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In a Nutshell
Alongside their signature digital security and identity theft protection, Aura offers Aura Parents—a suite of digital safety and wellbeing features designed for kids, tweens, and teens. Built with child psychologists and digital safety experts, Aura Parents bridges the gap between traditional boundary-setting and fostering healthy digital habits. The app provides the robust content filtering and screen time limits parents expect, but distinguishes itself by using AI models to highlight meaningful patterns in digital behavior. Aura Parents also provides alerts to parents when a high-risk AI chat app is used or when conversation may discuss self-harm.
Aura Pros & Cons
Pros
Integrates parental controls with safety & wellbeing insights
User friendly navigation
Get started in as little as 5 minutes
Cons
Parental control features are not available for desktops yet
Time Limits apply primarily to internet-connected apps
Aura at a Glance
8.6
Editorial ScoreEase of Use
User-friendly interface with simple setup designed for ease of use across devices
9.0
Features
Offers key parental control features including screen time limits, content filtering, location tracking, and activity monitoring
9.0
Number of Devices
Supports unlimited devices and users under a single plan
10.0
Pricing
No free plan or trial is explicitly presented on this offer page; pricing appears slightly above average
8.0
Customer Support
Phone support is available, but no details on hours or additional support channels are provided
7.0
Highlights
Features: Full-featured protection
Ease of Use: Easy for users
Reliability: Above average
Value: Just above average
Best For
Protecting your kids from accessing dangerous or inappropriate sites and apps
Getting a complete view kids online activity
Parental controls on smartphones and tablets
Helping kids develop healthy online habits
Why Choose Aura
Aura Parents is designed to help parents raise kids who thrive online and off. Instead of just providing "blunt tools" for screen time, Aura supports parents with the insight, context, and guidance needed to navigate an always changing digital world. By helping parents notice meaningful patterns, Aura empowers families to build trust and connection rather than relying on invasive surveillance.
What Aura Offers
Aura provides a comprehensive range of parental control, digital wellbeing and cybersecurity tools in one package:
Content filtering and blocking: Set filters based on age (Child, Teen), customize them by category or based on specific words. You can block specific apps, games, and websites entirely, ensuring inappropriate content is stopped before it reaches your child’s screen
Safe Search: This feature allows parents to filter explicit and harmful search results from appearing. Simply toggle on Search Engines, which stops sexually explicit content from search results for Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo or YouTube Restricted Mode, which turns on the restricted content mode provided by YouTube.
Screen time limit & Pause the InternetⓇ: Set daily time limits for specific apps or websites. Use the Pause the Internet® feature to instantly disable access on a child’s device for dinner or offline time. Once the limit is hit, they will be unable to access that app or the internet for the rest of the day, unless you award them Bonus Time.
Bonus Time: Reward independence and positive habits by granting extra online time
Messaging Insights: Find out which apps your kid is using to send messages. See the message volume, when messages are sent, and the tone used in those messages.
Safe Gaming: Powered by Kidas, this feature monitors voice and text in over 200 PC games, flagging potential cyberbullying or predatory behavior.
Daily vitals: Know when tech is helping — and when it’s getting in the way. These features highlight trends in sleep opportunity, daytime device usage, and social patterns to help parents notice shifts in habits.
Risk Signals: Flags patterns in messages that may discuss self-harm, providing an opportunity for a parent check-in.
AI App Monitoring & Alerts: Provides visibility into interactions with AI apps, flags when the app is considered high-risk and provides insight into the tone used on each AI app.
Core Security Tools: Includes a military-grade VPN, modern antivirus protection, and 24/7 Dark Web monitoring for identity theft protection.
Features
Content Filtering and Blocking
Aura enables parents to establish age-appropriate guardrails for each child, from younger kids to teens. You can create a customized digital experience by selecting specific apps, websites, keywords and streaming services to limit or restrict across an unlimited number of linked mobile devices. Aura’s content filtering and Safe Search features work on any network—whether your child is at home, at school, or at a friend’s house—proactively filtering explicit results from search engines and YouTube to provide peace of mind.
Screen time limit & Pause the InternetⓇ
Aura’s flexible time limit features allow you to set daily boundaries for total internet use or specific limits for individual apps. Once a limit is reached, access to the internet or that specific app is disabled for the day unless you choose to grant Bonus Time to reward positive habits and independence. To support healthy routines, parents can also schedule Focus Times or Bedtimes, which reduce distractions during homework or bed time by allowing access only to essential tools. For immediate boundaries, the Pause the Internet® feature lets you instantly disable internet access to any device linked to that child’s profile with a single tap.
Digital wellbeing features
Aura’s digital vitals is a key differentiator among competitors. While standard parental controls provide data on what a child is doing (time spent), Aura goes further to provide insight into how it might be affecting your kids. Designed with clinical psychologists, these features offer context that raw data cannot. It looks at online behavior and identifies trends and patterns unique to your child to help you gain insight into not only what they’re doing on their devices but how it may be impacting their overall wellbeing.
Online Activity
The Online Activity view provides a clear breakdown of where time is spent, including the top apps and categories.
Daytime & Nighttime Activity
View Their Online Activities any time of day
Gain a personalized view of your kid's online usage patterns, making it easier to understand behaviors that may impact their sleep or general wellbeing.
AI App Monitoring & Alerts
As AI chatbots popularity increases among kids of all ages, Aura Parents monitors these interactions and provides parents with the tone of the messages sent as well as alerts for when a high-risk AI app has been used.
Safe Gaming
Safe Gaming provides extra visibility in high-risk gaming environments by monitoring voice and text communications in over 200 popular PC games, including Fortnite and Roblox. Operating in the background on your child’s Windows PC, the feature uses AI to flag patterns associated with serious risks. If Aura detects language related to the following, it surfaces a signal for the parent:
Cyberbullying or "flaming"
Potential predator behavior
Hate speech or offensive language
Sexual content or privacy violations
Detection Rates and Reliability
Aura only launched in 2021. Therefore, it hasn’t yet been tested by any notable third-party testing sites.
Pricing & Value
Aura Parents offers excellent value by providing full parental controls, digital wellbeing features, and gaming protection for $99.99/year, with a 60-day money back guarantee. If you opt for the Family Plan that includes Aura Parents features as well as their signature security features. All plans include 24/7 U.S.-based customer support.
Help and Support
Aura’s U.S.-based customer support team is available 24/7 via phone or email to deal with technical or billing-related issues. Aura has partnered with Hanna Interpreting Services to provide real-time interpretation in over 300 languages, available 24/7. The Aura website has an extensive FAQ section with answers to frequently asked questions.
Bottom Line
Aura Parents is an innovative and reliable digital wellbeing tool that moves beyond simple parental controls to provide meaningful insights into a child's digital life. By combining clinical expertise with sophisticated AI and leading security technology, it is an excellent choice for families looking for a holistic, non-intrusive way to support their children's wellbeing in the digital age.
About Aura
Aura started out as a company focused on identity theft protection, but has developed great family safety features in the Aura Parents app. The app also comes with Antivirus protection, VPN, and a password manager, so you can’t go wrong with this complete package.
How do I know I can trust this review?
Top10.com authors, contributors, and editors are serious about research. We combine our own experience with the services we recommend, with reviews that come from verified users–just like you! Together, with reviews from industry experts, we find the Top 10 best products and services to make sure you can choose with confidence and ease.
Daniel Blechynden
Daniel Blechynden writes for Top10.com and specializes in tech, with a focus on web hosting and website building, personal finance and investing, the sciences, and digital marketing. He holds degrees in Chemistry and Marine Science from the University of Western Australia and has written for a number of leading publications.