Qustodio Review: Is It the Best Parental Control App in 2025?

Qustodio is the best parental control app for keeping your kids safe online and offline. It has very user-friendly apps for kids and parents, its security features are second to none, it provides the best-value parental control plan on the market, and it’s backed by a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee.

Qustodio has industry-standard parental control features like web and app filtering, time limits, location tracking, scheduling, and activity reports. I even tested top VPNs, and they couldn’t bypass its web filtering. I also really like how Qustodio can detect and block a whopping 20,000+ iOS apps (some parental control apps can’t fully restrict iOS apps).

In addition, Qustodio comes with:

• YouTube Monitoring — Lets you monitor your kid’s YouTube searches and what videos they watch.
• Location Tracking — Follow where your kid goes and set up geofenced zones.
• Calls & Messages — Lets you monitor your child’s phone calls and text messages on iOS and Android.
• Panic Button — Allows your kids to send distress signals to trusted contacts on Android.
• And more …

Qustodio has kids apps for all popular devices (iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Chromebook, and Kindle) and parental apps for iOS, Android, and web browsers — they’re simple to set up, so it’s very easy to get used to them even if you and your kids have never used parental control apps before.

That said, there are some areas that I think Qustodio could improve — I wish kids had an in-app option to request extra screen time or ask for a restricted site to be unblocked. Also, I’d like to see a live chat option added to the customer support platforms.

Qustodio has a decent free plan and 2 paid yearly plans. The paid plans allow the monitoring of 5 or unlimited devices. Also, Qustodio backs each purchase with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

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Qustodio Full Review — The Best on the Market (Includes Call & Text Monitoring)

I spent the past few weeks testing and researching Qustodio and talking with its support reps, and I can safely say that it’s the best parental control app on the market.

Qustodio has essential features to monitor your child’s web activity to make sure they have an enjoyable and safe internet experience. You also get access to call and text message monitoring, which allows you to make sure your kid isn’t bullied or exposed to inappropriate messages.

Qustodio is a little pricey, but it provides excellent value — plus, there’s a 3-day free trial, a free plan, and a 30-day money-back guarantee, which gives you plenty of time to test it and see if it’s the best fit for your family.

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Qustodio Plans & Pricing — Excellent Value for Both Small & Large Families

Qustodio has a free plan and 2 paid plans: Basic and Complete. The free plan is limited to monitoring just 1 device, while the Basic and Complete plans monitor 5 or unlimited devices, respectively. Although the paid plans are a little pricier than other top parental control apps, they offer excellent value considering the features on offer.

Qustodio also offers a 3-day free trial that lets you try most premium features, and there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee that applies to both premium plans.

Qustodio Free — Good Free Plan

When you sign up, Qustodio gives you a 3-day free trial of its Complete plan (no credit card details are needed). When your free trial expires, you’re downgraded to Qustodio’s free plan, which gives you screen time monitoring, web filtering, daily time limits, and the ability to pause the internet.

The free plan has other limits — you can monitor only 1 device, you get only daily and weekly activity reports, and you don’t get access to the customer support ticketing system.

Qustodio Basic — Best-Value Plan

Upgrading to Qustodio Basic adds the ability to monitor up to 5 devices, as well as some additional features like app filtering, location tracking, games and app blocking, device blocking routines, the Panic Button, and access to the email support system. It costs $4.58 / month and is only available as an annual subscription.

Qustodio Complete — Premium Plan With Advanced Features

Qustodio Complete lets you monitor unlimited devices, so it’s an excellent choice for large families. It comes with all of the features discussed in this review, and it’s the only plan to include key features like YouTube Monitoring, Calls & Messages Monitoring, My Places alerts (geofencing), and time limits for games and apps. This plan is also only available as an annual subscription, and it’s priced at $8.33 / month.

While Qustodio’s plans cost a little more than its competitors, they provide superior value for small and large families. That said, I understand that not everyone is ready to commit to a yearly plan right from the start — if you’d like more flexible options, I recommend checking out Bark and FamiSafe, as they both have pretty affordable monthly plans.

