Over the past few years, we’ve tested over 20 Bluetooth trackers. The major players in this category are well known, but to make sure we didn’t miss any, we turned to Amazon and Google.

Here’s what we look for in a great Bluetooth tracker:

• Network size: Most Bluetooth trackers can utilize other phones that have the tracker’s app installed to silently and privately search for your lost objects. The more people who use a platform, the better your chances of recovering your lost stuff.
• Precision finding: Once you know the general location of your lost tracker, narrowing down exactly where it’s hiding is the key to finding it. Trackers use a combination of physical speakers and digital apps to help you locate your belongings.
• Size: A tracker that’s too obtrusive to carry around with you or to attach to the thing you want to track is useless. Smaller and lighter is better.
• Range: The longer the range, the farther you can be from the tracker and still be able to find your lost item.
• Volume: If you’re near your tracker but can’t hear it, that’s no good. Despite having little space for a speaker, some of these can get quite loud.
• Other features: A replaceable battery isn’t absolutely required, but it’s a big plus. We also prefer trackers that can trigger an alarm on your phone. An app that is easy to navigate and updates location information quickly is important too.

To test each Bluetooth tracker, we enlisted people to hide trackers from us. We then attempted to find them just based on the pings we got from the trackers. (Note that this is not a failsafe indication of everyone’s experience with each network; because the number of Android, Tile, Google Find My, and Apple Find My users differs greatly from area to area, there is no good way to perfectly quantify how the network would assist you in your area.)

We also set the trackers down on the ground outside, went far out of their range, and then simulated trying to find them by walking toward them until their respective apps picked them up. Once an app located a tracker, we measured the distance to the tracker using this measuring wheel to see how far their range reached. We did this three times each and averaged the scores.

Top pick

Apple AirTag

The best Bluetooth tracker for iPhone users

AirTags leverage Apple’s huge network of devices to find lost goods, and they’re impressively accurate in pinpointing an item’s precise location.

Buying Options

$100$73 from Amazon (pack of four)

You save $27 (27%)

$100$73 from Walmart (pack of four)

You save $27 (27%)

$24 from Walmart
(pack of one)

$29 from Apple
(pack of one)

If you use an iPhone and want to track your stuff, Apple’s AirTag is easily the best option. Compared with the competition, this tracker has two distinct strengths that make it our top choice: The AirTag uses Apple’s huge network of devices to assist in finding the area where you left your lost item, and precision tracking makes it easier for you to locate the exact spot. Taken together, these two features mean you’re more likely to find what you’re looking for with the AirTag than with any other Bluetooth tracking system.

Apple’s Find My network has by far the largest number of devices that can look for your stuff.  Since 2019, Apple’s Find My app has used Bluetooth in every iPhone, iPad, and Mac that’s on the network—that’s a billion devices—to passively and anonymously find lost iPhones, Macs, and even contacts who share their location. AirTags use the same system to report the location of any item you attach them to. In practical terms, this means if you leave your AirTag-equipped keys at the coffee shop, for example, as long as someone there at some point has an Apple device, the keys’ location will be reported to you (and the person with the iPhone or other Apple device who identified it will never know). Although Tile’s trackers work the same way, they do so on a far smaller scale—it’s much more likely that the customer sitting one table over has an iPhone than a Tile or the Life360 app.

Setup is foolproof. Thanks to Apple’s control over both the hardware (the iPhone or iPad and the AirTag) and the software, activating a new AirTag is seamless. When you unpack a new AirTag and place it next to your phone or tablet, a pop-up appears on your screen, much like when you’re pairing a set of AirPods or an Apple Watch. Once you tap Connect, you can set a name for the AirTag and register it to your Apple ID. There are no settings or menus, and the entire process takes under a minute.

You track and manage your AirTags in Apple’s Find My app, where you can see the location and options for each tag. You can also rename or remove an AirTag on this screen, with the latter option resetting it completely, unpairing it from your Apple ID and allowing someone else to use it as if it were new. You can connect up to 16 AirTags to an account.

When you lose an AirTag, you can enable Lost Mode in the Find My app. If someone finds the AirTag (and the item it’s attached to), they can tap the AirTag with their phone to see contact information for returning the item to its owner.

The Precision Tracking feature helps you pinpoint your AirTag’s exact location. The other key feature of the AirTag works once you know your tracker’s general location. Like the iPhone 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 lineups, AirTags support a wireless connection known as Ultra Wideband, which allows for precision locating at relatively short distances. Once you’re in the general vicinity of your AirTag (say, the coffee shop where you left your keys), you can tap the Find button in the Find My app. The app then shows you the direction and distance to the AirTag in question, and your phone vibrates as you get closer and allows you to play a sound to assist in your search. In our testing the AirTag’s tracking signal took a moment to lock on, but once it did we were thoroughly impressed by the system’s accuracy.

