The Best Spy Apps in 2024– Free and Paid Options Tested

The best premium and free spy apps will let you monitor what your family and employees are doing online. Whether you’re a concerned parent, employer, or in a rocky relationship, spy apps can provide peace of mind, and give you the answers you need.

Phone spyware lets you monitor and control another device and provides access to conversations, social media activity, browsing history, photos, and call records, making them valuable tools in our digital lives.

In this guide, I’ve personally tested the best free spy apps on the market, as well as their paid spy app alternatives on my own devices, to review and compare every single factor, including their free trials and demos, money-back guarantees, their value for money, and how their features compare. On this page I list the best of the best.

The Best Spy Apps Overall: Tested By Our Experts

In the largest online survey on infidelity, 91% of women confessed to emotional cheating, compared to 77% of men – but, only 21% of people in monogamous relationships admit to cheating. For most people, finding out the truth is the only thing they need. But, it’s not the only reason people reliably turn to spy apps.

We know that 70% of children between the ages of 7 and 18 having unintentionally encountered online pornography, and with social media cyberbullying, thousands of online predators, and other dangers online, knowing that your family is safe is a top priority.

From my experience of testing spyware, I am confident that these are the strongest spy apps in the game. They cost between $11 and $50/month, but will let you see everything from what they’re browsing, who they’re talking to, and any information they might try to delete.

We understand cost is a concern when selecting any kind of software, but be extremely cautious of opting for free spy software. Our testing has found most free spy apps simply don’t work. Worse still, many are actually malware, posing serious risk to your online security, while some free spy software shares user data with other parties.

While free trials and demos are a great way to get a feel and understanding of how the software works, even the spy tools that offer free trials; Qustodio, ESET, and FamiSafe are incredibly limited in terms of the features they offer without upgrading to a paid plan, making it impossible for us to genuinely recommend them to anyone looking for complete peace of mind about the safety of their loved ones.

Free spy apps will always lack features which can be had for not much money on paid plans, such as real time alerts and screen recording. I dive more into the importance of these features in my in-depth reviews below.

mSpy — Best Spy App Overall

Spynger — Best Mobile Spy App for Partner Tracking

uMobix — Best Phone Spy App for Android Devices

Scannero — Best Spyware App for Phone Location Tracking

SpyBubblePro — Best Spy Software for Detecting Hidden or Deleted Content

Phonsee — Best Cheap Spy App for Mobile Devices

Eyezy — Best Phone Spy App for GPS Location Tracking and Geofencing

ClevGuard — Best Spy Phone App for Parental Control

The Best Spy App Picks Compared

Here’s a comprehensive table highlighting the key differences between the top spying phone apps so you can compare them side by side before making a decision:

Top 3 Free Spy Apps Reviewed

We wouldn’t recommend free spyware software for the reasons we list above, but of the free software I did test, these were the best of them all.

Qustodio — Free Spy App for Multiple Devices (Free-Forever Plan)

Qustodio is one of the few spy apps offering a free-forever plan. It’s trusted by over 6 million parents and works on Kindle devices as well as the usual devices.

Although reading is a great habit to encourage, monitoring what kind of content your kids are reading is also important. The best thing about Qustodio is its Safe Search mode. Instead of manually filtering out inappropriate content, you can use this, which works like the kid-friendly mode on Netflix and YouTube.

You’ll receive a notification if a site or app is blocked and your kids try to access it. You’ll know what they’re curious about, and you can talk about it at home.

The Panic button is another major attraction. It lets your kids send you instant alerts with a click of a button if they’re in danger, and calling or text messages isn’t an option. Qustodio also lets you set screen time limits. You can restrict screen time for certain apps and games alone or for the entire device.

ESET — Free Spy Phone App For Parental Control (Free-Forever Plan)

ESET is primarily an antivirus software provider but also has a product for Android parental control. It comes with a generous free plan loaded with useful features like the ability to set time limits for apps, generate app usage reports and block unsolicited websites and content.

You can decide how much screen time they get and how much time they individually spend – for free. Along with the free plan, you’ll also get a 30-day free trial for the premium plan.

This will give you access to the GPS location tracker, geofencing, web filtering, and a safe search mode. However, the free plan is relatively limited, while the premium plan doesn’t offer as many features as other tools.

That said, it also comes with a password manager. All in all, the parental control app is decent if you’re not looking for an all-out solution.

FamiSafe — Free Spy App for Tech-Savvy Families With Teenagers (3-Day Free Trial)

FamiSafe is a great tool for monitoring teenagers. It lets you track your children’s driving habits with detailed reports on their driving history for every trip. This will show their top speeds, average speeds, total distance driven, and much more.

It also tells you about your kids’ conversations with their AI assistants during the day. You need this feature despite having a separate web search history because sometimes people just talk to their phone assistants.

In addition, if you want to know what images your kids are capturing or receiving, use the “Detect Suspicious Photos” tool. It’ll automatically find inappropriate images and alert you.

Although short, the three-day free trial is still good enough for temporary tracking. Whether it’s driving reports, TikTok app history, geofencing, or GPS location history, you can see the updates of the current day—though it can’t access data from previous days.

