Seven co-parenting apps, by what each one is actually for
OurFamilyWizard, TalkingParents, AppClose, BestInterest, 2houses, Custody X Change and ours, compared by price and by the case each one is built for.
Compare › Best co-parenting apps
Quick answer
If a court order names an app, use that app. For a court-facing record: OurFamilyWizard for certified records, TalkingParents for recorded calls billed monthly, AppClose for every feature at one price. For a hostile co-parent, BestInterest filters what they send. For cooperative parents, 2houses is one subscription for the family and we keep each home private. To draft the plan itself, Custody X Change.
"Co-parenting app" covers three different products that happen to share a calendar. One kind is a court-facing record: every message fixed and timestamped, calls recorded, and a certified document at the end for a judge. One kind is a communication tool for a co-parent who is hard to talk to. And one kind is a shared organizer for two homes that mostly get along. Choosing the wrong kind is how parents end up paying twice for a legal record they never produce, or relying on a free calendar in a case that turns contested.
This list is ordered by that: court-facing records first, then the conflict tool, then the organizers, then the one built for writing the plan. We make one of the seven and it is marked. Every price here is from each product's own pricing page, checked in September 2026, and where a price is not published we say so rather than quote a review site.
The list
Best for: A contested case, or an order that names it
The platform family courts know best, and the reason is the record: messages that can never be edited or retracted, unlimited PDF records from Essentials up, and on Premium unlimited certified records, notarized, printed and mailed. Professionals get free limited access to observe a case. Calling is 45 minutes a month on Essentials and unlimited from Premium, with recordings and transcripts on Max. Against it: each parent pays separately, so a two-parent case pays twice, and it holds the co-parenting record and nothing else about either home.
Cost: Per parent, billed annually: Basic $110, Essentials $149.99, Premium $216, Max $299.88, with lower monthly rates on two-year plans. Fee waivers for qualifying parents.
Best for: A case that needs recorded calls, billed monthly
The other court-facing record, at a lower entry price and monthly rather than annual billing. Messages cannot be edited or deleted, Accountable Calling records and transcribes calls from 30 minutes a month on Essentials to unlimited on Ultimate, and PDF records are unlimited from Enhanced up, with one printed records package included on Ultimate. Payments carry a per-transaction fee of 4, 3 or 2 percent by tier. Tone checking is an Ultimate feature. Like OurFamilyWizard, each parent subscribes.
Cost: Per parent, monthly: Essentials $7, Enhanced $16, Ultimate $32, about 8% off annually. No free plan since March 30, 2026; fee waivers for financial or domestic-violence hardship.
AppClose
Best for: Every documentation feature, at one flat price
No tiers: unlimited certified electronic business records, messages that cannot be deleted, unlimited audio and video calls with recording by mutual consent and transcription, a calendar with fifteen schedule templates, expenses and reimbursement requests, unlimited file storage and an AI tone assistant, all on the one plan. That makes it the cheapest route to a full court-facing toolkit on this list. Two things its pricing page does not say: what the in-app payment service charges (fees are disclosed at transfer time), and whether the other parent needs a subscription of their own. It runs on iPhone, Android and the web.
Cost: $7.99/mo on the web ($8.99 through the mobile app), $83.88/yr, or $143.76 for two years. Every plan includes every feature. Sixty-day free trial; free accounts for financial hardship and domestic-violence survivors.
BestInterest
Best for: A high-conflict co-parent, including one who refuses to use an app
The only app here built around the other parent's messages rather than the record of them. On Protect and above, Message Shield filters hostile incoming messages and shows you a calmer version while keeping the original, and Boundary Line gives the other parent a phone number to text, so the filter works even if they never install anything. Tone Guardian reviews what you send. It is a communication tool first: if you need a certified record or recorded calls, the three above are the stronger buy.
Cost: Per parent: Free ($0, messaging, journal and AI coaching); Connect $9.99/mo or $99.99/yr; Protect $14.99/mo or $149.99/yr; Protect Plus $29.99/mo or $299.99/yr. Two-week trial on paid plans.
Chickadee Bandit
That's usBest for: Day-to-day coordination between two homes that stay private from each other
Every other app on this list is one shared account for the case, and each parent's own household lives somewhere else. Here each parent keeps a private household — their own calendar, chores, new partner — and the space between them holds only what they co-manage; neither home can see into the other. Messages in the space are append-only and server-timestamped, custody swaps are proposals until the other parent countersigns, expenses split with receipt photos and two-party reimbursement, and either parent can export the whole record at any time as a ZIP of machine-readable files. What we do not do, and are not building: in-app calling or recording, certified records, a formatted PDF, or practitioner accounts for an attorney or mediator. If any of those is on your list, this is the wrong entry.
