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Best for Bundled Protection
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Blocks harmful content on mobile devices
Unlimited devices
Best for Families with Younger Children
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Excels at app blocking and content filtering across 47 categories
Offers age-specific restriction levels to enhance safety and unlimited device connections
In our social media and kids survey, 23% of parents said they check their child’s internet history at least once per day, and 61% check their history at least weekly. Why not keep your kids safer online and streamline your monitoring efforts with a comprehensive parental control app?
Aura offers a plan that combines parental controls with cybersecurity and identity theft protection features like identity theft insurance, fraud remediation, Social Security number and dark web monitoring, a VPN, a password manager, and more. But when it comes to parental control features, we like Norton Family, which offers monitoring and location services not available with Aura.
In this article, we compare Aura’s and Norton Family’s pricing, features, usability, and more to help you decide which is best for your family. If neither works for your household, we also cover a few more of the best parental control apps to help you decide.
Aura Parental Controls and Norton Family both offer website monitoring, activity reports, and screen time limits. But Norton also offers location services, whereas Aura’s bundled features don’t include location tracking or geo-fencing. On the downside, neither offers text message or email monitoring features.
However, Aura offers more comprehensive app monitoring since Norton’s app monitoring is only accessible on Android and Windows devices. Plus, our testing found that the Norton app isn’t difficult to delete, so older children or teenagers may be able to disable features easily.
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| Starting price | $8.33/mo (billed annually) | $49.99/first yr |
| Free version | ||
| Max number of protected devices | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Web filtering | ||
| Screen time limits | ||
| Location tracking | ||
| Activity reports | ||
| Learn more | Get Aura Parental Controls | Get Norton Family |
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| Price range | $8.33-$20.00/mo | $49.99/first yr |
| Best value plan | Aura Ultimate Family for $20.00/mo (billed annually) | Norton Family for $49.99/first yr |
| Money-back guarantee/strong> | Yes — 60 days | Yes — 60 days |
| Learn more | Get Aura Parental Controls | Get Norton Family |
Aura offers two plans for parental controls — Aura Parental Controls and Aura Ultimate Family. Aura Parental Controls covers one adult and unlimited kids while Aura Ultimate Family covers up to five adults and unlimited kids.
Aura allows a free 14-day trial with a credit card and a 60-day money-back guarantee on annual plans.
Norton’s singular family plan offers services for parents to monitor their child’s online activities, from website monitoring to search history monitoring, setting device time limits, and location tracking.
Norton offers a free 30-day trial with a credit card and a 60-day money-back guarantee. Like Aura’s family plan, Norton’s money-back guarantee is only available with an annual plan.
Our Pick |
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| Website filtering | Yes — Gambling, chat forums, dating, explicit content | Yes — Can only block websites, not categories |
| App filtering | Yes — Amazon, Facebook, Fortnite, Hulu, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Minecraft, and more | Yes, on Android devices |
| Social media monitoring | Yes, limited monitoring for Android — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and more | |
| Text message monitoring | ||
| Email monitoring | ||
| Internet search monitoring | ||
| Screen time limits | ||
| Remote lock | ||
| Cyberbullying and online predator alerts | ||
| Location tracking | ||
| Geo-fencing | ||
| Activity reports | ||
| Learn more | Get Aura Parental Controls | Get Norton Family |
Aura Parental Controls and Norton Family offer similar features but have varying degrees of monitoring. For example, they both offer website monitoring, but Norton Family plans only allow parents to block certain websites, whereas Aura plans allow parents to block categories. Norton’s lack of category blocking feels like a miss. For example, Aura could block all gambling websites. Parents would have to input all gambling websites for the same protection on Norton.
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Another major miss for Norton is the app monitoring. Currently, Norton does offer app monitoring, but only for Android devices. Aura offers app monitoring for popular apps like Amazon, Hulu, Fortnite, TikTok, Discord, and more.
Norton does offer features we think are notable: internet search monitoring, location services, and video supervision — parents can see a list of viewed videos on YouTube and even preview a snippet of the video.
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Collecting data is inherent in using parental control software. You’re asking these services to monitor your child’s accounts, so data collection is to be expected. Aura and Norton collect data for standard practices and operations, but both services also collect device and usage information.
Aura and Norton take privacy seriously, encrypting data stored on its servers. Norton uses 128-bit SSL encryption, while Aura uses the industry-standard AES-256 encryption, which banks and militaries generally use. AES-256 encryption is the industry standard for securing data, but 128-bit SSL will still withstand brute-force attacks.
