There are many legitimate reasons for using a spying app on behalf of other people. There are usually three use cases for spy apps: use them to track your phone, use them to track your child’s phone, or use them to track your co-worker phone. We do not condone malicious use of such apps, and you should never use spy apps unless you have the other person’s consent. You can also check applicable laws to make sure you aren’t breaking them. In other words, please use them responsibly and we are not responsible for any wrongdoing. Anyway, here are the best spy apps for Android.
Funded
Price: $ 8.33 per month
mSpy is an app based on the idea that knowing is always better than hope. Packed with features, it gives you a clear picture of the user’s digital world. Know where you are at all times with advanced GPS tracking. With detailed call monitoring, you know who they are calling and who is calling them. And with social media monitoring – including Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and Snapchat – you know what they’re saying and who they’re saying it to. Just install mSpy on a target device and you will have advanced spying metrics as well as all the insights you need to make informed decisions.
Cerberus
Price: Free / $ 5- $ 43 per year
Cerberus is a phone tracker app for personal use only. It helps you to find a lost or stolen smartphone and has a number of additional functions. This includes taking photos of the potential thief, texting commands, locating the phone on a card, and locking and erasing your data. It won’t help you track other people’s devices, but it will allow you to completely spy on whoever stole yours. Subscription service starts at a very affordable $ 5 per year for a single device and scales from there.
FlexiSPY
Price: Free Trial / $ 99- $ 199 per 3 months
FlexiSpy is one of the more powerful spy apps for Android. You can use it to do things that people might be scared of, including turning on the microphone to hear what’s around a device, monitoring chat apps, remote camera recording, keylogging, and the ability to completely protect yourself from antivirus. Hide apps and the app drawer. The price is way up and you can’t get this app on the Play Store, but it has a ton of features.
Google family link
Price: Free
Google Family Link is an app for parents. It tracks kids through your Google account. With the app, you can view activities on the child device, manage apps and even recommend apps. You can also set device limits and lock the device if necessary. Some people encountered connectivity issues and bugs, but by and large the experience should work fine for most people. It’s a decent free option.
Find My Device by Google
Price: Free
Google’s Find My Device app is probably the best app for lost or stolen phones. You can quickly see the exact location of your phone on a map. In addition, you can erase the phone, ring it, or secure (lock) the device as you wish. You cannot take pictures or anything like that with Cerberus. However, it’s a straightforward and easy way to keep track of where your phone is at all times.
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Loot anti-theft
Price: Free
Prey Anti Theft is another Find-My-Device style app. This one is completely free and has some decent features. They include the usual set of Find My Phone features such as GPS tracking, phone lock, and sending alarms over the phone. However, Prey can also take pictures with the camera, identify nearby WiFi hotspots, and keep track of things like the device’s MAC address. These aren’t bad features.
Spyera
Price: Free
Spyera is one of the most intense spy apps for Android. It offers simple functions for people like parents. However, we cannot think of a use case that requires something this intense outside of corporate operations. It has a number of features including the ability to hide virtually anywhere. It also comes with remote control assistance, SMS spoofing, and all sorts of other admittedly shady behaviors. It’s extremely expensive so we don’t recommend it to normal people. It’s also not available on Google Play, so you’ll need to download and load the app from the official website.
Mobile provider tracking apps
Price: Free
Carrier Family Locators are family location services from cellular providers such as T-Mobile and others. These services work roughly as expected. You can track the location of every phone in your tariff. They usually offer things like on-demand location, alerts of various kinds, and it works on most devices. We linked T-Mobile here, but you can search the Play Store or call your carrier to see if they have a similar service.
OEM Find My Phone
Price: Free
Several phone manufacturers offer phone search services as part of their software experience. A notable example is Samsung. You log in with your Samsung account and find your device with its service. It runs parallel to Google’s Find My Device for a potent one-two punch. You can lock (or unlock) your phone, find it on a map, and there are other functions too. Well worth seeing if your phone has something like this.
XNSPY
Price: Free / $ 59.99 to $ 89.99 per year
XNSPY is a bit of a strange case. It has all of those terrifying features like call log monitoring, GPS tracking, web browsing monitoring, chatting access, and all sorts of other tracking stuff. However, it costs less than most of its larger competitors like FlexiSpy and Spyera. In the basic version you can look at a few things, while in the premium version you can look at everything. This is a good option for businesses or families looking to spend some cash, but families may want to try Google Family Link or Kiddie Parental Controls before using something more powerful like this one.
How to find and remove spy apps remove
Of course, some of these apps could be on your device without your knowledge and you might want to find out. Unfortunately, many of the common methods don’t work as well as they hide themselves. However, there are a few ways you can tell if something is spying on you.
- You can use the GlassWire app to monitor data on your device. You can easily see when a spy app is sending data back to its host. We recommend doing this first as spy apps can hide from task managers and antivirus apps, but not their own data usage.
- Some antivirus apps might still detect the app if the host didn’t hide it well enough. You can check out our list of the best here.
- You can find uninstall guides for most of the major spy apps. For example, here’s one for FlexiSpy and here’s one for mSpy.
- As a temporary solution, you can put the phone on airplane mode. Spy apps rely on the ability to send data back to the host and they cannot do so if you are not connected to a network.
- If all else fails, you can do a factory reset on the phone. That should wipe out every app except those pre-installed by the OEM.
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If we missed good spy apps for Android, tell us about it in the comments! You can also click here to see our latest Android apps and game lists.
