid-only apps. If the app charges everyone, there’s less reason to sell what it collects. Still read the policy.
Be wary of a free app with lots of features and no visible way of paying for its servers. Someone is paying. More in family trackers that don’t sell your data.
If the app is causing fights at home
Comparison lists rarely mention this one, though we suspect it’s behind more deleted apps than any other.
To many teenagers, Life360 feels like a dispatch board with their name on it. You know the cycle. The app goes on, the arguments start, someone works out how to switch it off, and a month later you have the arguments and no map. When a teenager is searching how to fake their location, the app has already lost.
If this is your reason, price and features matter less than one question: will your kid leave it switched on? Two things matter most.
Does it go both ways? If only the youngest person is on the map, it’s monitoring, and it gets resented as monitoring. If parents are on it too, it’s something the family does together. A ward sits on a threshold, in plain sight, and speaks up when someone crosses it. A hidden camera is pointed at one person. Teenagers can tell which of the two they’ve been handed.
Is it something they’d open for fun? It sounds like a small thing. An app a fourteen-year-old finds a bit charming survives; one that looks like logistics software gets switched off.
This is the reason we built Protego, so here we’re a genuine answer. More on the dynamic in when a teenager won’t share their location, on the ethics in is it wrong to track your teenager, and on staying close without hovering in lighthouse vs helicopter parenting.
If your family has iPhones and Androids
Mixed households rule out two of the best-known free options straight away. Find My is iPhone-only, and Family Link needs the child to be on Android.
Apps that work on both include Google Maps location sharing, Protego, iSharing, GeoZilla, Findmykids and OtoZen. Protego runs on iPhone and Android. Everyone joins the same circle and sees the same map, whatever phone they have.
Google Find Hub
On Android, Google’s Find My Device app was renamed Find Hub in May 2025 and now shows people who share their location with you, as well as devices. It’s the closest thing Android has to a built-in Life360. If you want an app that does parental controls too, see Protego vs Google Family Link.
If you need crash detection
Life360 includes crash detection from its Silver plan. Among the alternatives, OtoZen and GeoZilla advertise it.
Your phone may already do some of this. iPhone 14 and later can detect a severe crash, call emergency services and message your emergency contacts with your location. Pixel phones have Car Crash Detection that works similarly, though not in every country. That isn’t the same as alerting a family circle, but it does call for help.
Protego doesn’t have crash detection. If a new driver is the reason you’re reading this, that feature matters more than anything else here.
If it’s for your partner or your friends
Not everyone using Life360 is a parent. For two people the simplest answers are free: Find My if you both have iPhones, Google Maps location sharing if you don’t. Protego is free for a circle of two, which is exactly a couple. Friends can use it to see who’s already at the party, and whoever can see you, you can see too.
If your child is young
Most of these apps are built around teenagers and adults. For a seven-year-old, the model is slightly wrong.
Findmykids is built for younger children, with safe zones, a loud signal that reaches a child whose phone is on silent, and a family circle mode. You should also know about Sound Around, which lets a parent listen to the child’s surroundings through the phone’s microphone. Decide how you feel about that before you install it. We compared the two apps in Protego vs Find My Kids.
If you want open source or to host it yourself
If you’d rather not trust any company, OwnTracks is free, open source and runs on iPhone and Android. Your location goes to a server you control. In privacy forums people also mention Traccar and the Home Assistant app for the same job. The trade-off is setup: you need someone in the house who enjoys running a server, and there’s no polished family map. For that person, it’s the most private option on this page.
If you actually need monitoring, not location
Worth separating, because some people come to Life360 looking for something it doesn’t do. If your real worry is what your child sees and says online rather than where they are, location apps are the wrong category. Bark watches messages and social apps for concerning content, and Qustodio is a full parental-control suite. See Protego vs Bark and Protego vs Qustodio.
What we left off this list, and why
Some lists of Life360 alternatives include apps built to run hidden on someone else’s phone, mSpy for example, with stealth listed as a feature. They’re the hidden camera, not the ward, and we left them out. Secretly monitoring a teenager costs the trust that keeps them telling you things, and secretly tracking another adult can be against the law in many places. We also left out websites that claim to find anyone from a phone number, and we kept parental-control suites out of the table because they do a different job.
