Best GPS Tracker for Cats: With or Without a Subscription

If you want to see on your phone where your cat is, you need a GPS tracker with a SIM card, and that always costs something every month. You can track a cat with no monthly fee, using a Bluetooth tag such as an AirTag or a radio finder. Those only find your cat when it is close by, or when other people's phones happen to pass it.

GPS, Bluetooth or radio: what a cat tracker can actually do

Online, almost everything is sold as a "cat GPS tracker". There are really three kinds, and the difference decides whether you will find your cat when it matters.

GPS tracker with a SIM card: live on a map

The tracker works out its position from satellites and sends it over the mobile network to an app. You see your cat live, you can draw a safe zone around your home and you get an alert when your cat leaves it. There is no distance limit as long as there is mobile signal.

Two things come with that. The SIM card uses data, which you pay for. And you have to charge the tracker every few days, or about once a week with power-saving settings.

Bluetooth tag such as the AirTag: no fees, limited reach

An AirTag or similar tag has no GPS and no SIM. It sends out a Bluetooth signal that nearby phones pick up and pass on anonymously to Apple's Find My network, or Google's Find Hub network for Android tags. If your cat walks past houses and people with phones, you see roughly where it has been.

If it spends the night in a field, a wood or a closed barn, the last known location can stay out of date for hours. You also get no alert when your cat leaves home. The upside is the battery: Apple says more than a year on a standard coin cell.

Radio frequency (RF) finder: searching with a handset

Your cat wears a tiny tag and you carry a handset that beeps or lights up as you point it the right way. You need no phone, no subscription and no network, and the tags weigh only a few grams. You get no map, though. You already need a rough idea of where your cat is, within a few hundred metres in open ground and a lot less through walls and houses.

That makes RF good for a cat that hides in a shed, a garage or under the neighbour's decking, and poor for a cat that roams far. The choice is small. Tabcat, long the best-known RF tracker in the UK, has stopped trading, according to its own website.

Can you get a cat GPS tracker without a subscription?

A real GPS tracker with live location needs mobile data, so you always pay for it somehow. When a cat tracker is sold as "no subscription", it usually means one of these three things:

1. You add your own SIM card. Many cheap trackers have an empty SIM slot. You buy a pay-as-you-go data SIM and set up the connection in the app. That can work out cheaper, but setup is fiddly, support is often thin, and many of these units are bigger because they are also sold for dogs.
2. The SIM is included for life. A few brands do this, but the ones we found on Amazon UK are sold for dogs. PitPat is an example.
3. It is not GPS at all. A Bluetooth tag or an RF finder has no monthly fee, with the limits you read above.

For comparison, here is what the two big cat brands charge in the UK. Weenect lists £13 a month on a monthly plan, down to £3.67 a month if you pay five years upfront. Tractive starts at £4.50 a month on its longer plans, according to its Amazon UK listing. In both cases, the longer you pay ahead, the lower the monthly price.

So work out the total over two years: the tracker plus the plan. On Weenect's UK prices, two years on the monthly plan costs £312 in fees, against about £110 on the two-year plan. Prices change, so check them before you buy. Pick a tracker that supports 4G (LTE-M) too. Older 2G and 3G networks are being switched off in more and more countries, and trackers that rely on them lose their connection.

Weight and safety: what can your cat carry?

A cat wears its tracker day and night, in a place where it cannot take it off. Weight matters. The makers give a minimum weight themselves: Tractive and Weenect both advise their GPS trackers for cats from 3 kg (6.6 lb). For kittens and small, slight cats a GPS tracker is usually too heavy. Check when cats stop growing if you are not sure your young cat is there yet.

Always on a breakaway collar

An ordinary collar can catch on a branch or a fence, and a cat can get a front leg through it. A breakaway collar, also called a quick-release or safety collar, has a buckle that snaps open under a hard pull and stays shut during normal movement. Vets recommend this type for cats.