Qustodio accepts several payment methods, including credit/debit cards, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and wire transfers.

Qustodio Features — Great Filtering, Scheduling & Reports (Plus YouTube Monitoring)

Qustodio has the following essential parental control features:

• Web and app filtering — Lets you choose which sites and apps your kids are allowed to use.
• Time limits — Lets you specify how much screen time your kids are allowed.
• Location tracking — Shows you where your kids are and which places they’ve been to.
• Scheduling — Allows you to choose specific times of the day or week when a device or app can or can’t be used.
• Activity reports — Displays information about your child’s device use, including screen time, accessed sites, used apps, and more.

Qustodio also comes with many other useful features, including YouTube monitoring, call and text monitoring, and geofencing.

Web Filtering — Works Really Well (Can’t Be Bypassed With a VPN)

Qustodio’s web filtering lets you choose which sites your kids are allowed to access — you can set filtering rules for specific websites, but Qustodio also has 25+ predefined website categories (including Games, Profanity, Gambling, Mature Content, Pornography, and more). Remember that the rules you set for specific websites take precedence over the rules for categories. This means you can block an entire category while still permitting specific websites within that category.

Qustodio allows you to choose from 3 options when setting filtering rules for categories. You can choose to block the entire category, allow it, or allow it but receive alerts whenever your kid visits them. And for sites that you manually add, there’s an option to configure Qustodio to ignore the site, so it won’t show up in any reports in the Qustodio app.

Qustodio’s web filtering is really good — I couldn’t access any sites and site categories I blocked from the parent’s device, and it accurately alerted me when I visited sites marked for alerts. Qustodio’s web filtering worked in incognito/private modes, too.

However, I wish Qustodio would provide kids with an in-app option to request access to a blocked website (like Norton Family has) — that way, if Qustodio or a parent accidentally blocks a safe site, the child could quickly request access to it without having to phone or message their parents.

I’m happy VPNs can’t circumvent Qustodio’s web filtering. Kids often use these tools to try and bypass parental apps. I tested Qustodio with top VPNs like ExpressVPN and Private Internet Access — I tried accessing 10+ different blocked sites and apps, and Qustodio always prevented me from connecting to them.

Qustodio’s web filtering only works on supported browsers, including Google Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Safari, and Amazon Silk Browser.

Fortunately, Qustodio automatically blocks unsupported browsers, so kids can’t browse in Tor, Brave, or Opera to bypass website restrictions. I tested this out and Qustodio always prevented me from using Tor and Opera on my smartphone. This is really great, as some top parental control apps don’t block unsupported browsers.

What’s more, Qustodio has options that:

• Block unknown websites. These are sites that are not included in Qustodio’s website categories.
• Enforce safe search. When your kid opens Google, Bing, or YouTube, safe search is automatically enabled to protect them from potentially harmful content.
• Send alerts if your child tries to access blocked websites. You’ll get alerts to your email address when it happens, and Qustodio will notify you regardless of whether this site was blocked manually or via one of the categories.
• Send alerts if your child searches for concerning content. It immediately sends an alert when your child performs a search related to sensitive or inappropriate topics.

Overall, Qustodio’s web filtering works very well (even top VPNs can’t bypass it), is very easy to use, and comes with really helpful extra features, such as blocking unsupported browsers and enforcing safe search.

Daily Time Limits — Easy Screen Time Management on All Devices

Qustodio lets you set up a daily screen time allowance in increments of 15 minutes for each day of the week. You can also block access to your kid’s device, while still allowing them to make emergency calls or use the Panic Button. Qustodio allows you to set time limits on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Chromebook, and Kindle.

The Daily Time Limits feature is intuitive and works well. On my Android device, it took just 5 seconds to set limits, and access was blocked in under 3 seconds when time was up. The Allow and Block buttons in the parent app are also convenient — pressing Allow lifts all restrictions for the selected day(s), while Block prevents any screen time that day.