Where Protego fits
We make Protego, so read this section with that in mind.
Protego is a family GPS locator, and we wanted it to feel less like a control panel and more like something out of the books we grew up on. Everyone appears on a parchment map as a photo or a creature in a wizard’s hat, and anyone heading home leaves footprints along the way. Kids open it because it’s fun, which is the whole point: it becomes something the family shares instead of something done to the youngest. With the paid plan you can also set wards on places like home and school, and hear when someone gets there.
Every circle is mutual and there’s no hidden mode. We don’t sell location data. It’s free to download and free for a circle of two, with a paid plan for bigger families. It runs on iPhone and Android.
What it can’t do: crash detection, roadside help, reading messages, screen-time controls, or locking itself so it can’t be switched off. Our full side-by-side is in Protego vs Life360.
How to switch without a fight
- Tell the family first. A new icon appearing on a teenager’s phone without a word reads as an escalation, whatever you meant.
- Run both for a week. Make sure the new app works for everyone before you leave the old circle.
- Leave the Life360 circle, then delete the app.
- Cancel the subscription where you bought it. Deleting the app doesn’t cancel it. If you subscribed through the App Store or Google Play, cancel in your phone’s subscription settings.
We wrote the longer version of that first conversation in back to school location sharing.
The short version
| If you’re leaving because… | Look at |
|---|---|
| Cost, and you’re all on iPhone | Apple Find My |
| Cost, and your phones are mixed | Google Maps location sharing |
| What happens to your data | Apple Find My, Protego, OwnTracks |
| It’s causing fights at home | Protego |
| You need crash detection | OtoZen, GeoZilla, or stay on Life360 |
| It’s for a partner or friends | Find My, Google Maps, Protego |
| Your child is young | Findmykids |
| You want content monitoring | Bark, Qustodio |
Frequently asked questions
What is the best alternative to Life360? The best alternative to Life360 depends on why you’re leaving. For free, Apple Find My suits all-iPhone families and Google Maps location sharing suits mixed phones. For crash detection, look at OtoZen or GeoZilla. If the app is causing fights with a teenager, choose one where sharing goes both ways, such as Protego, which we make.
Is there a free alternative to Life360? Yes. Apple Find My is free on iPhone, Google Maps location sharing is free on iPhone and Android, Google Family Link is free for parents of Android children, and Glympse is free to download for one-off, temporary sharing. Protego, which we make, is free to download and free for a circle of two, with a paid plan for bigger families.
Does Life360 sell your location data? In 2021, The Markup reported that Life360 sold precise location data to about a dozen data brokers, and in 2022 the company said it would stop selling precise data to most of them. Its August 2026 privacy policy says it still shares precise location with select partners for their own use, which adults can turn off in the app’s privacy settings. The policy also says Life360 doesn’t share or sell personal information of members it knows are under 18.
Is GeoZilla better than Life360? GeoZilla is a family locator with driving monitoring and crash detection that alerts emergency contacts, so it suits families who mainly care about driving. Its website showed $59.99 for three months in October 2026. Whether it’s better depends on why you’re leaving, so check the current price in the App Store or Google Play before you switch.
Is Glympse better than Life360? Glympse does a different job from Life360. It sends a temporary live location link that expires on its own, which is useful for a single trip. It isn’t designed to keep a family on one map all the time.
Which Life360 alternatives work on both iPhone and Android? Google Maps location sharing, Protego, iSharing, GeoZilla, Findmykids and OtoZen all work on iPhone and Android. Apple Find My only works on Apple devices, and Google Family Link supervises children on Android.
Do any Life360 alternatives have crash detection? OtoZen and GeoZilla advertise crash detection, and Life360 includes it from its Silver plan. iPhone 14 and later, and Pixel phones in supported countries, can detect a severe crash and call emergency services themselves. Protego, the app we make, doesn’t have crash detection.
How much does Life360 cost a month? In the US, Life360 has a free plan, and paid plans cost $9.99 (Silver), $16.99 (Gold) and $24.99 (Platinum) a month, or $99.99, $169.99 and $249.99 a year, according to its pricing page in October 2026. One plan covers everyone in the circle.
Your family, together on one map
A GPS locator for the whole family, on a map that feels like magic.