Best free family tracking app?

Google Family Link is the best free option overall: it covers Android and iPhone, shows live location, and adds app limits and screen time at no cost. Apple's Family Sharing with Find My is the better free choice if every phone in the house is an iPhone.

The four that are genuinely free:

• Google Family Link — Android fully, iPhone with limits; location, app approval, screen time, device lock.
• Apple Family Sharing + Find My — iPhone only; location, Screen Time, purchase approval, no content visibility.
• Google Maps location sharing — any phone, no account juggling, location only, set to "until I turn it off".
• Life360 free tier — cross-platform location, place alerts and crash detection; driving reports and history sit behind the paid tier.

What none of them do. Read messages. Free tools are location, limits and app management; message visibility is the paid tier of a monitoring product, and on iPhone it is not available at all without the Apple ID.

Where our app fits. Ultimate Phone Spy is paid, not free, and runs on Android 4.0+, Windows and macOS (features). It adds messages, call logs and social app notifications for an Android child device. If location is your whole need, Family Link costs nothing and I would start there — the honest case for paying is message-level visibility on Android, not location.