Compared with Tile’s trackers, AirTags have a much shorter Bluetooth range. Apple doesn’t state any specific figures, but we found that the tracker maintained a connection to our test iPhone for only 30 feet or so. On the face of it, that doesn’t sound great, but Apple’s much, much larger crowd-finding network and precision locating are more important factors, since that’s what will make it more likely that you’ll recover stuff you’ve truly lost.

It has a sleek design. With its glossy, white plastic front and metal back, the AirTag looks and feels a lot like a pin-back button you might put on a jean jacket or backpack. The diameter is a little larger than a quarter, and the tracker is actually about a millimeter or two thicker than many iPhones, although its curved design makes it feel thinner. You have the option to add custom engraving when you order from Apple, with up to four characters (letters and/or numbers) or selected emoji; if you buy the four-pack, you can get different text on each. Noticeably absent is any sort of attachment mechanism such as a key-ring hole or adhesive back. Instead, you have to buy an extra accessory. Of course, Apple sells a handful of its own, and plenty of third-party companies sell all sorts of designs, as well.

It can chirp if you use the Find My app or Siri to ping it. The tune plays for about six seconds, with a repeating series of beeps. We found both the tone and the volume sufficient to help us find the AirTag when it was hidden around our testing space, comparable to what we’ve experienced with Tile trackers. If your AirTag is buried under a pile of clothes, for instance, you may not hear it, but the tone should otherwise be audible as long as you’re in the same room.

Each AirTag runs on a removable, user-replaceable battery. It’s the only Apple device that actually makes the replacement process easy. When the battery runs low (which, in our testing, happened after a little over a year of use), the Find My app notifies you, and you can swap in a new CR2032 battery by twisting off the AirTag’s metal back, removing the old battery, and popping the new one in. Even with this accessible design, AirTags are IP67 rated, so they should survive being under 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes, although Apple warns: “Splash, water, and dust resistance are not permanent conditions and resistance might decrease as a result of normal wear.”

It will automatically tell you if you’ve left something behind. You can toggle the alerts on and off per device, and you can set exceptions—say, if you don’t need to be alerted every time you leave home without your AirTag-armed backpack—with small, medium, or large separation radiuses, depending on the sensitivity level you need.

You can easily share AirTags. If there’s an item that you want everyone in your household or family to be able to track, such as a suitcase or a bike, you can share the AirTag’s location with up to five people.

You can find and disable an AirTag that is following you without your knowledge. When AirTags launched, there was widespread concern that the very thing that made Apple’s Bluetooth trackers so good at finding stuff—the extensive Find My network—would also make it easy for abusers to track their victims without their knowledge. And that has happened. But Apple has introduced several features over the years that make it more difficult, including partnering with Google to ensure that both iPhone and Android users receive alerts when Bluetooth trackers are detected near them.

Now when an AirTag or other Find My–compatible device (such as a pair of AirPods) is detected with you, your iPhone or Android phone will receive a notification regarding the tracker’s presence with information about who it belongs to and directions for disabling it.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Your AirTag can’t find your iPhone. Unlike Tile’s trackers (and some others), the AirTag doesn’t have any way to ring your phone if it’s nearby. So if it’s your iPhone that’s lost, you’ll have to rely on the Find My app on another Apple device to find it.

You can’t attach an AirTag directly to an item. Key rings and loops cost extra, so the actual cost is higher than the price of the tracker itself, unless you plan on just tossing one loose into a bag or pocket (which we at Wirecutter often do). Apple’s accessories all cost at least as much as a single AirTag, effectively doubling the price. Obviously, you can save quite a bit by buying from a third-party accessory maker.

Top pick

Tile Pro (2024)

The best Bluetooth tracker for Android users

The Tile Pro has a long range and a loud ring, and it gives you a better chance of finding your lost stuff than other non-Apple trackers.

Buying Options

$20 from Tile

AirTags don’t work with Android phones, but that doesn’t mean non-Apple folks don’t have a good tracker option. Tile’s Bluetooth trackers, including the Tile Pro (2024), are very popular and have a large crowd-finding network due to the combined pool of Tile app users and Life360 app users. (Life360 is Tile’s parent company.) They also offer impressive range and alarm volume and are sized and shaped in convenient ways: You can put a Tile Pro or Mate on a keychain without buying an extra holder, slip a Tile Slim into your wallet, or attach a Tile Sticker to any flat surface.

