The Best Parental Control Apps of 2024

Even though some new online safety brands have appeared on the scene since we first published our round-up, Bark is still our favorite parental control app. Bark can’t be beat in terms of email and social media monitoring, and our testers thought Bark was the easiest app to set up and use.

We prefer other parental control apps for specific features—like location tracking and contact management—and for more comfortable price points. Learn more about the differences between our top picks, and discover why other apps didn’t make the cut.

We examined how well these parental control apps track location and monitor platforms like social media and email. The best parental controls for your family will depend on what your kids' ages and access to technology as well. 

Our top five picks share these features:

• App management
• App usage history reports
• Texting history reports
• Screen-time management
• Content filter
• Website blocker 

We’ve organized the major differences in the chart below. To compare prices, see the chart above.

If you're not sure which features to prioritize, check out our guide to parental controls.

There is a catch to Bark—you don't get to see everything your child does online or on their phone. Bark's philosophy hinges on respecting kids' privacy when nothing's wrong. And if the content filters do catch something amiss, Bark gives practical guidance on how to have a conversation or seek counseling services. It doesn't give you the ability to lock down the phone apart from turning off its internet access. 

Bark's unique in this approach, so if you do want to have a more hands-on role in your child's digital life, the other parental controls on our list have you covered.

Read our full Bark app review to learn more about what it monitors and how it performed during our tests. And if you haven't bought a phone for your kid yet, check out our Bark Phone review to learn why it's even better than the Bark app.

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We love the in-depth cloud-based dashboard, which shows you exactly what your child has been typing into search engines or YouTube and automatically flags concerning activity for you to review. 

You’ll see which apps and websites your kid spends the most time on, who they’re calling, and the content of their texts. There’s also social media monitoring, but it’s limited to Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo Messenger. 

You can also set up rules and restrictions from this dashboard, but that’s where Qustodio’s user-friendliness takes a nosedive. Other apps offer simpler interfaces for parents.

FamilyTime monitors text messages, general app and device usage, and web browsing history. If you detect an issue, here's how you can intervene:

FamilyTime offers more functionality for iOS devices than competitor apps. For example, you can use geofencing and block apps on your child’s iPhone with FamilyTime, whereas Boomerang only offers those features for Android users. 

You still can’t track calls or texts on iOS devices with FamilyTime. That’s an Apple rule.

Learn more in our full FamilyTime review.

Blocking explicit images and videos is Canopy's primary goal, but it also offers many other supportive features to help parents breathe easier when their kids go online.

Here are some of Canopy's top features:

• Real-time filtering: Instantly blurs explicit content to shield children from harmful material.
• Screen time management: Provides tools to manage screen time across multiple devices, with varying limits for different gadgets.
• Sexting alerts: Alerts both parents and children if sexting content is detected.
• Algorithm accuracy: Categorizes 99.8% of explicit content correctly, serving as a reliable supplement to offline family lessons.

Additionally, Canopy plans to introduce new features to monitor text content, oversee social media usage, and identify potentially harmful or bullying conversations, enhancing its comprehensive digital safety suite.

MMGuardian doesn't offer the same depth of social media monitoring as Bark, but it does cover some of the most popular apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. 

You can also track your child's location at any time without requesting a check-in. MMGuardian no longer offers geofencing, though, since it led to too many false alarms. 

MMGuardian isn't very affordable if your children use more than five devices altogether. The price for a single child device is around $50 a year, and it doubles to around $100 a year for five child devices, such as smartphones and tablets. That price is comparable to Bark, but you get unlimited coverage with Bark's parental control app.  

Read more in our full MMGuardian review.

Aside from surveillance, SentryPC offers basic screen time management, content filtering, and geofencing. It lacks a few other management tools like contact management and remote internet and device shutdowns.

Even though there's no social media or email monitoring, the keylogger is a catch-all that would show anything typed into the device.

SentryPC's online dashboard is a little clinical. There's a demo available on their website if you want to see it for yourself.

Finally, SentryPC is best if you only have one device to monitor. The first one costs around $70 a year, and each additional device license is another $30.

We started out with a list of 30 parental monitoring apps. Here are some that didn’t quite make the cut for our top five.

Boomerang's main appeal is its affordability—about $16 a year for one device or $31 a year for ten devices. But most of its features are limited to Android devices, so skip this one if your child uses an iPhone.

We also like that Boomerang doesn't allow new apps to be downloaded until you give the OK. It also has good screen time management features. 

Boomerang just squeaked out of our top five. If you're on a budget, give it a closer look by reading our full Boomerang review.

Screen Time (not to be confused with Apple's parental control of the same name) has a free version that covers one Android device. The Premium subscription comes to about $84 a year. 

As long as your child uses an Android phone, you can read their full texts with Screen Time, monitor messages sent through WhatsApp, Viber, and Kik, and see all photos your child takes, sends, and receives.

There's no contact management, or call log history, but Screen Time has a nice buffet of other management tools. We especially like that it can block all new app downloads. 

Norton Family is best for parents and kids who already have an open dialogue about internet safety, since the dashboard is more for guiding your conversations than instituting a total device lockdown. It lacks the social media monitoring and app management of more comprehensive parental control software like Bark. Norton Family starts at about $50 for the first yer.

