Bosco Review 2025: Is the Free App Worth It?

Bosco is a limited parental control app, but it could work well for parents seeking minimal monitoring capabilities. Bosco allows you to monitor your child's location, app usage, and phone calls. 

Unfortunately, it doesn't give parents any control over the phone — like setting app time limits or pausing the internet. Instead, Bosco simply looks for harmful content and notifies parents of any exposure.

Keep reading to learn more about our experience testing Bosco and how it compares to other parental control apps.

At a glance

Price	$1.92-$4.49/mo
Free trial	Yes
Number of kids supported	Unlimited
Content filtering	No
Conversation monitoring	Text messages
Screen time management	No
Location tracking	Yes
Activity reports	Yes
Remote lock	No
Supported devices	Android phones and iPhones
Learn more	Get Bosco

We last tested Bosco on March 3, 2025.

Our experience

Bosco was quick and easy to set up. After visiting the site, we selected the premium plan and were prompted to download the app on our phone. 

To set up Bosco, both the parent and child need to download the app on their devices. The adult will need to set up the child's profile with their name, date of birth, and gender.

Then Bosco will generate a unique code that needs to be inputted on your child's device. Once added, the accounts are connected. On your kid's phone, you'll need to allow virtual private network (VPN) permission to monitor their network traffic. 

While setting up, you can add "Saved Places" like home or school. The app will send you a notification if your kid leaves or arrives at these locations. 

We tried adding our home address but Bosco didn't populate our address and it didn't let us move forward with setting up these locations, either, so we decided to continue with the other aspects of the app. 

Bosco monitoring in action 

There isn't much to Bosco but we wish the app offered a tutorial of some kind. It took a lot of clicking around for us to discover that it's not very customizable. 

Bosco determines what apps are considered risky and there are limited toggles as far as the alerts you'll receive. 

Bosco also has a file scanner feature, which scans all the files on your kid's phone. It took a couple minutes for the dashboard to populate, but Bosco only flagged three alerted us to three files and there were zero dangerous files found. However, there was no way for us to click through on the alerts. 

We also learned that you'll receive stats on your child's screen times across apps but you can't do anything to manage that screen time. We learned Discord and Reddit are considered "risky" but we're not sure why those apps in particular were flagged and not other social media apps we used like TikTok and Messenger.

If you need more options with your monitoring and screen time management, then Bosco may not be the best option for your child.

Can Bosco be easily uninstalled?

Possibly Bosco’s biggest flaw is that it's super easy to circumvent. We uninstalled the app on our test device with no problem. 

Our child test profile simply stopped tracking and the parent test profile received no notification that the app was uninstalled.

Who is Bosco best for?

• Recommended for parents who want to monitor their children but don't want to control their choices.

Bosco isn't your typical parental control app. Most apps let you set boundaries with your child's device usage, like setting time limits on apps and filtering web content. Bosco doesn't have those features.

Bosco is a hands-off app that allows for a child's privacy while keeping the parent in the loop if something bad happens.

Bosco prices and subscriptions

Bosco has a free plan and a premium version that ranges in price from $1.92-$4.49/mo. Essentially, the free plan lets you track your child's phone, monitor their battery, and receive emergency alerts. 

The Premium subscription gives you additional features: Bosco will monitor messages for inappropriate content; it will scan files for malicious threats, see how much time they spend on apps, and detect their mood.

And that's basically it. Bosco doesn't monitor social media, email, internet searches, or apps. It won't show you your child’s messages either, unless it notices cyberbullying, harassment, or violence.

Bosco is an affordable service, but it does lack some of the features that other parental control apps provide. For example, Bark offers a similarly priced service at $5.00/mo, with far more tools, like blocking apps and websites, check-in features, and filtering inappropriate content.

If you want to use Bosco, the best value is its Premium plan: It provides additional monitoring features that can help keep your child safe.

