11 best spy apps for Android
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 the use of such apps in malicious ways, and you should never use spy apps unless you have the other person’s consent. You may also want to look up applicable laws to make sure you aren’t breaking one. In other words, please use them responsibly and we are not responsible for any wrongdoing. Anyway, here are the best spy apps for Android!
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mSpy
Funded
mSpy is an app based on the idea that knowing is always better than hope. With numerous functions you get a clear picture of the user’s digital world. With the advanced GPS tracking you always know where you are. 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 spy metrics at hand and all the information 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 find a lost or stolen smartphone and has a number of additional functions. These include 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 down other people’s devices, but you can spy on anyone who stole yours. Subscription service starts at a very reasonable $ 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 few more powerful spy apps for Android. You can use it to do things that people may be afraid of, such as: For example, turn on the microphone to hear what’s around a device, monitor chat apps, remote camera capture, keylogging, and the ability to completely hide from antivirus apps and the app drawer. The price is way up and you can’t get this app from 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 from google
Price: Free
Google’s Find My Device app is probably the best app for lost or stolen phones. You can quickly see your phone on a map for exact location. In addition, you can erase, ring, or secure (lock) the phone as you wish. You cannot take pictures or anything like that with Cerberus. However, it is a straightforward and easy way to keep track of where your phone is at all times.
mSpy
Price: Free Trial / $ 29.99- $ 69.99 per month
mSpy is one of the most popular options in this field. It works with both iOS (with and without jailbreaking) and Android. The parent device can view the child device’s chat messages in almost any app, view call logs, track GPS location, monitor internet browsing, and view the thumbnails of any photos or videos sent or received on the child device. There’s also a keylogger, geo-fencing, and even support for apps like Snapchat. It’s pretty expensive, but it works pretty well as a spy app or a parental control app. Everything is also available in a nifty dashboard.
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Loot against theft
Price: Free
Prey Anti Theft is another Find-My-Device style app. This one is completely free and has some decent features. This includes the usual features of finding my phone like GPS tracking, phone lock and sending alarms over the phone. However, Prey can also take pictures with the camera, identify WiFi hotspots nearby and, for example, track the device’s MAC address. That’s not a bad set of 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 where something so intense outside of corporate use is required. It has a number of features including the ability to hide from 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 the app from the official website and load it off the page.
Carrier Family Locator Apps
Price: Free
Carrier Family Locators are family location services from cellular providers such as T-Mobile and others. These services work as expected. You can track the phone location of each phone in your plan. They usually have on-demand locations, warnings of various types, and work on most devices. We’ve linked T-Mobile’s here, but you can search the Play Store or call your carrier to see if they have 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 you can find your device with its service. It runs parallel to Google’s Find My Device and offers a strong double victory. You can lock (or unlock) your phone, find it on a map, and other functions too. Well worth checking out if your phone has something like this.
XNSPY
Price: Free / $ 59.99- $ 89.99 per year
XNSPY is a strange case. It has all of these terrifying features like call log monitoring, GPS tracking, web browsing monitoring, chatting access, and all sorts of other tracking features. However, it goes for less than most of its bigger competitors like FlexiSpy and Spyera. In the basic version you can look at a few things, while in the premium version you can see everything. This is a great option for businesses or families looking to spend some cash. However, families may want to try Google Family Link or Kiddie Parental Controls before embarking on something stronger like this.
How to find and remove spy apps
Of course, some of these apps might be on your device without your knowledge and you might want to find out. Unfortunately, many of the common methods don’t work very well, considering how well these hide themselves. However, there are a few ways you can tell if something is potentially spying on you.
- You can use the GlassWire app to monitor data on your device. You can easily tell when a spy app is sending data back to its host. We recommend this first as spy apps can hide from task managers and antivirus apps but cannot hide their own data usage.
- Some antivirus apps may still detect the app if the host hasn’t hidden 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. You cannot do this 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.
Thank you for reading! Try these out too:
If we missed any good spy apps for Android, let us know in the comments! You can also click here to view our latest Android app and game lists.
