What will a kids phone really cost you?
Sticker price is the smallest part. Select a device — we compute the full total from our verified pricing database. Unverified devices show no numbers until we confirm them.
Every phone, every term
The same maths, pre-computed for all five phones so you can scan rather than click. A dash means at least one input isn't published on a static vendor page, so the row can't be completed honestly — see the notes underneath.
| Phone | Device | Plan / mo | Activation | 1 year | 2 years | 3 years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gabb Phone 4 | $169.99 | $24.99 | — | $469.87 | $769.75 | $1,069.63 |
| Bark Phone | $240 | $29 | $0 | $588 | $936 | $1,284 |
| Troomi (Samsung Galaxy A17 5G) | $249.95 | $24.95 | — | $549.35 | $848.75 | $1,148.15 |
| Pinwheel Phone | $119 | $14.58 | — | $293.96 | $468.92 | $643.88 |
| MMGuardian Phone | $229 | — | — | — | — | — |
Swipe sideways to see the full table on a phone screen.
Of the phones where every input is published, Pinwheel Phone has the lowest verified two-year total at $468.92. That is not the same claim as "cheapest kids phone" — it's the cheapest of the ones that will tell you their price.
What the plan alone costs per year
What's in the total — and what isn't
The calculator adds three things: the device price, any one-off activation fee, and the cheapest advertised plan multiplied by the number of months. It deliberately leaves out four things that vary too much per household to belong in a headline figure.
- Sales tax. Varies by state and sometimes by county; adding a national average would make the number look precise while being wrong everywhere.
- Third-party carrier service. Pinwheel's Caregiver Portal plan and MMGuardian are bring-your-own-carrier: you still owe a separate SIM and data plan. Their totals here cover the kids-phone product only, not the airtime.
- Promotional pricing. We use standing list prices. Holiday discounts and 12- or 24-month plan commitments can lower the monthly figure — Gabb and Bark both do this.
- Replacement and repair. A phone given to a nine-year-old has a real breakage rate. Protection plans are sold separately by every vendor here.
Why the headline price misleads
Every vendor in this category leads with a monthly number, because a monthly number is small. The Bark Phone is the clearest example of what that hides: the advertised entry price is $29 a month, but the handset is financed separately at $10 a month for 24 months on top, and cancelling the service more than 60 days after purchase means paying off the remaining device balance. The "from $29" phone is a $936 phone over two years. Full detail is in contracts and hidden fees.
The second thing the headline hides is what you get for the money. A cheaper plan often means fewer parental controls, not just less data — the monitoring matrix shows which capabilities sit behind which tier.
Where the numbers come from
All pricing is pulled from official pricing pages by our monitoring pipeline and logged in the price change tracker, so you can see when any figure above last moved and why. Per-device breakdowns, including the full plan line-up rather than just the cheapest tier, live on the device pages — for example Gabb, Bark or Troomi.
Figures last verified 2026-09-07. US list prices in USD, tax excluded.