Private by default
Cross‑platform location sharing for iPhone, Android and wearables, built with strict no‑tracking privacy.
No card needed to start your trial. Cancel any time.
Not in the app stores yet. This is where they will be, and your free trial starts when you create your first loop.
What sets us apart
Only a short window of history, no all‑day GPS watching, and watches as well as phones
2 Days, Then Deleted
Other apps keep months of location history. Orbit keeps just 2 days and automatically deletes the rest — because long‑term trails reveal far more than families realize. And when you delete your data, it’s gone for good. Orbit doesn’t keep copies, backups, or hidden history.
Easy on Your Battery
Battery drain is the usual complaint with apps like this. Orbit updates only when you move a meaningful distance and stays silent while you’re still, never holding GPS open all day.
Watches, Too
A child with only a watch is still on the map. A watch works differently from a phone, and that is the hardware, not Orbit. An Android watch speeds up while its wearer is on the move. An Apple Watch can’t share its position continuously, so it updates about once an hour, and when you ask, one tap on the watch checks in and sends where they are.
Keeps you in the loop
Find out as it happens, or ask anytime.
Arrivals and departures
Home, school, a grandparent’s house. A drop-off at school can notify for the kids and not the adult driving them. Departures tell you how long they stayed.
Ask if they are okay
A check-in posts a message to the loop, and sends where they are with it. Ask for one and they are told who asked, and so is everyone else on the timeline. Opening the map is quieter: it asks the phones and watches on it for a fresh position, with no notification, but only ever fetches what that person already shares with your loop, and no phone more than once every few minutes, no watch more than once a quarter of an hour.
The whole day, not just now
The timeline keeps arrivals, check-ins and drives if a loop turns them on, so “did they get to school” still has an answer at four o’clock. A finished drive is recorded quietly, without a notification.
What actually interrupts you?
Some things are worth an interruption. Everything else you can turn down.
Asking for help reaches everyone at once
One button alerts everyone you share with and sends your location with it. It works from a watch, and it works with the phone locked.
A warning before a phone dies
Turn on low battery and you are alerted while there is still time to do something about it, and you can be told once if a phone you rely on goes silent. Both are off until you choose them, so you only hear about what you asked for.
Turn down the chatter, keep the alarm
Every notification setting is on one screen: turn a kind off for all your loops, or mute one loop, person or place. Asking for help always comes through at full volume.
Who can see me?
The people in your loops, and nobody else.
Stop sharing whenever you want
One switch pauses a loop, and everyone in it sees that you paused. A parent can keep it on for a child in their care, and the child’s own screen says so.
You can see everyone who can see you
A loop is a list you can open, and everyone in it can see everyone else in it. You are there because you entered an invite code somebody gave you, and there is no hidden or silent mode.
Nothing is sold, ever
No data selling. No third-party tracking SDKs. No advertising profile. Your subscription is the entire business.
Getting Started
Setup is quick and easy
Create a loop
A loop is the small group you share with. Invite people with a short code that expires after a week.
Share when you want to
Positions update as you move and stop when you are still. Pause any loop with one switch, and everyone in it sees that you paused.
Set the places that matter
Add a place, and the loop hears when somebody arrives or leaves it. Get help takes no setup at all.
For parents and caregivers
Setting up someone in your care
A supervised member shares their location from the moment they join, and it is not theirs to switch off. It is meant for someone you are responsible for: a child, or an adult living with memory loss. Setting one up takes about a minute, and nothing about it is hidden. They are told, and shown who set it.
Start a loop
Create it in the Orbit app. You will be asked to confirm your email address first, which is what keeps a free trial to one per person.
Make a supervised invite
On the Loop tab, under Invite, tap “Create supervised invite”. You get a second code, separate from the ordinary one, so you can add a partner and a child on different terms.
Send it to their phone
Share the link or read out the code. They install Orbit, make their own account, and enter it. Doing it on their phone yourself is often easier. Codes expire after seven days.
What it stops
- Enforced: They cannot pause location sharing.
- Enforced: They cannot leave the loop. Only an admin can remove them.
- Enforced: They cannot join another loop, or start one of their own.
- Enforced: They cannot be made an admin of the loop while supervised.
What it does not do
- Limit: It is not hidden. The Loop screen tells them sharing is on, that an admin manages it, and who that is.
- Limit: Get help keeps working for them, and always will.
- Limit: Orbit cannot override the phone. Someone can still deny location permission in the operating system, turn the phone off, or delete the app. Orbit will show that their position has gone stale, but it cannot prevent it.
- Limit: Lifting supervision is one switch for an admin, and it hands the choice back.
- Limit: It is not a way to watch an adult who has not agreed to it. Supervision is for someone in your care, and Orbit tells them who set it either way.
Privacy
Your location is not the product
Many location apps drift toward ads, scoring, and data sales. Orbit stays focused: your people, your alerts, no tracking, no data brokers. You pay for Orbit, so you’re the customer — never the product
No data selling
Orbit has no advertising business and no data partners. There is no arrangement under which your location could become something we sell.
No third-party tracking SDKs
The apps ship no analytics, attribution, or advertising SDKs. Nothing in Orbit reports your behavior to a company you have never heard of.