You can read more about our experience with our in-depth Norton Family Parental Control Review.

The Circle Home Plus internet filter (now part of Aura) costs $10 per month or $89 per year; however, the Aura pricing isn't listed plainly anywhere on their website and I had to dig through FAQ to find it without signing up for a plan. Circle Home Plus controls any device connected to your home’s Wi-Fi. If that sounds good to you, we recommend Bark Home instead. It costs about $80, and you don’t need to pay an annual fee. 

You can read more about our experience with our in-depth Circle Home Plus review.

Circle also came out with an app that's now sold with Circle Home Plus, but it didn't knock our socks off. It doesn't monitor texts, emails, or social media messages and doesn't provide call logs or contact management. It's good for regulating screen time and blocking apps or content categories, though.

Mobicip offers a web filter, screen-time management, location tracker, app blocker, website blocker, and history report starting at around $48 per year for five devices. If you use Android devices, Boomerang offers those same features and more at around $31 per year for 10 devices.

If you use iOS, macOS, Windows, Kindle, or Chromebook, then Mobicip is a slightly more affordable alternative to Qustodio (but without the info-heavy reporting dashboard).

OurPact offers a free version that lets you block apps and set up one schedule for screen time. If you want any other functionality, you need to pay $6.99 per month—but if you pay for a year in advance, you get two months free. If you can pay it all at once, your annual rate will be about $70 and that lets you manage up to 20 devices.

We do think it’s cool that this parental control software lets you see a live view of your child’s screen, but its reporting dashboard lacks insight into web history, call history, and overall device usage.

Read more about our testing experience in our in-depth OurPact review.

Google Family Link is free and lets you manage apps, control screen time, and track your child’s location. Google Family Link’s closest competitors are the free versions of Kaspersky or Qustodio, which don’t track location but do offer a web filter. We think web filtering is the more useful feature, but you can always install Google Family Link in addition to Kaspersky or Qustodio if you want.

Once upon a time, Net Nanny earned a spot among the top parental controls. We bumped it down the list because there were more affordable and easier-to-use alternatives on the market now. It also doesn't offer any trial period, which is a big minus in our book.

But, Net Nanny has adjusted its pricing, and it's now more competitive. Plans start at $50 per year for one device, $80 per year for up to five devices and $130 per year for as many as 20 devices. And we've found that the company offers discounts pretty regularly. As of publication, all plans were 30% off, reducing annual costs to $40, $55, and $90, depending on how many devices you want to cover. 

The biggest issue we had was how hard it was to set up the app. It took our tester an hour to set up Net Nanny for one device, and they were able to get around the web filter. We need to give Net Nanny another look, but as of our last round of testing, we don’t see a reason to choose this brand, especially since it offers no message monitoring. 

Cocospy helps parents track where their kids are and what they are up to online. Its features include the ability to check WhatsApp, contacts, browser history, and call logs, plus geofencing. Monthly prices range from$40 to $70 per month, which makes this a pretty pricey option.

Kidslox takes the cake for location history. It not only shows your child's current location, but the route they took to get there and how long they lingered at stops along the way. You'll see corresponding addresses and times too. 

Location history is saved for 7 days. You can also set up geofences. Other than that, Kidslox offers average parental controls with no message monitoring. 

Kidslox bills customers annually, charging $49.99 per year for its single-device basic plan or $79.99 for the family plan, which covers up to 10 devices.

mSpy is an alternative to SentryPC but costs at least twice as much. It's an invasive parental control that shows you almost everything that happens on your child's device—including any captured photos and videos. It also can also monitor emails, texts, Facebook messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat, and seven other social media apps.

mSpy is very expensive compared to the competition and charges extra for technical assistance. It also hides pricing and makes claims like "#1 choice in the United States" that comes with a disclaimer that the statement is only the opinion of the company. We'd steer clear. 

We think Bark offers the most comprehensive monitoring service if you can spare about $100 per year toward your child’s online safety. It’s the only parental app that monitors email, and that’s just as important as monitoring text messages and DMs.

• 30+ parental control apps considered
• 27 data points assessed
• 8 hours of testing
• 50 hours of research

To find the best parental control apps, we set up different apps, tested them as both “children” and “parents,” and then addressed strengths and weaknesses. 

On top of hands-on testing, we dug into each app’s features, prices, compatibility, and customer reviews. We also consulted with other online safety experts. 

Three members of our team tried out the different apps, looking for how well each performed in these specific areas:

• Setup and installation: how easy it was to install on different devices (including iOS, Android, mobile, and desktop), how much time it took, and whether or not there were any issues that came up.
• Performance: Did the app do what it was supposed to do? Would it be easy for kids to work around it?
• Features: what extra features were available, and did they deliver as promised?

Read more about our methodology.

• Internet Safety Guide for Kids
• How to Keep Your Teen (or Tween) Safe Online
• How Can I Protect My Child from Strangers Online?
• How Can I Secure My Internet Connection?
• What to Teach Your Children about Home Safety
• What Age Should Kids Get a Phone?

1. United Nations, "Global Issues: Child and Youth Safety Online"