The Tile Pro uses Tile’s crowd-finding network to track down your lost item. If your Tile is out of Bluetooth range, you can view a map displaying its location the last time your phone made contact with it. If your phone is no longer at that location—or if you’re worried that it won’t be—you can mark the item as lost, which invokes Tile’s crowd-finding feature. In fall 2022, Tile opened its network up to parent company Life360’s tens of millions of smartphone users, who can choose to opt in to help Tile members find their trackers. With Life360’s acquisition of Tile came a significant increase in network size; according to the company, as of August 2024 there are over 65 million Life360 members opted in to the Tile network, which means more people could potentially track down your Tile.

The Tile Pro has a “Scan me if found” QR code on the back. When the finder scans the code, a website that says the attached item is lost pops up on the finder’s phone, and the Tile’s location is sent to its owner. The owner can also choose to put the Tile in lost mode and share their phone number and a message so that the finder can text or call them to return what they’ve lost.

The Tile Pro is useful for more than tracking down a lost item. If you have a Life360 account and a 2024 Tile tracker, you can use its SOS feature in emergency situations. This feature sends an SOS text to your Life360 Circle contacts when you press the button on the Tile tracker three times in a row. (In our tests, SOS only worked if we had our phone on and within Bluetooth range of the Tile tracker when we pressed the button.) The feature worked without a hitch during testing—except when we triggered SOS, the Tile made a tiny chirping sound. If you’re truly in danger or in a situation where silence is necessary, that may not be ideal.

The Tile Pro offers the best combination of features from the Tile lineup. The Pro design offers a few advantages over other Tile trackers. The keyring is made of metal, unlike the plastic one on the Mate, and it has the loudest ring of all the Tile trackers; in a busy mall, we were able to hear the Tile Pro from the farthest distance away. In our tests we were able to pick up its Bluetooth signal an average of 224 feet away, farther than any other Android tracker we tested (and farther than the AirTag, too). The Tile Pro is rated IP68, so it’s protected against dust and should survive being submerged in water up to 1 meter deep for 30 minutes at the most.

It has a replaceable battery, like the AirTag. The Tile Pro runs on a CR2032 coin battery, which should last for a year and is easily found in grocery stores and drugstores. The Tile Mate’s battery is non-replaceable and is supposed to last three years, after which you’d need to buy a whole new Tile tracker. Tile says that its trackers are recyclable at the end of their lives, but the fewer trackers you have to buy, the less e-waste ends up in landfills. You’ll know your Tile is running out of battery if the ringer starts playing more quietly, if you double-press the button and it plays no sound at all, or if the Tile app gives you a low-battery notification.

The optional subscription plan offers extra benefits, but you don’t need it. The $3-per-month (or $30-per-year) Tile Premium covers as many Tiles as you own. The service includes an extended warranty (from one year to three) and SMS-based customer support. On the software side, it offers a 30-day location history, unlimited sharing of your Tile trackers’ locations, and smart alerts that let you know when you’ve left home without any of your Tiles. (The last feature is based on your entering your home address, and in our previous testing we could get a third of a mile away before receiving the alert, which isn’t super handy.) Aside from separation notifications, Apple doesn’t provide any of these features with an AirTag. For $100 a year, Tile also offers Premium Protect, which has the same features plus a $1,000-per-year reimbursement for (most) registered items that are lost. Tile Premium is an unnecessary expense for most people, and Premium Protect is worth the investment only if you’re tracking something valuable (though you might be better off getting a cheap used Apple device and an AirTag in that case).

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The price is a little steep. The Tile network is the best, most helpful one we’ve found other than the Apple Find My network, but it’s still no real competition, so we don’t love the fact that the Tile Pro is $5 more expensive than the AirTag. If you’re always dropping things when you’re out or leaving stuff on the roof of your car, the Tile Pro is the best non-Apple choice because it makes finding things easier when you have no idea where they might be. If you really need only to be able to ring something in your house because you can’t remember where you put it down, save the $10 and get a Tile Mate or Sticker; their shorter range and quieter ring won’t matter as much if it’s just in your living room.

You can detect an unwanted Tile tracking you, but not as easily as an AirTag. To detect a Tile that may be tracking you without your knowledge, Tile requires you to download the Tile app and then use the app’s Scan and Secure feature. The app is available for both iPhone and Android users, but those who might not be familiar with Tile won’t know to install the app to detect the trackers. AirTags and Bluetooth trackers that are compatible with Apple’s Find My network and Google’s Find My Device network automatically alert both iPhone and Android users if unknown trackers are nearby. (Tile’s trackers are not compatible with Apple’s and Google’s respective device-finding networks.)