Minimal data collection
An email address, a display name, your loops, and recent positions. Positions are kept for 2 days and then deleted. What happened is kept: arrivals, check-ins, and drives if a loop turns those on. None of that is a trail.
What is collected, how long it is kept, and who else it passes through.
Pricing
One price, however many loops
Not one per person, and not one per loop. A family group and a friends group cost the same as one, and the first thirty days are free without a card.
30 days free
One loop, for a month. No card, no reminders to cancel.
Free
No card asked for.
- Included: Everything Orbit does, for one loop
- Included: One loop, up to 5 saved places
- Included: No payment details asked for
- Included: One trial per person
Orbit
One price for everything you make, however many people are in it.
$5.99per month
or $49.99 per year · save 30%
- Included: Up to 5 loops
- Included: Up to 10 people in a loop
- Included: Up to 10 saved places per loop
- Included: Everyone’s latest location on one map
- Included: Arrival and departure alerts
- Included: Get help, to every loop at once
- Included: Check-ins from your phone or watch
- Included: 2 days of location history
- Included: Apple Watch and Android watches
- Included: Temporary loops for one occasion, which are always free
Temporary loops
For one occasion: a concert, a trip, a day out. Free, always: before your trial, during it, after it, and with or without a subscription.
Free
Always, for anyone with an account.
- Included: Ends 24 hours after you start it, for everyone in it
- Included: Then deleted, with its places and its timeline
- Included: Up to 2 running at once
- Included: Up to 3 places in each
- Included: Never counts toward the loops your plan covers
- Not included: Supervision
Subscribe in the Orbit app, through the App Store or Google Play.
FAQ
Before you install it
Where do I subscribe?
In the Orbit app, when your trial is ending or from Settings, then Account. You pay through the App Store or Google Play, and change or cancel it there. One subscription covers every loop you own, whichever phone the people in them use.
What if someone gets into my account?
Both fixes are in the app, under Settings.
Changing your password signs out every device, including whoever else was signed in.
“Sign out everywhere” does the same without changing your password, and also replaces the invite codes for any loop you own. Everyone who shares a loop with you is emailed, because anyone in your account could see their location too. Their own passwords are not affected.
If you cannot get in at all, use the reset link on the sign-in page. It works for one hour. Orbit keeps only 2 days of location history, so that is the most anyone could have read.
Can someone track me without my knowing?
No. You join a loop with an invite code and can see everyone in it. Most members can pause sharing whenever they like.
Invites a parent or carer sets up keep sharing on instead, and Orbit says so on the loop screen, before and after joining. There is no hidden mode either way.
How much battery does it use?
Some. Every app that shares location costs battery, and one that says otherwise is not counting.
Orbit takes its cadence from movement rather than a timer: it reports as you move, and only now and then while you are sitting still. It asks the phone for an approximate position rather than keeping GPS running, which is the setting that actually empties a battery, and uses GPS only near your places, where an arrival needs it.
So the heaviest day is a long drive, when the phone is usually charging, and the lightest is a school day.
How current is the map?
Somebody out and about is usually within a few hundred meters of their pin, more in a car. An Android phone reports about once a minute on the move, and an iPhone every 150 meters or so on foot and about every half-minute driving, placed by Wi‑Fi and cell towers rather than GPS. When they stop, it stops, and checks in now and then to say it is still there. Near one of your places the phone switches to GPS, so arriving or leaving is precise, and it is sent as soon as the phone sees it, whatever it was doing.
An Android watch keeps up too: while its wearer is walking, cycling or in a car it reports every minute or two, and once they stop it reports every fifteen to thirty minutes. An Apple Watch is slower, by Apple’s design rather than Orbit’s: outside a workout it lets an app check where it is only now and then, so between asks it updates about once an hour, and more often with Orbit on its watch face.
Orbit is not a sat-nav. Following somebody turn by turn means holding GPS open all day, which is what flattens a battery by teatime.
Opening the map asks the phones and watches on it for a fresh position, so what you see is usually a minute old rather than a quarter of an hour. An Apple Watch answers only while Orbit is on its watch face. If you need to know now, ask where they are. An iPhone or an Android watch is woken to send a fresh position within seconds, even with Orbit closed, and an Android phone is already reporting as it moves. They get a notification saying you asked. It works only while they are sharing with you. An Apple Watch is woken the same way only while Orbit is on its watch face; either way it shows your request, and tapping it opens Check in, which sends where they are.
Which permissions does Orbit actually need?
Orbit keeps working if you refuse any of them. What you lose is reliability.
Location, set to Always. “While using the app” reports only while Orbit is on screen, which for an app whose job is saying where somebody is comes close to not working. This is the one that matters.
Notifications. Without it nothing reaches you: not an arrival, not a check-in, not a request for help.
Physical activity, on Android. It is how Orbit notices a drive starting, so it reports more often while you are moving.
Background running. Phones and watches both let you restrict an app in the background, and some makers do it by default. If somebody seems to update only when they open the app, this is almost always why.
What happens if I stop paying?
The loop stops showing positions and its map is replaced by a note saying why. Nothing is deleted, and its places and history come back the moment you subscribe again. Get help keeps working, and you can cancel in the App Store or Google Play whenever you like.
Can I leave a loop without anyone knowing?
Leaving is visible to the loop, because a member quietly vanishing would be worse than one who left openly. To stop for a while, pause instead.