Costs
Part of Family Agreements: Set a Fair Rule for Parent Access
Which family agreements tools are worth using
Family agreement tools compared by name, from OurFamilyWizard to Google Docs, with what each costs and which ones survive a real household budget.
What to take away
- The family agreement tools worth using start with Google Docs and Apple Notes. Both are free, both people can edit, both can see the version history, and the file leaves with you.
- OurFamilyWizard is built for split households and costs money. It passes because both homes see the same page.
- Screen-time products that attach a rule to a limit put the document inside the enforcement. That changes what the clause means.
- Reward apps score compliance. A scored rule is a wage that gets renegotiated.
- No product has the conversation, applies the consequence, or notices that a child who keeps every clause is having a bad month.
The family agreement tools, named
A family agreement needs paper and an hour. Anything sold on top of that has to beat the paper, and most of it does not. The table covers what each one is for, what it costs, and who it suits.
Family agreement tools compared
Google Docs
- Cost
- Free
- Both edit
- Yes
- Version history
- Yes
- Court record
- No
- Best for
- Most homes
Apple Notes
- Cost
- Free
- Both edit
- Yes
- Version history
- No
- Court record
- No
- Best for
- iPhone homes
OurFamilyWizard
- Cost
- $100-180/yr
- Both edit
- Yes
- Version history
- Yes
- Court record
- Yes
- Best for
- Two homes
Kind and key facts
- Google Docs
- Shared document with full version history; both parties edit
- Apple Notes shared note
- Shared note inside Apple's ecosystem; edits sync through iCloud
- Microsoft Word online
- Shared document with tracked changes and comments
- OurFamilyWizard
- Purpose-built co-parenting record with shared calendar, message log, and expense tracking
- TalkingParents
- Similar co-parenting record; messages timestamped and uneditable, with records for court
- Google Family Link
- Parental controls with a written-rules field
- Apple Screen Time
- Device limits and downtime schedules; no shared document
- Qustodio
- Paid control product with activity reports and time limits
- Bark
- Paid monitoring product with alerts on specific risks
Published or typical cost
- Google Docs
- Free with a Google account; Google Workspace business plans start around $6 per user per month and are not needed for a household
- Apple Notes shared note
- Free with an Apple ID; iCloud+ storage starts at $0.99/month for 50 GB if you need more space
- Microsoft Word online
- Free with a Microsoft account; Microsoft 365 Personal typically $70 to $100 a year, Family $100 to $130 a year, depending on region and Copilot tier
- OurFamilyWizard
- Subscription, typically about $100 to $180 a year per household or per parent, depending on plan; check current tiers
- TalkingParents
- Free basic tier; paid plans typically about $6 to $20 a month depending on records and features
- Google Family Link
- Free
- Apple Screen Time
- Free, built into iOS and iPadOS
- Qustodio
- Limited free plan; paid tiers typically $55 to $100 a year for one to five children
- Bark
- Typically $5 to $15 a month, or $50 to $100 a year, depending on tier and number of children
Who it suits
- Google Docs
- Most households
- Apple Notes shared note
- Families already on iPhones
- Microsoft Word online
- Households already using Word
- OurFamilyWizard
- Two homes, especially where a court order exists
- TalkingParents
- Same as OurFamilyWizard, where one parent wants a fixed record
- Google Family Link
- Android households that want controls and a note in one place
- Apple Screen Time
- iPhone households
- Qustodio
- Parents who want activity reports
- Bark
- Parents who want alerts on specific risks
The table sorts them by kind: free shared documents, co-parenting records, control products, and monitoring products. The first two kinds can hold an agreement. The last two hold a rule.
Check current prices directly. Every one of these changes its tiers, and a comparison written in September is stale by spring.
What the paper still does better
A sheet on the fridge enforces nothing, and that is the point. It has no dashboard, no notification, and no view the child cannot see. Whatever it says, it says the same thing to both of you.
It also gets crossed out. A page where the night clause has been rewritten three times in three hands is a page that was argued over. family agreements sets out why the argument is the whole product.
Worked example: the same clause in three tools
Take one clause: "phone charges in the kitchen at 9pm on school nights."
One clause, three tools
Google Docs
- What it is
- Shared document
- Child sees
- The agreement
- Both edit
- Yes
- Real agreement
- Yes
Family Link
- What it is
- Control label
- Child sees
- A restriction
- Both edit
- No
- Real agreement
- No
OurFamilyWizard
- What it is
- Shared record
- Child sees
- The record
- Both edit
- Yes
- Real agreement
- Yes
- In Google Docs, both of you can see the clause, edit it, and read the version history showing who changed what and when. The document is separate from any control.
- In Google Family Link, the same words sit in a field attached to a downtime schedule. The child reads the sentence as the label on the restriction, not as an agreement.
- In OurFamilyWizard, the clause lives in a shared record both homes can see. That property matters when the two houses disagree about bedtime.
Same sentence, three different documents. Only Google Docs and OurFamilyWizard are agreements in any real sense. Family Link is a label on a control.
The reward trap
Paying for compliance changes what the rule means. A bedtime kept for points is a transaction. Transactions get renegotiated: the price rises, the points get gamed, and on the day there are no points the rule has no reason left.
A rule kept because it was agreed survives the day the app is deleted. Screen-time habits covers why friction beats prohibition and why neither needs a scoreboard.
Reward systems have a second problem. They report. Every point records behavior, so a child on a points scheme is being logged whether or not anyone calls it monitoring.
The Federal Trade Commission publishes consumer material on protecting a child's privacy online. It is a useful prompt for what to ask any company holding that record, though the rules that apply to you are set where you live.
What to check before you commit
- Both of you can edit the text as well as read it.
- Both of you can see all of it, all the time. No parent-only view.
- The document is separate from anything that monitors. Parental controls covers how much the controls should be doing anyway.
- You can export or print it and walk away from the product.
- There is a review date the household chose, not a nag from the app.
- Nothing is scored. No streaks, no points, no badges for a clean week.
What none of them do
They do not have the conversation. The hour at the table, the stated non-negotiables, the moment your child argues you into a better position: no template or app supplies any of it.
They do not enforce. The consequence written down still has to be applied by a tired adult on a Wednesday, exactly as written, without the speech.
They do not notice. A well-kept document reports nothing about how your child is, and a child who keeps every clause can have a terrible month without the page telling you.
The National Library of Medicine keeps a general reference on teen mental health for neutral background on what changes are worth taking to a doctor. mental wellbeing covers what to watch instead.
And they do not carry the promise that does the most work, which no tool can make for you: that coming to you about something that has gone wrong will not cost them their phone. That is said, in your own voice, and then kept.
Common questions
Is a shared document better than paper?
Marginally, for households where the page would otherwise get lost, and where the child can edit it as freely as you can. Paper has one advantage no app has: it cannot send a notification.
Our control app lets me attach rules to each limit. Is that an agreement?
It is a label on a control. Keep it, and also keep a separate page that includes the clauses that bind you, which a control product has no field for.
What about a household split across two homes?
The same tests apply, plus one more: both homes can see the same page. Where the two houses cannot agree everything, a shared document showing the two or three rules held in common, and openly leaving the rest to differ, does more than two competing apps.