In addition, Qustodio lets you choose what happens when the screen time is up:

• Lock navigation:
  • Android, Chromebook, and Kindle — Blocks all apps except basic apps like the calendar and the calculator.
  • iOS — Blocks internet access on the device.
  • Windows and macOS — Blocks internet access on all web browsers.

• Lock device:
  • Chromebook and Kindle — Blocks access to the whole device.
  • Android — Blocks access to the whole device and only allows emergency calls and the use of the Panic Button feature.
  • iOS — Hides any app that is rated age 4+ by the app store. When the restriction is removed, all apps will appear in alphabetical order, which makes it a hassle to keep them organized. If that’s an issue, Qustodio recommends using the Lock navigation option instead.
  • Windows and macOS — Logs out your kid, preventing online and offline use.

You can select both Lock device and Lock navigation or just one. By default, Qustodio enables the Lock device feature.

It’s also possible to simply pause the internet access on your child’s device with a click of a button on the parental app’s main dashboard. This is really handy if you don’t want to change permissions for a one-off event like a family meeting and have to remember to restore the permissions later.

Plus, you can add extra time for each day in increments of 1 minute. You can also use this feature to add more time for special occasions, extended learning sessions, or as a reward for good behavior in just 2–3 clicks.

But I’d like to see an in-app option for kids to request extra screen time like Norton Family includes — it’d be much more convenient than kids having to make an emergency call just to let you know they need an extra hour of screen time when they’re out with their friends.

The daily time limit set for the given day is displayed in the kid’s app, so your kid will always know how much screen time they have left. It also shows how much time your kid has spent on each app they’ve used.

Overall, Qustodio’s time limits are great. They’re very easy to use, work really well, and they’re available across all popular platforms

Routines — Create Schedules for Your Child (Lots of Flexibility)

Qustodio’s Routines feature lets you set specific access rules for web, apps, and the entire device during defined time periods each week, which you can set in 15-minute increments. I also like how it includes 4 predefined actions: Bedtime (blocks device access), Entertainment (allows access to apps and games), Focus (blocks internet), and Study (limits access to only educational websites).

Even better, you can create your own custom schedules, with a unique icon and color so they’re easy to identify and manage. For instance, you can block your kid’s access to social media apps during their soccer practice, but at the same time give them access to their device, so they can call you if they need a ride home. You can customize access by allowing all apps with exceptions you define, customize blocks by cutting off internet access or blocking the device altogether, or decide whether you want the daily time limits to affect the Routines.

The parental app makes setting schedules really simple and intuitive. You can view the schedule as a weekly calendar or as a list of all the blocks and permissions you’ve defined. And your kid can see on the kids app exactly how much time they have left for any particular block or allowed time, so they can better plan how they use their screen time. I just wish that the kids app allowed them to request more time through the app rather than needing to contact you separately.

Overall, Qustodio’s Routines feature makes it super easy to schedule your kid’s screen time, and it gives you lots of granular control over how they use it.

Games & Apps — Detect + Block or Limit Specific Apps

Qustodio lets you set time limits for specific apps or disable access to them. This feature works on Android, Windows, macOS, Kindle, Chromebook, and even iOS — Qustodio claims it can detect, monitor, and restrict 20,000+ compatible iOS apps, which is pretty impressive since some parental control apps (such as Webwatcher) can’t block iOS apps.

Qustodio only displays apps that your kid uses, so you don’t need to waste time going through a long list of system apps, like the weather app, to find them. The apps are categorized into 5 groups: Social, Entertainment, Gaming, Education, and Others (like browsers). You can even configure Qustodio to alert you when your child uses a new app.

In my tests, Qustodio accurately detected all the apps I opened on my test device, such as Instagram, TikTok, Netflix, Twitter, and Discord. From here, you can either block access to an app or set a daily time limit. I tested this, too, and Qustodio instantly blocked the apps I restricted.

