GPS trackers for kids and elderly parents

A phone they already have. If the person can use a phone, start here. Both platforms have built-in location sharing that is free, accurate, battery-efficient and — crucially — attached to the one device they will definitely carry. For most teenagers and most independent older adults this is the whole answer, and buying a tracker instead adds a second thing to charge and lose.

A cellular smartwatch. The right middle option for a child too young for a phone but old enough to manage a watch. It needs a carrier line rather than a tracker subscription, which is usually cheaper and always more portable, and it adds calls, fall detection and an SOS button. Most importantly a child will keep a watch on, which no dedicated tracker achieves.

A dedicated tracker. Earns its place in two cases. A wearer who cannot call for help needs a tamper-resistant device with an SOS path — that is what AngelSense and the dementia-specific devices are for, and they are built around that rather than around location sharing. And a young child where you want something small and passive in a backpack, which is a job a Bluetooth tag does for nothing.

If the person you are protecting has dementia or is a non-verbal child, almost nothing on a general tracker comparison applies to you. The requirements are narrow and specific: the device must be difficult for the wearer to remove, it must work outside the house, and an alert must reach somebody who will act on it within minutes.

That rules out Bluetooth tags entirely — they need a passing phone, and the moment that matters may not have one. It rules out most consumer GPS trackers, which are built for cars and have no SOS path and no tamper-resistant fastening. What is left is a small group of purpose-built devices, all of which require a cellular plan because they have to work away from home.

Two of them deserve naming. AngelSense is built around a wearer who cannot communicate, with a tamper-proof fastening and an assistive speakerphone; its Amazon bundle includes a year of service, it charges a $59 activation fee on the month-to-month plan, and it does not publish its monthly rate — you have to request a quote. SureSafe's dementia tracker takes a different approach and calls a list of family contacts directly rather than a monitoring center, which removes one subscription from the chain.

One honest caveat on every device in this group: it only works if somebody answers. A device that calls three phones nobody picks up is not a safety net. Decide who is on that list before you buy.

Every recommendation on this site assumes the person being tracked knows about it. We will not help with covert tracking of a family member, and that is a position with three separate justifications.

The ethical one is obvious. The legal one is real: tracking a person without consent runs into state statutes — California Penal Code § 637.7 is a representative example, prohibiting the use of an electronic tracking device to determine a person's location or movement, with narrow exceptions — and family-law and employment contexts add their own rules. This is not legal advice and your state may differ, but "it is my child" is not the complete answer people assume it is, particularly for an adult child or a parent.

The practical one is the one that persuades people. Covert tracking does not work. A teenager who finds a hidden tracker learns how tracking is defeated, and tells their friends. A teenager who agreed to a tracker, with a stated rule about when it gets looked at, keeps it charged. The second arrangement survives; the first one ends.