When it comes to account security, we prefer to see a minimum of two-factor authentication, verifying identity on a second device with an ID or verification code. Norton offers two-factor authentication, but it’s not required. Aura, however, doesn’t offer any additional security measures for account verification.
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Our Pick | |
| Two-factor authentication | ||
| Collects data | ||
| Shares data with third parties | ||
| Learn more | Get Aura Parental Controls | Get Norton Family |
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Our Pick | |
| Windows | ||
| macOS | ||
| Android | ||
| iOS | ||
| Browser extensions | Yes — Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge | Yes — Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge |
| 24/7 customer support | Yes | |
| Customer support options | Phone, chat, forums, email, guides | Phone, chat, forums |
| Learn more | Get Aura Parental Controls | Get Norton Family |
Overall, our experience with Norton Family was easy. It was intuitive to set up and add a child, and the software has an easy-to-read overview of content accessed on the monitored phone. Norton Family has levels that allow for general controls based on age, so it was quick and easy to enable content features appropriate for your child. Norton Family allows you to monitor what mobile apps your child downloads, but since we tested on an iPad, we didn’t have access to the app monitoring features. It’s also worth noting that this feature doesn’t actually monitor the content on said apps, just the names of the downloaded apps.
Norton Family activity summary dashboard with limited iOS compatibility /images/2024/03/09/norton_family_dashboard.png)
As part of our testing experience, we noticed it’s easy to remove the app from the device or disable the browser extension without parents receiving a notification. Because of that, Norton Family may not be the best option for families with teenagers. We contacted customer support via chat, but our question was not sufficiently answered.
Our experience with Aura was difficult, starting with our attempt to access the portal. We used a Safari browser, and it wouldn’t work. We couldn’t get the service to accept our credentials on our iPad either. We tried Aura’s customer service bot, which didn’t answer our question but did direct us to the customer service phone number. After a 10-minute hold, we talked to a customer service representative who answered our question quickly.
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Yes, Aura is a reputable company. According to the Better Business Bureau, Aura has an A+ rating and a strong reputation in identity theft protection.
Aura Parental Controls costs $8.33/mo (billed annually) while the comprehensive Ultimate Family plan costs $20.00/mo (billed annually). Aura is more expensive than traditional parental control apps because, in addition to basic parental control features, you get comprehensive identity theft protection for the entire family.
Parental control apps are worth the expense for parents worried about their kids staying safe online. Despite some shortcomings (Norton’s parental control software isn’t compatible with macOS and only offers limited social media monitoring and app filtering features for Android), Norton Family is a reputable service that offers robust website filtering and location tracking features.
If you’re looking for a standalone parental control app, Norton Family is better at monitoring what’s happening with your child online. For families looking for bundled cybersecurity protection, Aura Parental Controls would be a better fit. To get comparable coverage through Norton, you’d have to spring for Norton 360 Select with LifeLock.
For families looking to bundle parental control services with identity theft protection services, Aura Parental Controls is your best option. This service combines identity theft features like SSN and dark web monitoring, a VPN, a password manager, identity theft insurance, identity recovery, and financial fraud protection while also offering website and gaming monitoring, cyberbullying and predator threat alerts, and screen time limits. Aura Parental Controls doesn’t offer monitoring or location services, so families looking for a more comprehensive parental control software may not be satisfied with Aura’s feature suite.
Norton Family, on the other hand, offers a more robust set of parental control features, like web filters, search history monitoring, screen time management, app monitoring, and location services. However, it lacks the benefits of Aura's identity theft protection services. Parents must bundle other Norton products using Norton's Family plans for additional cybersecurity features, like a VPN and a password manager.
We consider Aura Parental Controls and Norton Family to be good products; it really just comes down to what you’re looking for and which features are more important to you and your family’s needs.
Ultra-secure, high-speed VPN complete with malware protection and automatic blocking of intrusive ads and third-party trackers
Other benefits include a premium password manager, dark web monitoring, and access to IP-restricted content
3 plans to choose from for custom protection on up to 10 devices
Parents looking to keep their kids safe online can gain peace of mind by purchasing parental control plans like Aura Family or Norton Family. But if you’re looking for a more comprehensive parental control app to help keep your kids safe on social media, you may want to check out these alternatives.
Machine learning catches the latest slang and keywords
Screens content across 19 categories
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