There’s a search function that helps you find specific apps to set rules or block them. Qustodio also has separate tabs for all apps, blocked apps, allowed apps, and apps that have time limits applied to them, so it’s very easy to find what you’re looking for.

Unfortunately, Qustodio can’t monitor your child’s chats and posts on popular social media apps like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Bark sends alerts for problematic content but doesn’t allow full access to your child’s messages and posts.

Overall, Qustodio provides a really good app blocking feature — it’s very convenient to use and it’s able to detect and block apps that are popular with kids and teens (even on iOS), but it can’t monitor chats and posts on social media apps.

YouTube Monitoring — Track & Limit What Your Kid’s Watching

Qustodio has a dedicated YouTube Monitoring feature, which allows you to see your kid’s YouTube searches and the videos they watch on the YouTube app and site (accessible in the activity reports).

YouTube Monitoring also allows you to block both the YouTube site and app or set time limits for the YouTube app. Some parental apps (like Norton Family) don’t have a dedicated YouTube monitoring feature.

YouTube Monitoring is available on most platforms (except Chromebook and Kindle), but it works differently on each one:

Also, you can enforce safe search on YouTube in the Web Filtering feature. This way, your child doesn’t risk accidentally coming across harmful YouTube videos.

In my tests, the feature worked well. I was able to see every video I watched on YouTube on my test device and every search I performed. Qustodio instantly updated my YouTube activity in the mobile app, but the web version registered the changes only once I exited YouTube on my test device.

Overall, Qustodio’s YouTube Monitoring feature is really helpful and an excellent way to keep your kids safe on YouTube — you can block YouTube’s site and app and track your child’s activity on both of them.

Location Tracking — Accurate Tracking & Geofencing Alerts

Qustodio shows you where your child is and where they’ve been. It displays a location timeline, which is a list of your child’s previous locations. I’m happy to see this feature, as some top parental control apps don’t offer this. True, this kind of location tracking can feel invasive, but it’s also helpful if your child loses their phone or if they get lost.

I tested the Location Tracking feature, and it worked really well. It accurately tracked my test device’s locations on my walk to the park and back home.

When I was on the move, I received frequent location updates every 5–10 minutes. There’s an option to instantly update your kid’s location, which I tried on my test device, and it worked as advertised. Plus, on Android, you can even get directions to your child’s location via Google Maps.

I liked the My Places alerts, which use geofencing to track your child’s locations. You set up zones (like school) and get notified when your child arrives or leaves. However, during testing, notifications were delayed by 10–15 minutes, so I’d like to see Qustodio improve the responsiveness of this feature.

Qustodio lets you create geofences that cover distances up to 0.12 miles or 200 meters, which isn’t bad. That said, Norton Family provides much better coverage, as its geofencing feature supports distances up to 2 miles or 3,200 meters.

Overall, Qustodio’s location tracking feature provides the best way to track your children’s location. A geofencing feature is also available, although its notifications are sometimes too delayed.

Calls & Messages — Block or Whitelist Calls & Contacts

This feature monitors your child’s calls and messages and lets you decide who can contact your child. I tested it on Android and iOS, and here’s what I could monitor and do:

• The phone numbers or contacts I called or received calls from on Android, along with FaceTime and WhatsApp call details on iOS. I could see how long the conversation lasted and the date and time.
• The full SMS and iMessages exchanges, including the sender, receiver, date, and time.
• Message alerts about concerning content in SMS and iMessages — this is convenient, as you won’t have to go through every text message to find a potential issue. The software uses AI to monitor for 20 types of threats, such as bullying, school absence, and self-harm.
• Block all incoming and outgoing calls or specific numbers, which is useful if, for example, a bully is sending offensive messages.

Qustodio’s Calls & Messages feature worked well. I could see all incoming and outgoing calls and text messages, including on iMessages, and it always alerted me when it detected inappropriate language. The blocking option also worked as advertised — it stopped all numbers I blocked in the parent app from calling me and vice versa.

