Best Free Life360 Alternatives for Families

This is the best free pick for most families, and the only big-name option that works the same on Android and iPhone. Open Google Maps, tap your profile picture, and share your real-time location with a contact. You can share for a set time or until you turn it off.

It also has place alerts. For each person sharing with you, you can add up to 5 notifications for when they arrive at or leave a place. The other person gets an email telling them you set it up, and they can block it. Notifications are not available if the sharer is under 13 (or the age of consent in their country). To share with someone who has no Google account, send a link. It shows your location in any browser for up to 24 hours.

On Android, the same people sharing also appears in Find Hub (Google renamed Find My Device to Find Hub in 2025).

What you lose vs Life360: no location history for family members, no crash detection, no driving reports, and no single family "circle" screen.

If everyone in your family has an iPhone, you already have a solid Life360 replacement. The People tab in Find My shows everyone who shares with you, and it works with Family Sharing.

You can get a notification when someone arrives at or leaves a place, or when they are not at a place during a set schedule. You choose once or every time. Recurring alerts need the other person to approve them first, and they need two-factor authentication turned on. Apple allows up to 25 of these notifications. Apple says it does not sell personal data.

The catch is Android. Find My cannot share people's locations with Android users. One Android phone in the family means you need Google Maps or another cross-platform app.

What you lose vs Life360: no Android support, no location history, no driving reports or crash-dispatch service.

Family Link is Google's parental control app. Besides screen time and app approvals, it shows where your child's Android phone is on a map. You can save family places and turn on alerts for when the child arrives or leaves.

The parent can use Android or iPhone. The child's device must be Android (or a compatible Fitbit) for location to work. Location works best when the child's phone has mobile data, and alerts switch off if the phone's location accuracy setting is turned off.

What you lose vs Life360: no iPhone support for the child, built for kids rather than adults or grandparents, no driving features.

Most families already have a WhatsApp group. Open the chat, tap attach, choose Location, then Share live location. You pick 15 minutes, 1 hour or 8 hours, and you can stop early.

WhatsApp says live location is end-to-end encrypted, so only the people in that chat can see it. That makes it one of the more private options here. It needs only your phone number. It is best for a night out, a road trip or a teen walking home, not for all-day tracking.

What you lose vs Life360: sharing ends after 8 hours at most, no place alerts, no history, no always-on family map.

Glympse has done temporary location sharing since 2008. You send a link, and the other person watches you move on a map in any browser. They do not need the app or an account. Every share expires on its own.

It also has private groups for families, carpools and sports teams, where members can share and request locations. Glympse says it does not sell your data or require sign-ups to view locations. The Android version contains ads, and the paid upgrades are mostly branding tools for businesses.

What you lose vs Life360: no geofence alerts, no history, sharing is designed to be temporary.

GeoZilla looks and works the most like Life360. You create a family circle, invite people by phone number, link or QR code, and each person has to accept before sharing starts. It has arrival and departure alerts, a daily location timeline, low battery alerts, driving reports and SOS.

The free tier is limited. Premium adds unlimited location alerts, unlimited circles, 2 weeks of history for everyone and driver protection, and one purchase covers the whole family. On privacy, GeoZilla's policy says it does not sell personal information, but it may share data, including location and ad IDs, with third parties for advertising. Apple's label lists identifiers as data used to track you.

What you lose vs Life360: in practice not much in features, but you pay for Premium to get them, and the privacy trade-off is similar.

Samsung Find grew out of SmartThings Find. Its People tab lets you share your location with family and friends, set it for a limited time, and get location notifications. A family group holds you plus up to 5 more people. The Devices and Items tabs also find Galaxy phones, watches, Buds and SmartTags.

It needs a Samsung account, and the person you share with must have Samsung Find installed. The Google Play data safety label says no data is shared with third parties.

What you lose vs Life360: works only on Galaxy devices, no driving features.

OwnTracks is a free, open source app that sends your location to a server you control, not to a company. Family members you authorise can see each other on a map. You can mark places as regions with a radius, and the app reports when a phone enters or leaves them. With the OwnTracks Recorder on your server, you keep a full location history.

The trade-off is setup. Someone has to run the server (MQTT or HTTP) and keep it online. If your family already has a home server, it fits well next to the other tools in our open source privacy tools list.

What you lose vs Life360: easy setup, crash detection, SOS services, and a polished family app.

Traccar is an open source GPS tracking platform. The Traccar Client app turns a phone into a tracker that reports to a Traccar server. The server gives you a live map, geofences with alerts, and trip reports with history. The Play listing says location goes only to your chosen server and no data is shared.

You can self-host it free, or pay Traccar's own developers for a hosted account (from $9.95 a month). The apps point to a public demo server by default, which is fine for testing but not for your family's location.

What you lose vs Life360: it is built for fleets and trackers, so the family experience is plain, and setup takes work.