How to Track a Phone Without Them Knowing | Top Free & Paid Tools Reviewed

With one of the best spy apps, you can track a phone and confirm or dispel your suspicions regarding a cheating partner or an insubordinate child. Besides showing you the precise location of the target device, a good cell phone tracker app allows you to read through your partner’s messages, browser history, and more.

We’ve reviewed the top 10 phone tracker apps this year, and in this article, we’ll analyze their best features. According to infidelity statistics for 2022, 57% of the people involved in extramarital affairs used the internet to flirt. Read on to learn how to track a phone without them knowing and why mSpy and EyeZy have the best parental control app solutions this year.

Track a Cell Phone | Top 10 Spy Apps List

Thanks to modern technology, tracking a cell phone via a parental control app to ensure your child is safe or that your partner isn’t cheating on you is never easier. Here are the top 10 best phone tracker apps this year, ranked based on their features, pros and cons, pricing, and more:

1. mSpy — Overall, the best cell phone tracking app, with a 14-day money-back guarantee and great device monitoring tools.
2. EyeZy — Leading provider for message monitoring, with tools for keylogging, message alerts, and web and social media monitoring.
3. uMobix — Reliable service with a superb GPS location tracking tool and a deep feature set for device access and monitoring.
4. Cocospy — Excellent monitoring app with a stealth mode and keylogging and location-monitoring capabilities.
5. Spyic — Affordable phone tracker with a massive money-back guarantee and options for blacklists, accessing messages, and controlling app use.
6. XNSpy — Popular spy app with advanced remote controls, allowing you to control the camera and microphone and wipe the target device remotely.
7. Hoverwatch — Great way to track a cell phone for free, covering location data and regularly collected screenshots, and with lots of room for customization.
8. iKeyMonitor— Consistent service, with the ability to track your family member’s precise location for free, as well as to monitor location and WiFi access history.
9. TheOneSpy — Powerful but affordable cell phone tracking app for monitoring location, files, and apps and full device control.
10. KidsGuard — Feature-rich parental control app with GPS location tracking and social media monitoring tools.

Best Phone Tracker Apps Reviewed In Depth

Finding a reliable and functional phone tracking app is challenging because most have hidden fees or don’t work. Now that you’ve seen our list of the market’s leading phone tracker apps that work, we can analyze them individually.

1. mSpy — Overall, the Best Cell Phone Tracking App

mSpy offers superb phone tracking features complemented by various advanced spying tools. It’s the best parental control app for 2023 because it provides precise location tracking and is near-impossible to detect.

mSpy has an intuitive dashboard that’s easy to use and provides ample helpful information. You can track the target phone’s location, look at recent messages and calls, check the browser history, and much more.

Besides looking at the current location in real-time, you can see the device’s chronological history of the movement, allowing you to know where your partner or child has been in the past few hours or days.

mSpy adds links to Google Maps for each detected location, allowing a seamless transition to Google Street View and other helpful features. However, if you’re curious about more than just where your partner or child is, you can use mSpy’s other advanced features.

Using this spy app, you can remotely activate the target phone’s microphone and camera to listen and see its surroundings. With its geo-fencing feature, you can draw borders on the map, mark them as “safe” or “dangerous,” and get notifications if the target device crosses its boundaries.

With mSpy, you can spy on your partner’s messages, including SMS, social media, instant messaging, and other texting platforms. Beyond this, mSpy will notify you if your partner downloads a dating app, allowing you to react or spy on their messages.

Pricing

• 1 month — $48.99/month
• 3 months — $27.99/month
• 12 months — $11.67/month

mSpy offers discounted prices for new users, making it a cost-effective solution for beginners. Its annual plan offers the most value and saves you money in the long run. Try mSpy risk-free now with its 14-day money-back guarantee.

2. EyeZy — Leading Provider For Message Monitoring

EyeZy helps you easily track your partner’s precise location, messaging history, and more via its intuitive dashboard. It’s easy to install on an Android device, making it one of the best spy apps for Android in 2023. With EyeZy, you can flag specific words or phrases and get a notification every time the target phone user texts them to someone or searches for them online.

This feature is invaluable to parents that want to help their children avoid inappropriate content. In addition, it allows you to block harmful websites and dangerous apps, giving you total control over the target device.

Beyond this, EyeZy provides accurate reports on the target device’s movement and online activity. It analyzes the contact list to show you who the user messages the most. Its interface is well-designed and doesn’t overwhelm you with irrelevant information, allowing you to navigate it quickly.

Besides letting you track a phone location, EyeZy provides an accurate keylogger that monitors keystrokes on the target phone. It’ll detect every keystroke and log it for you to review. EyeZy’s keylogger captures passwords, disappearing messages, deleted messages, and more, ensuring you don’t miss any information.