Panic Button (Android Only) — A Simple Way for Your Child to Send You an SOS

The Panic Button feature allows your child to send a direct alert to trusted contacts via text messages or email messages. This is an excellent feature your kids can use to stay safe while walking home from school or when they’re out with their friends. Many parental control apps (like Bark) don’t provide access to an SOS feature.

Setting up this feature is easy — you just need to enable it in the parental app, add trusted contacts (Qustodio lets you add an email address or phone number for each contact), wait for them to confirm, and then enable the feature on your kid’s device. Overall, it took me 4 minutes to set up the Panic Button on my Android smartphone.

On the child’s end, using the Panic Button is very straightforward, too — your kid only needs to tap the SOS button at the bottom of the app, and then tap on another SOS button and confirm the activation. To turn off the feature, the child just needs to tap the SOS button again and confirm their choice. You’ll then receive an email notifying you that your child has turned off Panic Mode, with a link to their location.

I tested the Panic Button when I was walking outside and it worked very well — the feature instantly sent me an SMS and email alert containing a link with my Android device’s location. The link included the street address, coordinates, time, date, and some helpful tips on what to do next.

Overall, the Panic Button is an excellent Android feature that lets your child send distress signals to trusted contacts if they’re in trouble. I hope Qustodio adds support for it on iOS, too.

Activity Reports — Regular & Detailed Activity Breakdowns

Qustodio provides daily, weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly activity reports in the Dashboard tab. You can also get an hourly breakdown of activity for the current and last 2 days. The activity reports show you the following metrics:

In addition, Qustodio shows you whether or not they reached the time limit you imposed, their daily average for the time period you’ve selected, and a breakdown of the different rules that applied to their screen time.

You can also get more in-depth information on your child’s online activities. To do that, access the Timeline tab that’s under the Dashboard tab on the left-side menu.

The Timeline tab provides you with access to the following metrics:

Overall, I think Qustodio’s activity reports are very helpful, as they provide accurate and in-depth information about your child’s online activities and device usage.

Additional Features — A Few Useful Extras, Including Uninstall Protection

Qustodio also comes with the following additional features:

• Uninstall Protection — Qustodio requires you to type in your parental app username and password when you want to uninstall its kids’ apps (this is something competing brands like mSpy lack). This way, your child can’t secretly uninstall the apps to prevent tracking. This feature is available on all platforms. You can also set it up to require your Qustodio password for changing phone settings on Android.
• Hide Qustodio — This feature lets you “hide” Qustodio on Windows and macOS devices. Your kid won’t be able to see Qustodio’s icon in the tray and notification bar, they’ll be redirected to Google’s search page when the app blocks a site (instead of seeing a Qustodio notification), and they’ll just get logged out if you choose to lock their device when the screen time limit is up. That said, your children will still likely be able to find Qustodio’s app on their devices.
• Auto-logout — This security feature automatically logs you out of your account after a period of inactivity when you’re logged into the parent’s account on the web browser. It makes sure your child won’t change or remove any restrictions in case you forget to log off your computer.

Qustodio Installation & Setup — Easy on Both Kids’ and Parents’ Devices

Qustodio has apps for parents and kids. It has parental control apps for iOS, Android, and web browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge), and apps for kids on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Chromebook, and Kindle.

Both apps are simple to set up, but installing Qustodio on your kids’ devices will take longer because you also need to give the app different permissions. That said, it took only 5 minutes to install the parental and kids apps on my Android smartphone and the kids app on my Windows PC.

Qustodio Ease of Use — Very User-Friendly (Even if You’re Not Tech-Savvy)

Qustodio’s web and mobile parental apps are really easy to use — the interface is very user-friendly (even for parents who are not tech-savvy) and pretty much all settings and features come with short, helpful explanations.

Also, Qustodio’s mobile kids apps are minimalistic and very simple to navigate (so your kids won’t have any trouble getting used to them), and its desktop apps are hidden in the background, so they won’t bother your children.