 

Methodology

How We Review And Test Spyware Apps

Important Note: Spy software is not legal to use without the device owner’s permission in many countries and states. When we test spy software, we do so only with the explicit consent of the device owner and in compliance with local laws and regulations.

To provide our readers with accurate and well-informed recommendations, we test the most popular spy applications on the market to find the best options for you. Our methodology consists of the following criteria:

• General Features: We evaluate the comprehensive feature set of each spy app, including but not limited to features such as App Management, Time Management, Call Monitoring, Device Control and GPS Tracking.
• Ease of Use: We gauge the user-friendliness of each app, considering factors such as installation process complexity, the necessity of jailbreaking (for iOS) or rooting (for Android) the target device, and more.
• Device Support and Compatibility: We thoroughly examine the compatibility of each spyware app with different devices and operating systems, including iOS and Android. We also assess whether the app offers a unified dashboard accessible from both desktop and mobile devices.
• Customer Support: We test the responsiveness and effectiveness of customer support provided by each app developer. We evaluate the availability of support channels, such as live chat, email, or phone support, as well as the satisfaction ratings of customer assistance.
• Price and Value for Money: We assess each spyware app’s pricing structure in relation to its features and functionalities, aiming to determine its overall value proposition. We analyze whether the app offers different subscription tiers, flexible payment options, and discounts for long-term commitments. Additionally, we check whether the app provides free trials or demos for users to test its capabilities before making a purchase.
• Privacy and Security: We prioritize the privacy and security of user data in our evaluation. We scrutinize the app’s data encryption measures, adherence to privacy regulations, and commitment to regular security updates to safeguard user information from unauthorized access or breaches.

Why Do I Need a Spy Phone App?

There are many good reasons why you might want to use a phone app to track or monitor a smartphone’s usage and GPS location. Some of the most common of these include:

What Can I Do with Spy Apps?

Spy apps will, naturally, enable you to monitor a phone – but what does being able to spy on another phone actually mean? Here are some of the capabilities of the best spying apps.

• Chat monitoring – Many top tools for spying on phones come with comprehensive chat monitoring features, allowing you to track conversations from multiple apps on a single dashboard.
• App control – A range of spyware apps will allow you to add and remove apps and to lock how and when they are used. You can often also access browser history and social media connections.
• Keyloggers – A keylogger may be the ultimate tool available if you want a free app to monitor another phone. This tool tracks every keystroke entered on the device, allowing it to catch communications, searches, and logins.
• Camera and microphone control – The best tools allow you to silently use the device’s camera to take pictures and enable video streaming or to use the microphone to capture audio. This gives you complete awareness of the device’s environment.
• Device control – The most powerful apps will give you full control over the tracked device, turning it on and off and even wiping the device if needed.
• GPS location tracking – A good mobile tracker app will allow you to see precisely where a device is and will include geofencing, which sets off alerts if the device leaves a set area.

What Devices Can I Track with Spy Apps?

There are a range of excellent spyware apps for whatever platform you want to track. Here are some of the devices you can monitor.

Who Are Spy Apps For?

A wide range of individuals can benefit from using spying apps. Some common use cases for free phone monitoring include:

Are Free Spying Apps Safe?

All the spy app providers on our list are safe to use and are great for getting started. They’ve been handpicked after careful scrutiny of their features and trustworthiness.

However, it’s best to avoid apps that only offer a free solution, as these are often offered by unscrupulous providers who are actually running data mining centers and selling your data online.

Look for platforms that offer paid solutions along with free ones. These apps use subscription income to strengthen their security. They offer a free plan to allow potential users to test their free spy services before they move to a paid subscription.

This is why all our recommended platforms offer a paid plan, and most of their free plans are essentially free trials that allow you to try out the service before committing.

Key Factors to Consider When Choosing Spy Software

Choosing a spy app can be difficult, given the number of options available. Here are a few things to consider whether you’re looking for free iPhone spying apps or free Android spy tools.

Best Free Spy Apps vs. Paid Subscriptions

All the Android and iOS spy apps we’ve listed here offer demos, trials, or money-back guarantees, ensuring you can see their services in action without risking any money.

Only a handful of mobile spy apps offer free-forever plans, and these tend to be limited versions of parental control apps. If you want to use more fully featured device monitoring software in the long term—allowing you to access the phone and camera and use a keylogger—you’ll likely need to look toward paid plans with providers like mSpy, uMobix, or Spynger.

Given this, finding an affordable paid plan is a better solution than finding an underpowered alternative or considering untrustworthy free spy solutions.

Is a Free Spy App Worth It?

There’s not a whole range of free spy apps to pick from today, and the ones that offer forever free plans face tough competition from spy apps that require paid subscriptions. Nevertheless, there are a handful of spy apps that deliver a truly outstanding free service, such as Qustodio and FamiSafe, specifically if you’re looking for parental control features.

In our guide, we’ve picked the spy app best for each use case and created a shortlist that caters to a range of needs – whichever you choose, though, you won’t regret it.

So, what’s the best and most trusted spy app? Based on our research, we can’t recommend mSpy highly enough, and it’s often cited as the best premium spy app on the market. Try it now, risk-free, with its generous money-back guarantee.

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