Tile tracker owners can also get around the Scan and Secure feature by activating Anti-Theft Mode, which prevents a Tile from showing up when someone uses Scan and Secure to detect a tracker. To set up Anti-Theft Mode, Tile requires you to go through a rigorous identification-verification process, including providing government-issued ID and biometric verification. This process is designed to deter Tile owners from using the devices for illegal activity, such as stalking, through a lack of anonymity. After Anti-Theft Mode is activated, a person who is unknowingly being tracked by a Tile won’t receive an unwanted-tracker notification on their phone.

The punishment for a Tile user who enables Anti-Theft Mode and then uses it for stalking is a $1 million fine, but we’re skeptical that that’s an effective deterrent.

Apple is introducing a new AirTag feature in iOS 18.2, which is rolling out in December, that lets AirTag owners share the location of a lost tracker with third parties, such as airlines. The shared links go dead after the AirTag is marked found, after seven days, or when the owner manually stops sharing the location of the tracker. More than 15 airlines will reportedly offer compatibility with this new feature in the near future to help expedite the process of finding lost luggage. We’ll add more information on this feature as soon as we’re able to test it.

Apple’s Find My network is so effective because it’s turned on by default when a person sets up an iCloud account on their Apple device. Google recently flipped the switch on its own Find My network, and a handful of compatible Bluetooth trackers have launched this year. But the default setting for Android users to contribute to the Google Find My network is limited, enabling the devices to ping for lost trackers only in “high-traffic areas.” This means your AirTag could be found by a single person walking past it through the woods, but your Android tracker might be found only if you lose it in an airport or on a busy sidewalk, which isn’t efficient.

When we tested a variety of Google Find My–compatible trackers, none of the trackers we used were able to keep up with Tile’s network and capability. In most cases, the trackers didn’t ping us with their location when our phone was out of their Bluetooth range. Google has a setting that allows Android users to opt in to the broader Google Find My network, but until more people enable it—or Google enables it by default—we’re not sure that Google Find My trackers will ever be as capable as Tile trackers or AirTags.

Chipolo has two Google Find My–compatible trackers, the $35 Card Point and the $30 One Point, and neither was as effective as the Tile trackers. When we set up the Card Point, the notification to add it to Google Find My didn’t appear for a few minutes, which was frustrating, and when it did pop up, it seemed to do so by chance. When testing them in a mall, we couldn’t track them at all until we came back into Bluetooth range, and even then we had to get within 30 feet to detect them.

We tested three Google Find My–compatible trackers from Pebblebee: the $30 Pebblebee Clip, $35 Pebblebee Card, and $35 Pebblebee Tag. Pebblebee’s trackers have the best hardware of any of the trackers we’ve tested: All three models are rechargeable, the battery should last around a year between charges, and they all come with a charging cord. The Clip and the Tag also have a bright LED light that you can trigger when searching for them, which is likely to make finding a Pebblebee tracker in the dark at a concert or in a movie theater much easier. However, all three of the models we tested stopped working for no apparent reason after just a few days of use, and we were not able to trigger them to ring or flash after that, no matter how close we were to them.

Chipolo’s One Spot uses Apple’s Find My network, meaning it’s just as likely that someone’s iPhone will anonymously find your lost tracker as it is with an AirTag. But the One Spot has only one advantage over the AirTag—a keychain hole as part of its design—and a number of disadvantages. It doesn’t have the precise finding capabilities, it’s not as resistant to the elements, and it’s physically larger. Unlike the Chipolo One (2020) (which is physically identical but uses Chipolo’s crowd-finding network instead of Apple’s), the One Spot can’t be used to trigger an alert on your phone, nor can it let you know if you’ve left something behind. There’s no reason to choose the One Spot over the AirTag, especially since they cost about the same.

Orbit offers a number of tracker styles, including the Orbit Glasses tracker, which fits on eyeglasses or sunglasses. Unfortunately the Orbit network is just too limited for us to recommend choosing Orbit over Tile. Anecdotally, we lost a pair of sunglasses that were outfitted with the Orbit Glasses tracker in busy and tech-heavy New York City. And despite marking them as lost in the app in hopes of an Orbit user passing by and finding them, we never received a notice that the sunglasses were found.

This article was edited by Caitlin McGarry.