An in-depth study of infidelity-related behaviors on social media sites shows you’re more likely to be cheated on if your partner frequently meets new people by spending time on social media apps. You’ll appreciate EyeZy’s features that let you review their online activities, including social media messages and shared media.

Pricing

• 1 month — $47.99/month
• 3 months — $27.99/month
• 12 months — $9.99/month

EyeZy offers a cost-effective phone tracking service. Test its versatile premium plans risk-free today, thanks to its 14-day money-back guarantee.

3. uMobix — Superb GPS Location Tracking Tool

uMobix lets you discreetly track the target phone and access its call history, messages, gallery, and more. With impressive call logs displaying detailed information about each call, duration, and timestamps, uMobix is one of the best call logger apps this year.

uMobix’s intuitive interface shows the most recent development on the target phone, making it a superb choice for passive monitoring for busy parents or partners with a tight schedule. You can see the chronological history of the places your partner or child visited and get a clear picture of their daily habits.

Besides precise location tracking, this cell phone tracking app lets you discreetly spy on your partner’s online activities. You can access their instant messaging apps, social media, and SMS message history and see every message they send or receive, including deleted messages and multimedia.

The app lets you know if your partner or child used the target phone recently, so you can easily confirm if they’re deliberately not messaging you back. Beyond this, uMobix grants access to the target device’s browser history, which means you can see the user’s interests and search habits, including bookmarks and the most frequently visited websites.

If some listed websites seem inappropriate or dangerous, you can remotely block them, preventing access for the user.

Pricing

• 1 month — $49.99/month
• 3 months — $29.99/month
• 12 months — $12.49/month

uMobix lets you track a phone number with its feature-rich premium plan for $12.49/month with a year-long subscription. Take advantage of its 14-day money-back guarantee and try its services risk-free today.

4. Cocospy — Excellent Phone Tracking App With a Stealth Mode

Cocospy doesn’t risk your privacy while you track a cell phone location because of its advanced stealth mode. This near-invisible phone tracker won’t slow down the target device or display notifications, making it impossible to detect.

A reliable phone tracker with a stealth mode is crucial to avoid complicated situations with your children or partners. For example, a cheating partner might elude your supervision if they detect a phone tracker on their device, leading to further discord.

Thanks to its stealth mode, Cocospy helps you track a phone number while avoiding detection.

If you’re wondering where your loved one is, Cocospy can show you their current location or the history of their movement for up to seven days. You can seamlessly mark their location in Google Maps with one click if you need to get there quickly.

Cocospy is easy to install and use and requires only 2-5 minutes of physical access to the target device. After you install it, you won’t have to access the target phone as you can remotely activate all its features.

Besides discreetly tracking the target device, you can read through the user’s sent and received messages, see all the media stored on the target phone, get its SIM card information, and much more.

Pricing

Cocospy offers three competitively priced paid plans:

• 1 month — $49.99/month
• 3 months — $23.33/month
• 12 months — $9.99/month

Try Cocospy risk-free today, thanks to its 14-day money-back guarantee.

5. Spyic — Phone Tracker With a Massive Money-Back Guarantee

Spyic lets you spy on your child’s or partner’s mobile devices risk-free for two months with its 60-day guarantee. Before committing to a subscription, you can use that period to test Spyic’s features thoroughly. This phone tracker lets you track the target device’s location or access its location history via its well-designed dashboard.

It also has an excellent keylogger that includes timestamps and app details, allowing you to see who your child or partner messages. That means you can always know what places they visit and for what purpose without them knowing.

Unlike most keyloggers for Android devices, Spyic can detect keystrokes in apps like Telegram, QQ, and WeChat, and it’s one of the best WhatsApp spy apps. Besides tracking your partner’s location and social media messages, you can spy on their other online activities using Spyic, including their browser history, calendar events, and application downloads.

With Spyic, you’ll have an in-depth overview of your child’s or partner’s online habits and interests. That lets you stay alert and prevent them from accessing inappropriate content or gain peace of mind knowing they have no dangerous habits.

Pricing

Spyic offers a basic and a premium plan for its users, with its Premium plan offering far more advanced features. Here’s the price tag:

• 1 month — $49.99/month
• 3 months — $23.33/month
• 12 months — $9.99/month

Take advantage of the 60-day money-back guarantee and try it risk-free for two months now.

6. XNSpy — Popular Spy App With Advanced Remote Controls

XNSpy ensures you’re in control by offering you various impactful features. With it, you can remotely block apps and websites or lock the user’s phone screen. XNSpy’s remote control features make it one of the best spy apps for concerned parents and partners.

It lets you control what your child or partner can see on their mobile phones, helping you reduce their exposure to inappropriate and harmful content.

