There is no single accuracy figure for an AirTag, because it reports in two completely different ways. More than a few meters away, what you are seeing is not the tag's position at all — it is the position of whichever stranger's iPhone last heard it, so the dot is as accurate as that phone was. In the last few meters, Ultra Wideband takes over and gives you a direction and a distance, which is accurate enough to find a key fob inside a sofa.
That distinction explains almost every complaint and almost every surprise people have about tag accuracy, so it is worth being precise about it.
Far away: the accuracy of somebody else's phone
An AirTag contains no GPS receiver. It broadcasts a rotating encrypted identifier over Bluetooth; any passing Apple device hears it and reports its own location to Apple's servers, encrypted so that the finder learns nothing. You then see that reported location.
Three consequences follow, and they are the whole of far-field accuracy:
- The dot is the phone, not the tag. The passing phone could have been anywhere within Bluetooth earshot — Samsung states up to 120 m for its tag's Bluetooth range and Chipolo states up to 120 m too, which is the right scale to have in mind. So “accurate to the building” is a fair expectation and “accurate to the room” is not.
- The dot has an age. It is where the tag was when a phone last passed, not where it is. In a busy street that is minutes ago; in a quiet garage it may be yesterday. The timestamp matters more than the coordinates.
- Accuracy depends on crowd density, not on the tag. The same AirTag is near-live in a city center and nearly useless on a hiking trail. No tag from any brand changes this, because none of them have GPS.
Up close: Ultra Wideband, and why it feels like magic
Within range of your own phone, an AirTag can be found by Precision Finding, which uses Ultra Wideband rather than Bluetooth signal strength. UWB measures time-of-flight, so instead of “the signal is getting stronger” you get an arrow and a distance in feet. Apple states the second-generation AirTag has 1.5 times the Precision Finding range of the first.
This is where tags genuinely beat every GPS tracker on the market. A cellular tracker will tell you the keys are in your house; Precision Finding tells you they are four feet away behind the cushion.
The third mechanism: noise
Loudness is accuracy by another route, and it is the only one that works on any phone and in any pocket. Apple states the second-generation AirTag's speaker is 50% louder than the first. Chipolo states about 125 dB on the LOOP, which is a different league and is why a loud tag with no UWB can out-find a quiet tag that has it.
What a tag cannot do, at any accuracy
It cannot follow something. A tag has no GPS and no cellular radio, so it cannot report from a place no phone visits, and it cannot stream a position while something moves. That is not an accuracy limitation, it is a category limitation, and it is the single most common mismatch between what people buy and what they needed. Where it is versus where it was is the decision that comes first.
How to get the best accuracy out of a tag you own
Mount it where the signal can get out. Bluetooth is badly attenuated by metal and water. A tag inside a steel toolbox, under a car body, or in a bag against a wet coat reports far less often than one in a jacket pocket.
Keep the battery healthy. A weak coin cell reduces transmit power before it stops the tag entirely, so the first symptom of an old battery is a tag that reports less often rather than one that goes silent. Replacing it takes a minute.
Read the timestamp, always. The most common accuracy complaint is actually an age complaint: the position was perfectly accurate when it was recorded nine hours ago.
Expect less in the countryside. If the thing you want to find spends its time away from people, no tag is the right tool regardless of its specification.
Which one if accuracy is the priority
iPhone: AirTag, for Precision Finding on the largest crowd network there is.
Galaxy phone: SmartTag2, which gives you the same UWB behavior and states a 120 m Bluetooth range and up to 500 days of battery.
Any other Android: a Find Hub tag with UWB such as the Moto Tag, accepting a thinner network than Apple's.
Either platform, and you would rather hear it than follow an arrow: the Chipolo LOOP, where a stated 125 dB does the last few meters without any radio precision at all.
We are not printing a general GPS accuracy figure on this page. The usual public source for one did not resolve when we checked it, and no manufacturer publishes a figure for these devices — so the honest version of this page explains the mechanism and cites the specs that do exist.