Cost: $6/mo or $60/yr for one household. One parent sponsors the co-parenting space and the other parent joins free.
2houses
Best for: Cooperative parents who want one subscription for the whole family
The one app here priced per family rather than per parent: one parent pays and everyone joins. It covers the shared custody calendar with sync, messages, expense tracking and cost sharing, an information bank for the children's details, and a journal and photo albums, on iPhone, Android and the web, in six languages — which makes it the natural pick for a family split across countries. We found no claim on its site of unalterable messages or court-certified records, so do not assume either; it is built for parents who get along.
Cost: $169.99/yr (about $14.17/mo). One subscription covers both parents, the children, third parties and mediators. Fourteen-day free trial.
Custody X Change
Best for: Drafting the parenting plan and counting parenting time
A different job from the rest of this list. Custody X Change is built for the plan itself: a schedule calendar, a parenting-time calculator for the percentage an agreement or a child-support calculation quotes, and a court-ready parenting plan template, with a journal, expenses and messaging alongside. Lawyers use it with their clients, and a client linked by a professional can get a free year. It runs on the web, with apps for Windows, iOS and Android installed from the browser rather than an app store. If the percentage is all you need, our free custody schedule calculator counts the overnights without an account.
Cost: Plans start at $6/mo, billed annually. The price of each level is not published outside the sign-up flow. 30-day refund.
Prices and features are from each product's own site as of September 2026; where a product has a head-to-head page here, its entry restates that page. Products change — always check the other product's site for current details.
Choosing between them
- If a court order or parenting plan names an app, use the app it names. Nothing else on this list substitutes for the record the court expects.
- If you need certified records a court will accept, OurFamilyWizard's Premium plan is the one that includes them. AppClose includes certified business records on its single plan, for less.
- If you need recorded calls, TalkingParents records and transcribes them on every tier, AppClose on its one plan with both parents' consent, and OurFamilyWizard only on Max.
- If the other parent's messages are the problem, BestInterest is the only app that filters what they send.
- If you coordinate well and want each home to stay private, that is what we built; if you would rather one subscription for the whole family, 2houses is it.
- If you are still working out the schedule, start with the plan: Custody X Change, or our free calculator for the overnight count alone.
Per parent or per family
Look at who pays before you look at the price. OurFamilyWizard, TalkingParents and BestInterest are subscribed to by each parent separately, so the real cost of a two-parent case is double the number on the pricing page. 2houses is one subscription for the family. On ours one parent pays for their household and the other joins the co-parenting space free. AppClose's pricing page prices a plan without saying which of those it is; ask before both of you subscribe.
What none of them does
None of these apps imports another's history. If you are switching, export or download your record before the old subscription ends, and keep it somewhere both of you can reach. And no app makes a record admissible: that is a court's decision, whatever a product's marketing says.
Cozi, and other family calendars
Cozi, FamilyWall and similar family organizers come up in this search, and for two parents who coordinate easily a shared family calendar can be enough. They are built for one household, though: there is no record that cannot be changed, no expense split between homes, and anything one parent adds is seen by everyone in the account. Our family round-up compares them.
The feature list is not fixed
Every other product on this page is a fixed set of features: it does what it does, and a need it did not anticipate gets a no. Chickadee Bandit is built from small apps, and a household can add one of its own. An admin describes the app in a paragraph on the Apps page and the hub builds and installs it, using the AI credits that come with every plan; someone who writes code can start from any of the open-source apps and install their own version from a URL. A custom app gets the same checks as the ones we ship: it declares what it reads and writes, keeps its data in your household's own database, and the hub refuses anything it did not ask for.
Where this list comes from
We make one of the products on it, and it is marked. Every claim about another product was checked against that product's own pricing and feature pages on the date above — not against another review site — and where we could not find a published price we say so rather than quote one. The order is by what each product is for, not a ranking of merit.
Read next
- Free tool: See a custody schedule on a calendar, and count the overnights
- What information should co-parents share, and what should remain private?
- 2-2-3, 2-2-5-5, alternating weeks: the custody schedules, explained
- Splitting the kids' expenses between two households without fighting
- Every product we compare, by what it is for
If ours is the one you're weighing
30-day free trial, no card. One price for the whole household, no ads, and the whole app library comes with it.
Start a free trial