XNSpy also has a unique feature that lets you erase all data from the target phone with one click. It’s an ideal fail-safe feature if you fear your privacy is in danger because of the data on the device.

Besides its precise location tracking features, XNSpy enables you to remotely activate the target phone’s microphone and listen to the user’s surroundings.

Pricing

With its annual plan, you can start tracking a phone with this parental app for just $7.50/month:

• 1 month — $35.99/month
• 3 months — $20/month
• 12 months — $7.50/month

XNSpy offers a 10-day money-back guarantee, allowing you to try it risk-free before committing to a subscription.

7. Hoverwatch — Great Way to Track a Cell Phone for Free

Hoverwatch has an impressive free plan that lets you track a cell phone and includes additional features. It’s challenging to figure out how to track a cell phone for free, with most free spy apps having hidden fees and trying to scam you.

Hoverwatch offers an outstanding free plan capable of SIM card monitoring, viewing the device’s gallery, call logs, and more. Most importantly, Hoverwatch can track a cell phone location for free.

However, if you want access to its more advanced features like geo-fencing and daily reports, you’ll need its premium plan. That would also allow you to monitor disappearing media and messages, and you’d have access to one of the best web browsing history trackers.

Pricing

The prices below are for its Personal plan, designed to track one device and includes precise location tracking features:

• 1 month — $24.95/month
• 3 months — $19.98/month
• 12 months — $8.32/month

With its Professional plan, you can track up to 5 devices for as little as $3.33/device/month. Its Business plan brings the price down to $1.67/device/month for up to 25 devices.

8. iKeyMonitor — Track Your Family Member’s Precise Location for Free

iKeyMonitor is one of the most popular phone tracker apps globally, with over 400 thousand users in over 100 countries. It offers a solid free forever plan, allowing you to try its services before committing to a subscription-based plan.

Beyond this, it has a straightforward and intuitive interface that doesn’t require you to be a tech genius to use it. However, tech-savvy users will appreciate its highly customizable mobile apps.

This phone tracker ensures you always know who your partner or child frequently contacts, thanks to its detailed summary reports about their contact list. It detects outgoing and incoming calls and provides timestamps and call duration information.

Beyond this, iKeyMonitor offers geo-fencing as a part of its free forever plan. With it, you can draw borders on the map and get a notification whenever the target device crosses them.

Pricing

iKeyMonitor’s all-inclusive plan costs $29.10/month with its year-long plan, while its other plans cost $16.66/month.

• 3 days — $9.99 (Android only)
• 1 month — $59.99/month
• 12 months — $29.10/month

The other premium plans divide iKeyMonitor’s features into categories, allowing you to purchase its keylogger, phone tracker, or social media monitoring features separately.

Try it out risk-free with its 30-day money-back guarantee.

9. TheOneSpy — Powerful Cell Phone Tracking App

TheOneSpy offers two premium plans for Android, with its more expensive plan offering precise GPS location tracking and geofencing. The cheaper plan can track a cell phone with limited capabilities and doesn’t support geofencing.

The basic paid version of TheOneSpy can monitor your partner’s location, contact list, gallery, and more.

To unlock its full potential, we suggest getting a more expensive version that allows you to monitor your partner’s social media apps, browser history, and other online activities.

Besides having a precise location tracking feature, its more expensive version allows you to remotely turn on the target phone’s microphone and camera to listen and see its surroundings.

If your partner or child spends too much time on the computer, you’ll be glad to know that TheOneSpy can reliably track their location, activate their webcam, monitor their online activities, and more.

Pricing

• 1 month — $43/month
• 3 months — $31/month
• 12 months — $10.40/month

TheOneSpy’s basic plan for Android, XLite, costs $6.25/month with an annual plan, and its more expensive solution costs $10.40/month and provides far more advanced features. Take advantage of its 14-day money-back guarantee and try it risk-free today.

10. KidsGuard — Feature-Rich Parental Control App

KidsGuard is a parental control app designed to assist concerned parents with locating their children and controlling their device usage. That makes it an excellent choice for worried partners or business owners too.

KidsGuard allows you to view your child’s daily screen and online activities, allowing you to limit them accordingly.

It’ll also show you the most frequently used apps and visited websites, and you can choose to block access to them to shield your child from inappropriate content.

By navigating KidsGuard’s intuitive dashboard, you can find your child’s or partner’s current location without them knowing.

Beyond this, KidsGuard’s keyword monitoring feature allows you to choose keywords and get a notification every time the user sends or receives them on the target device.

Pricing

You can start tracking a cell phone’s location for just $8.32/month with KidsGuard’s annual plan:

• 1 month — $39.99month
• 3 months — $16.65/month
• 12 months — $8.32/month

Take advantage of its 30-day money-back guarantee and try it risk-free today.

