Three steps,
three minutes
Most family tracking apps bury you in permissions, upsells, and "premium feature" nags before you can even see a map. NearCircle is built to get you from install to working in under three minutes.
Create a Circle
A Circle is your private group — your family, your friends, your team. You can name it anything you want: "The Smiths", "Road trip 2026", "Mom & Dad". Every circle is isolated from every other circle.
On your first launch, NearCircle walks you through one-tap Sign in with Apple, then asks for location permission. We request "Always" so background tracking works — but you can start with "While Using" and upgrade later. No dark patterns.
The app creates your first circle automatically. You're the admin. You can rename it, set an avatar, and decide whether it's permanent or temporary. Temporary circles auto-expire at a time you choose — perfect for weekend trips or a single event.
Our free tier includes 1 circle with up to 3 members. Plus gives you 5 circles, Family gives you 10. Most households never need more than 2 or 3.
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Invite members
Tap "Invite" and NearCircle generates a QR code and a one-tap share link. Send it via iMessage, WhatsApp, or just point another iPhone at the QR code. Whoever accepts joins your circle — no account creation needed before joining. They sign in with Apple at accept time.
Every invite is consent-first. The invited person sees exactly which circle they're joining, who's in it, and what they'll share. They can decline. They can join and then toggle invisibility. They can leave any time with two taps.
For kids and elderly parents who don't have or can't manage an Apple ID, you can use family sharing (parent device manages child device) or use Elderly Care mode (caregiver manages the link).
Invite links expire after 48 hours by default. If someone misses the window, just send a new one — no manual cleanup needed.
Stay connected
That's it. Everyone in the circle now sees each other on the map in real time with emoji avatars, speeds, and distances. Tap a member to see their last 24 hours of movement (free tier) or longer on paid tiers.
Set Safe Zones by dropping a pin on home, school, the gym. Anyone in the circle gets an optional arrival/departure notification when members cross the geofence. Unlike Life360 and Findmykids, these alerts fire in seconds — not fifteen minutes late.
Hit SOS in an emergency — a 2-second long-press sends your exact location and a high-priority push to everyone in your circle. No "premium tier" gate on safety features in Family.
Most of NearCircle's intelligence runs on your device. Routines the app learns (your usual school pickup time, your typical commute home) stay on your phone and never sync to our servers. You can review and delete what the AI has learned at any time.
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The difference
What's different from Life360?
No aggressive upsells
Life360 shows upgrade prompts to premium subscribers. NearCircle shows you the map. Paywalls exist only where they have to — at the tier boundary, once.
No data brokers
Life360 sold precise location data — including children's — to roughly a dozen data brokers. We wrote our no-data-selling promise into our terms and our DNA.
Safety features that work
Life360's crash detection has been documented as "non-functional" in published user complaints. Our SOS is a 2-second trigger with a fallback path — SMS if push fails.
Actual privacy tools
Invisibility toggle, temporary circles that self-destruct, scheduled privacy windows, neighborhood-level location fuzzing. Life360 doesn't ship any of these.
Less battery drain
Life360 is documented at "100% battery usage" in review after review. We use motion-aware GPS sampling — if you haven't moved, we don't poll.
Half the price
Life360's top tier is $24.99/mo. NearCircle Family is $9.99/mo with Elderly Care, SOS, and AI insights included. No "Platinum" upgrade to unlock safety.
First-time questions