Chickadee Bandit

Seven family location and driving apps, by what each one is for

Life360, Apple Find My, Google, Glympse, Bark, Bouncie and ours, compared by price, by who can see whom, and by what happens to the location data.

Compare › Family location sharing apps

Quick answer

For one live map with crash response and roadside help: Life360, after reading its privacy settings. All iPhones: Find My, free. Android and iPhone together: Google Maps, free. One trip, shared by link: Glympse. Content monitoring with location: Bark. Driving data from the car itself: Bouncie. Arrival alerts and drive reports that each person opts into, inside a household app: ours.

Family location apps answer different questions, and the right one depends on which you are asking. "Did she get there?" needs an alert, once. "Where is everyone?" needs a map. "How is he driving?" needs a record of the drive. "What happens if there is a crash?" needs something that calls for help. No product here is the best answer to all four.

They also differ in something a feature table hides: who decides what is shared, and what the company does with it afterwards. This list starts with the all-in-one product, then the two that are already on your phone, then the ones that do a single job, then ours. We make one of the seven and it is marked. Prices and policies are from each product's own site, checked in October 2026.

The list

  1. Life360

    Best for: A family that wants everyone on one live map, with crash response and roadside help behind it

    The most complete product here, on iPhone and Android. Everyone in a Circle sees everyone else, all the time. The free plan has 2 days of location history, 2 place alerts, a weekly family driving summary and crash detection. Silver has 7 days of history and 5 places; Gold and Platinum have 30 days, unlimited place alerts, a report for each driver covering speed, phone distraction and hard braking, emergency dispatch and roadside assistance. Against it: read its privacy policy before you install it. The policy, last modified in August 2026, says Life360 discloses precise location and movement data to selected business partners for their own uses, including monetization, without your name or contact details. You can turn that off in its Privacy Center, and it says it does not share or sell the data of members it knows to be under 18. Its help pages also say location history cannot be deleted without deleting the account.

    Cost: Free, or Silver $9.99/mo ($99.99/yr), Gold $16.99/mo ($169.99/yr), Platinum $24.99/mo ($249.99/yr). A paid plan covers everyone in the Circle. Seven-day free trial on paid plans.

  2. Apple Find My

    Best for: A household where everyone has an iPhone

    Already on every Apple device. You share your location person by person, for an hour, until the end of the day or indefinitely, and can stop or hide it for any one of them. You can ask to be told when someone arrives at or leaves a place, up to 25 notifications, and the other person is told when you set one and has to approve a recurring one. Apple says that between two devices on iOS 17 or later it cannot access the shared location. Against it: there is no Android app, no history of where someone has been, and nothing about driving.

    Cost: Free. It is part of iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch.

  3. Google Maps and Family Link

    Best for: A household with both Android phones and iPhones, or a child on Android

    Two free products that are easy to confuse. Location Sharing in Google Maps is between any two people with Google Accounts, on Android or iPhone: each person chooses to share, and the other sees their live position and battery level. You can set up to 5 arrival and departure notifications for each person, and that person gets an email saying so. Family Link is for a parent: it shows a supervised child's location and alerts on family places, and the parent controls the setting. Against it: Family Link locates a child's Android device, not a child's iPhone, and neither product keeps a history for the other person or does anything about driving.

    Cost: Free. Both come with a Google Account.

  4. Glympse

    Best for: Sending one person a live map of your trip that stops on its own

    The opposite of an always-on map. You send a link, the other person watches you travel in a browser with no app and no sign-up, and the share expires automatically. That makes it the right tool for a pickup, a late drive home, or a relative who will never install anything. It runs on iPhone and Android. Against it: there are no places, no alerts and no family group, and the company's own site is now aimed at businesses.

    Cost: Free. Its App Store listing shows optional Premium purchases from $9.99, which it describes as being for events and businesses.

  5. Bark

    Best for: A parent whose first concern is what a child sees and sends, with location alongside

    A parental-controls product first: it watches messages and apps for signs of trouble, blocks sites and sets screen time. Location comes with it, as a map of the children, alerts when one reaches or leaves a place, and check-ins a child sends. It is one-way, with the parent seeing the child. Bark says it has never sold a child's location data and never will. Against it: the driving features, a lock on texting while driving and a summary of where a teen went and how fast, are marked on its site as Bark Phone only, so they need its phone and plan.