Track a Phone | Top 10 Apps Phone Tracker Apps Compared

Here’s a quick overview of the key details discussed in our reviews section to help you compare the leading phone tracker apps head-to-head:

Why Use An App to Track a Phone? | Standout Uses and Benefits

A reliable phone tracker app allows you to remotely monitor your child’s, partner’s, or employee’s mobile phones or computers.

They’re invaluable tools that help you prevent exposure to harmful or inappropriate websites and apps, reduce screen time, track a cell phone, and more. Here are the key standout benefits and uses for these apps:

Parental Control

With increasing malicious content on the internet, concerned parents turn to phone monitoring apps to ensure their children avoid sexual predators, scammers, pornography, drugs, the dark web, and other dangerous content.

There are ample statistics to show how pressing an issue it is for children to be online. For one, over 500,000 sexual predators spend time online every day looking for their next victim.

With an app like one we’ve reviewed above, you’ll have control over the apps your child accesses and insight into what they’re doing, who they’re talking to, and more.

These apps also allow you to track your child’s precise location and have peace of mind, knowing they’re safe — both online and offline.

Monitoring Your Partner

Affairs starting online are becoming more prevalent. In fact, a staggering 30% of Tinder users are married. That said, having suspicions or uncertainty is common in our digital world.

A phone tracker can help you confirm your suspicions or have peace of mind by monitoring your partner’s online activities.

If you have a reason to believe your partner is doing something behind your back, tracking their mobile phones and reviewing their browsing and messaging history can help you confront them.

Employee Monitoring

With modern messaging solutions that include disappearing media and encrypted channels, it’s challenging to safeguard company secrets. Installing a phone tracker on each company device allows you to supervise employees and prevents data leaks.

In one survey alone, 55% of respondents admitted that their biggest security concern regarding organization vulnerability was smartphones.

Beyond the security threat, the location tracking capabilities make these tools invaluable for businesses that have remote or field workers on site.

Best Free Tracker App | How to Track a Phone for Free

While we included some solutions for tracking a cell phone for free with tools like Hoverwatch and iKeyMonitor, free phone trackers are often limited compared to their premium counterparts. In addition, these free forever accounts will also bombard you with ads to upgrade to a premium plan.

You should avoid free phone trackers that compare themselves to the best spy apps like mSpy and EyeZy because those are often scams with hidden fees and security issues.

That said, a free phone tracker will track a phone somewhat accurately. However, if you want a comprehensive service with top-notch security and precise location tracking, we suggest investing in mSpy, EyeZy, uMobix, or any other premium service from our list.

Factors to Consider When Choosing the Best App to Track a Phone

While creating our best phone trackers list for this year, we considered several crucial factors before finalizing their placement. Finding a reliable, easy-to-use, invisible phone tracker is challenging, considering how many spy apps use fake advertisements.

Here’s what you must look for when choosing a parental control app that’ll reliably work:

Installation

You should avoid phone tracker apps that require more than five minutes of physical access to install. Beyond this, look for apps that offer a stealth mode at the end of their installation and preferably deliver your account’s credentials to an email address, like mSpy.

Features

The best phone tracker apps have complementary features like message monitoring, call recording, and more. Here’s a list of features to look for, in addition to precise location tracking, when choosing a phone tracker:

• Keylogger
• Website history viewer
• Reading deleted messages
• Remote screenshotting and recording
• Blocking dangerous websites and apps remotely
• SMS and social media, and instant messaging apps chat history

Pricing

We’ve included various tools with different price points for their precise location and online activity tracking services. You should look for the one that suits your needs and budget, whether you’re a concerned parent, spouse, or business owner.

Most spy apps offer a significant discount for their annual plans, and they only get expensive when you need to track more than one device.

How to Track a Phone Remotely

Here’s a quick step-by-step guide on how to track a phone using mSpy, the best phone tracker this year. Note: for iOS devices, you’ll need the Cydia app.

Step 1: Create Your mSpy Account

1. Enter your email address.
2. Pick an operating system (Android for this guide).
3. Subscribe to mSpy.

After you subscribe, mSpy will send you an email that contains your login information, Control Panel link, and Installation URL. Save the email or note the information down.

Step 2: Disable Play Protect on the Target Device

1. Open the Play Store on the target phone.
2. Tap the account icon on the top right, choose Play Protect, and enter its settings.
3. Move the slider on “Improved Harmful App Detection” so it turns grey.
4. Confirm your decision.

Step 3: Install mSpy on the Target Device and Start Tracking its Location

1. Gain physical access to the target device, open the browser, and enter the Installation URL from the email mSpy sent.
2. Follow the installation steps until it’s complete.
3. Use your device to open the Control Panel URL from the email mSpy sent and log into your mSpy account.

You’ll now have access to mSpy’s dashboard, which you can use to monitor the target device.

Mobile Tracker FAQs