KidMoat vs Google Family Link: Which One Should You Use? (2026)

Short answer

Google Family Link is free and already on your child's Android phone. It sets a daily limit, blocks apps and shows location. Three things are worth knowing before you rely on it: its web filter only works in Chrome, it requires a Google account in your child's name, and your supervision can end when they turn 13.

KidMoat filters every browser on the phone, links your child's device by scanning one QR code with no account for them, and does not change on a birthday. It also turns your own phone into your child's space in one tap, puts exam week one tap away, and gives your child coins they spend on rewards you choose.

KidMoat is Android for now — parent and child both. If everyone in your family is on Android, everything below applies to you.

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The one situation Family Link was never designed for

Family Link assumes one thing throughout: the child owns the phone. You create a Google account for the child, that account signs in to their device, and you manage that device.

For a very large number of families that is not the arrangement. Phone sharing between a parent and a child is the norm rather than the exception across much of Asia, Africa and Latin America: children use a phone long before they own one, and the handset they use belongs to a parent. In Europe and North America a child more often has a device of their own by the same age. Family Link is built for the second arrangement and has nothing for the first.

So the common case is a nine-year-old using a parent's phone for an hour after homework. Family Link has no answer for that. There is no way to say "this is my phone, but for the next hour it belongs to my daughter, with her limits". You would have to hand over an unmanaged phone and hope.

That single gap is why KidMoat exists.

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Feature comparison

Checked 5 August 2026 against Google's own Family Link documentation. Features change — if something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.

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Where KidMoat is genuinely different

1. It works when the phone is yours, not theirs

One tap turns your phone into your child's space — their apps, their time limit, their rewards. Your PIN takes it straight back. Each child gets their own space, so a younger sibling is never held to an older one's limit.

Family Link cannot do this at all. It manages a child's device, and your phone is not a child's device.

2. Exam weeks are a different day, not a settings session

Exams, unit tests, revision. KidMoat has six ready-made day types — Normal, Weekend, Holiday, Exam Day, Sick Day, Screen-Free Day. Tap Exam Day and the day's limit, the apps that stay open, and the bedtime all change together. Tap out and they all change back.

In Family Link you would edit limits app by app, then remember to undo every one of them a week later. Exam season is the point at which a parent most wants to tighten things temporarily and then put them back, and almost no parental control app treats it as a thing that exists.

3. Your child gets a reason, not just a lock

A limit on its own only moves the argument. KidMoat gives a child five coins on any day they stay inside the limit you agreed together, and those coins buy real rewards that you set — an ice cream, a trip to the park, an hour of cricket. Never extra screen time, which would defeat the point.

Family Link locks the phone. That works, and it is also the entire reason your child resents it.

4. Filtering that covers every browser, not just Chrome

This is the difference most parents do not discover until it has already failed.

Family Link's web filtering applies to Chrome. A child who installs Firefox, Brave or Opera from the Play Store is browsing outside it entirely — the blocked list simply does not apply. Reviewers have made the point plainly: if a child installs another browser, Chrome's filter is irrelevant (Boomerang's Family Link guide).

KidMoat filters at the DNS level on the device, which means it applies to whatever browser is open, including one installed five minutes ago. It also closes the two standard ways around a DNS filter: Chrome and Firefox can send their DNS queries over HTTPS to their own providers, so KidMoat sinkholes those provider domains and the browser falls back to the resolver the filter can see. DNS-over-TLS on port 853 is refused the same way.

5. Your child does not need a Google account — and cannot age out of supervision

Family Link works by creating a supervised Google account for your child and signing their device in to it. Two consequences follow.

First, setup means making your child an account, with the email address and the password that come with it. KidMoat links their phone by scanning one QR code. No account for them, nothing new for them to be signed in to, nothing for them to sign out of.

Second, and more important: Google's supervised accounts are tied to age. When your child turns 13, they become eligible to convert to a standard account — and most of your supervision goes with it (Google's own documentation). That is precisely the age at which most parents feel they need it more, not less. Nothing in KidMoat changes on a birthday.

6. Even with their own phone, your child gets something Family Link has none of

If your child has their own handset, Family Link will lock it. That is the whole of what it offers them.

KidMoat gives the same child coins for staying inside the limit you agreed together, a streak they can see, levels to climb, and rewards you choose that those coins actually buy. When they want twenty more minutes they ask from their phone and you answer from yours — inside a daily extension cap you set, so "just five more minutes" cannot become an hour by attrition.

A dedicated phone is not a reason to skip KidMoat. It is the case where the rewards do the most work, because your child is the one deciding how the day goes.

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Two things to know before you set it up

• Android only, for now. Both the parent app and the child app. Worth knowing before you start rather than after.
• A determined child can remove it — and you are told the moment they do. We would rather send you that alert than claim a lock we do not have. An app that quietly stops working is worse than one that tells you it stopped.

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Bottom line

Six things decide this, and they are all on the table above.

A filter that works in every browser, not just Chrome. Setup by QR code, with no account in your child's name. Supervision that does not end on a birthday. Your own phone usable as your child's for an hour. Exam week in one tap. And a child who earns something for keeping the limit instead of being locked out of the phone.

Family Link does none of the six. KidMoat was built for all of them.