    Cost: The Bark app is $14/mo or $99/yr and covers every child and device in the family, with a seven-day free trial and no free plan. Bark Phone plans run from $29 to $79 a month, plus the phone.

  6. Bouncie

    Best for: A new driver, where you want the record to come from the car and not the phone

    A small device that plugs into the car's diagnostic port, with its own mobile connection. It records the car's position every second of a trip and keeps the trip history without a limit, sends notifications for speed, hard braking and hard acceleration, alerts on zones and curfews, reads engine fault codes and can notify you of an accident. Because it is in the car, a phone left at home changes nothing. Bouncie's site says driving and location data is never sold or shared. Against it: it follows the car and not the person, so it says nothing about a teen riding with a friend, and it costs a device and a subscription for every vehicle.

    Cost: A device bought once, plus a monthly subscription for each vehicle, with no contract or activation fee and a 45-day guarantee. Its pricing page has the current figures.

  7. Chickadee Bandit

    That's us

    Best for: A household that wants arrival alerts and a weekly picture of a new driver, with each person choosing what they share

    Location here is part of a household app and is built around consent. Each member turns sharing on for themselves and picks live, places only, or off; nobody, the account holder included, can turn it on for someone else. Places only shows a person pinned to a safe zone while they are in one and nothing in between. Safe Zones sends a push when someone arrives at or leaves one of up to fifteen places, with quiet hours, and keeps those events for 30 days. Safe Driving, which an adult turns on for a teen, reports each drive afterwards: route, distance, top speed, hard braking, calls and phone unlocks, a weekly score, and time over a speed limit you set. The driver sees the same report and can mark a trip that was not theirs. All of it needs our Chickadee Locate companion app on the phone. Against it: there is no crash detection, no emergency dispatch and no roadside assistance, a drive is reported after it ends and not while it is happening, and a teenager who chooses off is off. If you need the phone to call for help after a crash, this is the wrong entry.

    Cost: $6/mo or $60/yr for the whole household, up to 10 members, with every app in the library. 30-day trial, no card, no ads.

Prices and features are from each product's own site as of October 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

  1. If you want one live map of the whole family and help dispatched after a crash, Life360 on Gold or above. Open its Privacy Center on the first day.
  2. If everyone has an iPhone, start with Find My. It is free and already installed.
  3. If the household is a mix of Android and iPhone, start with Location Sharing in Google Maps.
  4. If you only need to share a trip now and then, Glympse.
  5. If your worry is what a child is seeing and sending, Bark, and treat its location as a bonus.
  6. If the question is how a new driver drives, and you want the answer from the car, Bouncie.
  7. If you want arrival alerts and drive reports that each person has agreed to, kept with the rest of the household's life, ours.

Who decides what is shared

This is the difference that matters most with a teenager. In Find My and Google Maps each person chooses to share, and is told when someone sets an alert on them. In Life360 a Circle is all or nothing: every member sees every other, and a member who pauses is shown to the others as paused. Family Link and Bark are parent-controlled by design, which is what you want for a young child and a harder conversation at sixteen. Bouncie is fitted to the car, so it is not the driver's choice at all. Ours is opt-in for each member, with a places-only setting between on and off, and the page a teenager sees is the same one the adults see.

What happens to the location data

Ask this of any product that knows where your children are. Life360's privacy policy says it discloses precise location data to business partners for their own monetization unless you opt out, and that it excludes members it knows to be under 18. Apple says it cannot access a location shared between two devices on iOS 17 or later. Bark and Bouncie each say on their own sites that they do not sell location data. We did not find a statement from Google about how long a shared location is kept. Ours is stored in your household's own encrypted database, and we do not sell data or show ads.

Driving: the phone or the car

Three products here report on driving, in three ways. Life360 uses the phone and adds crash detection, with dispatch and roadside help on its higher plans. Bouncie uses the car, so it cannot be left at home, and it knows the engine's fault codes. Ours uses the phone and reports after the drive, with the driver looking at the same report. The first is a safety net, the second is a record of the vehicle, and the third is a weekly conversation. If the thing you are afraid of is a crash on an empty road, choose the one that calls for help.

Before you install any of them

Decide with the person being located what is shared, who sees it, and when it stops. An app that a teenager has agreed to keeps working. One they resent gets left on the kitchen counter, and a phone on the counter reports home.

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.

How to build a custom app for your household

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.

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