Qustodio Customer Support — Great Email Support & Articles

Qustodio’s customer service is quite impressive. It has a support library with comprehensive FAQs, instructional guides, and tips for resolving issues.

Qustodio’s support section includes a lot of helpful articles. From FAQs to setup guides with screenshots — I rarely needed to contact the support team because most answers were right there.

Qustodio doesn’t have live chat, but many parental control apps don’t have this feature (FamiSafe and Norton Family are some of the only parental apps that provide access to live chat).

But that’s not an issue, as there’s a ticketing system that provides very responsive and helpful email support — I submitted multiple support tickets at random times of the day over the course of a week, and I always received a reply in about 24 hours, which is pretty fast. The replies always answered all my questions, and the support reps also replied to all of my follow-up questions.

There’s also Qustodio’s Care Plus service, but it’s only available in the US as part of the Complete plan. Care Plus provides priority phone support in English and Spanish, ongoing check-ins, and personalized help. I asked a colleague in the US to test the Care Plus service, and he was very happy with it — he scheduled a call and was contacted by a support rep over the phone on time, and they were able to provide him with helpful and detailed answers to all of his questions.

Qustodio has excellent customer support overall. While it lacks live chat, it makes up for it with a comprehensive support library, responsive ticketing, expert representatives, and premium phone support with Care Plus.

What Qustodio Can Do Better — Let Kids Request Access to Sites

Qustodio is the best parental control app in 2025, but there are some things it can improve.

I’d like to see Qustodio add a feature where kids can request access to blocked sites through the app, similar to what Norton Family offers. This feature is super useful if the app (or you) accidentally blocks a safe website, as your kid won’t have to call you to ask for permission to access the site. That said, it’s convenient how Qustodio provides you with 3 options for setting filtering rules for categories, such as allowing your kid to access sites from a specific category and only receiving alerts when your kid visits them — Norton Family lacks this customization.

It would be nice to see Qustodio expand the size of its geofencing zones, too — 0.12 miles doesn’t cover much distance, especially if you want your kid to stay away from a certain part of town.

Similarly, it’d be great if Qustodio introduced a screen time request feature to let your kid ask for more screen time. It’s more convenient than having your kid call you to extend their allowed time. That said, I still prefer how Qustodio lets you set up a daily screen time limit in increments of 15 minutes for every day of the week and add extra time in 1-minute increments, whereas Norton Family only lets you set a screen time allowance in increments of 30 minutes.

Finally, Qustodio could improve its social media monitoring. For now, Qustodio only lets you block a social media app or set specific time limits for it, but there’s no way to monitor your kid’s texts and posts on social media — for example, Bark monitors all of your kid’s interactions on social media sites and alerts you if it detects problematic content. On the flip side, Qustodio allows you to monitor your kid’s phone calls on both Android and iOS, which you can’t do with Bark.

Is Qustodio Really the Best Parental Control App in 2025?

I think Qustodio is an excellent parental control app since it comes with tons of useful parental control features and is also extremely easy to set up and use.

Qustodio has all essential parental control features, like web and app filtering, time limits, location tracking, scheduling, and activity reports. I especially like how not even top VPNs can get around Qustodio’s web filters and that it detects and blocks 20,000+ iOS apps.

In addition, it provides access to other great features, including YouTube Monitoring, location tracking and geofencing, a Calls & Messages that lets you monitor calls and text messages on Android and iOS, and a Panic Button that allows your child to send emergency signals to trusted contacts on Android.

Also, Qustodio’s apps are very user-friendly. However, I’d also like to see Qustodio make a few improvements — like adding in-app options for kids to request extra screen time or access to a blocked site and adding live chat support.

All in all, Qustodio is the best parental control app in 2025 — it provides excellent monitoring, filtering, and time limits, has tons of other helpful features, and is really user-friendly. It has a decent free plan and paid yearly plans that are backed with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

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