Short answer: Life360 is the better tracker, Family360 is the cheaper tracker, and neither one is a parental-control app. If what you actually want is to know what is happening on the phone - messages, social apps, search terms, who they are talking to - neither of these will show you that. For that job the two we recommend and test are mSpy (deepest monitoring: messengers, screen recorder, keyword alerts) and Eyezy (same core coverage, simpler dashboard, faster setup). Both run on iPhone and Android and both include location, so you do not have to choose between "where are they" and "what are they doing".
Those two links are affiliate links - the price stays the same for you.
If you only want location, here is the honest comparison
- Life360 is a safety membership, not just a map pin. Live location, place alerts, driving reports (speed, hard braking, phone use while driving), crash detection, roadside assistance and a Tile tracker bundle on the higher tiers. The free tier gives you live location and two saved places; everything people actually praise sits behind Silver, Gold or Platinum.
- Family360 does one job: a shared live location pin, arrival and departure alerts, basic history, an SOS button, at roughly $5-6/month for a family rather than $15+. It is simpler to set up and much cheaper, and that is its whole pitch.
- Where Family360 wins: price, simplicity, and no driving-report upsell you will never use.
- Where Life360 wins: accuracy and refresh rate, driving telemetry for teen drivers, crash detection, roadside assistance, and a much larger user base (so other family members probably already have it).
The privacy caveat nobody mentions in the comparison tables
Both are advertising-adjacent businesses. Life360 has been criticised for years over how it handles and shares location data, including a 2024 FTC action over selling geolocation data to brokers, and it still monetises through ads and partner offers. Family360 publishes far less about its security practices, and its data controls run through a manual email request rather than an in-app menu. If the idea of a third party holding months of your family's location history bothers you, that matters more than the price difference.
The gap both apps share
Location apps answer "where", not "what". They cannot show you a Snapchat conversation, a search for self-harm content, a stranger asking your child to move to Telegram, or a bullying thread in a group chat. Teen drivers and lost phones are a Life360 problem; online risk is a monitoring problem.
So, which one
- You want driving reports, crash detection and roadside help: Life360 (Gold, if you have a teen driver).
- You want a cheap shared pin and nothing else: Family360.
- You want to see the messages, apps and searches behind the location: mSpy for depth, or Eyezy if you want it running in ten minutes.
- Best combination, and what we run ourselves: a free location app for the map plus one monitoring app for the content.
One rule we do not bend on: only install any of these on a device you own or have explicit consent to monitor. For your own minor children that is normally fine - tell them it is there. Installing a tracker on another adult's phone without consent is illegal in most countries and it is not what these tools are for.
One dashboard for the devices you actually own: Ultimate Phone Spy covers Android phones, Windows PCs and Macs — SMS, call logs, location history, geofences, web history and installed apps in a single account (plans and pricing, system requirements). It is installed openly on devices you administer, and it does not cover iPhone because iOS does not permit that level of access.