Features	Free	Premium
Price	Free	$4.99/mo
Number of devices	Unlimited	Unlimited
Website filtering
Social media monitoring
Text message monitoring
Email monitoring
Internet search monitoring
Screen time management
Cyberbullying and online predator alerts
Remote lock
Location tracking
Mood detection
Daily report
Learn more	View plan	View plan

Bosco features

Before diving into Bosco’s features, it's important to note that the Android version has far more tools than the iOS version. Most of the Premium features are not available on Apple devices; this is something to consider if you want to set up parental controls on iOS.

Features	Android	iOS
Location tracking
Inappropriate content monitoring
Remote unmuting
Battery monitoring
Daily monitoring
Screen time monitoring
Mood detection
SOS button
File scanner

Overall, keep in mind that Bosco isn't meant to control activities on your child's device. It's mostly meant to monitor and report to you if Bosco notices a potential problem.

Content monitoring

Bosco monitors messages for cyberbullying, harassment, violence, and explicit images. It doesn't allow parents to adjust the sensitivity of its monitoring. Bosco also doesn't monitor social media content, emails, or web browsers. 

Overall, its content monitoring is pretty limited.

Social media and phone apps

Bosco doesn't block any phone apps. However, it can tell you what apps your child is using and how much time they spend on those apps. 

Bosco will notify you of any new or risky apps on your child's device, but there's no explanation as to which apps are risky and which aren't. In general, Bosco doesn't provide much protection to staying safe on social media.

Text messages

Bosco does monitor text messages for potentially harmful material. The app will tell you how many messages the child received and how many were deemed offensive. 

It will also scan images to determine if there is anything inappropriate. We're not sure what's considered inappropriate and Bosco didn't find any inappropriate files to flag.

Email

Bosco doesn't monitor your child’s emails. If this is an important feature to you, then you may want to look at different parental control apps.

Web browsers

Bosco doesn't monitor web browsers or any internet search activity. You won't know what your child is searching for with the Bosco app.

Content filtering

Many parental control apps let parents blacklist websites or apps. Bosco doesn't have content filtering features like this. It notifies you only if your child was exposed to inappropriate or explicit content online.

Screen time management

Bosco doesn't let parents manage their child's screen time. There are no features like setting time limits for apps or disconnecting a device from the internet completely.

However, Bosco does monitor app usage and will tell you how much time was spent on specific apps.

Location tracking and geo-fencing

Bosco offers location tracking and lets you create saved places. You'll receive a notification every time your child arrives or leaves a saved place. Bosco will also tell you if they deviate from a saved route.

However, there isn't any option for a check-in request. Bosco was also a bit slow to update when the child moved locations.

Activity reports

Activity reports are a Premium feature, where parents can receive daily reports of a child's app usage, alerts, and scanned actions. The reports are located within the app under the Daily Report tab. 

It's a useful reminder to check in with your child's online activity.

Bosco customer support

Email or live chat	Yes — info@boscoapp.com
Phone	Yes — WhatsApp only +972 51-254-4687
Online guides or forums	No

The app had a customer support button, so we clicked on it. We were surprised when we were redirected to a WhatsApp business account. There isn't a live chat within the app or Bosco's website.

We sent a message on WhatsApp and received a reply in an hour. They answered our question and then sent us to the Bosco site to read more.

However, we found the website lacked a lot of information. There's a help center, but the pages never loaded. This continued even after we tried an incognito browser and switching oour VPN on and off.

Overall, we weren't too impressed with the customer support. They were slow to respond, and it was difficult to find information immediately.

Top alternatives

Bosco is missing many standard parental control features. While it might be suitable for basic monitoring, you may want to establish more firm boundaries between your child and the internet. 

There are plenty of other parental control apps that offer more control. We highly recommend the following: 

Bosco FAQs

Bottom line: Is Bosco good?

Bosco can be a good choice for parents who want to monitor their children's online activity without intruding on their privacy. The app keeps minimal tabs on the child's location, and app usage, and it also monitors messages for harmful content. Parents receive notifications only if their child might be in danger.

However, Bosco isn't a great choice if you're a parent looking for more robust tools. It lacks standard features like content filtering, social media monitoring, and screen time management. There are plenty of other parental control apps available to help enforce online boundaries for your child.