There is an honest downside. When the buckle opens, the tracker is gone too. That is the most common complaint in reviews of cat trackers: collars found in a neighbour's garden or on a driveway. Get your cat microchipped and keep the details up to date as well. A chip cannot fall off and lets a vet or rescue centre contact you when someone brings your cat in. In England it has been a legal requirement for pet cats since June 2024.

• Leave room for two fingers between the collar and the neck.
• Choose a tracker that fits on a breakaway collar, or one with its own safety buckle. The Tractive CAT 6 Mini has one built in, with an adjustable release strength.
• Do not turn the release strength up as far as it goes just because the collar keeps coming off. It has to open when your cat is stuck.
• Check every day for the first few weeks that the collar does not rub or pull out fur. If you see a bald or red patch, take it off and ask your vet.
• Never put a lead on a breakaway collar. Use a harness for that.

Our picks by situation

We only list trackers we have a clear reason for. Prices and plans change often, so check them on the product page before you order.

What owners say about the Tractive CAT 6 Mini

The first surprise for many owners is how far their cat goes. One reviewer in a semi-rural area found that the tabby they thought stayed near the house covers about 3.5 miles a day along hedgerows and farmland. Another owner found a sixteen-year-old cat with dementia asleep in an unused shed, using the tracker's sound. Owners also learn that the line on the map jumps around when a cat is lying still. That is GPS drift, and the cat has not moved at all. The biggest complaint is the collar coming off outdoors. Owners of two young cats of 3.7 and 4.4 kg lost the collars three times in three days, in neighbours' gardens and on a driveway, and sent them back. Others find the subscription steep on top of the price of the collar, or get "left the safe zone" alerts while the cat is in bed.

What owners say about the Weenect XS

Owners like the ring and the light most. One reviewer whose cat wanders out of earshot rings the tracker, switches on the torch and calls, and then sees the cat coming home across the field. Typical battery life in reviews is three to four days, and some owners charge it every night to be safe. The complaints are about battery and signal. With a one-minute update interval, one owner got less than 12 hours of use, and others lose the signal when the cat is deep in brambles. Several say the first position in the app can be well off and takes a minute to settle with the Super Live mode. Customer service gets a lot of praise, including refunds. A tip from a long-time user: sew your phone number onto the holder and leave bells and name tags off, so there is less to snag.

What owners say about the AirTag on a cat

AirTag reviews are mostly about keys, wallets and luggage, so they tell you little about cats. The cat owners who mention AirTags do so in reviews of GPS trackers, and their point is always the same: in a village or on the edge of farmland, too few phones pass by for the location to be useful. That is why several of them moved to a GPS tracker after all. In a busy town it is a cheap way to see roughly where your cat spends the day.

On Android? Look for a tag that works with Google's Find Hub network, or with Samsung's SmartThings Find if you have a Samsung phone. They work the same way, with the same limits.

What owners say about the Girafus

The happy owners have rescued cats from trees, from behind sheds and once from the locked garage of a house whose owners were on holiday. Once the handset has locked on, it leads you to within centimetres, which a GPS tracker cannot do. Owners compare it to a game of hot and cold, and say signals bounce off buildings, so you turn slowly on the spot. In a street of detached houses one reviewer gets about 100 metres of usable range, well short of the advertised figure. The complaints are about the hardware: tags that lose their pairing with the handset, rechargeable batteries or tags that fail after a few months, and a seller that is hard to reach.

How to choose in four questions

1. How far does your cat go? If it stays in the garden and next door, a Bluetooth tag or RF finder is often enough. If it roams across fields, woodland or an industrial estate, you need GPS with a SIM card.
2. Do you want an alert when it leaves home? Only a GPS tracker with a SIM card can do that. A tag only shows afterwards where your cat was.
3. How heavy is your cat? Under 3 kg (6.6 lb), a GPS tracker is usually too heavy. Check the maker's minimum weight.
4. How often will you charge it? A GPS tracker needs charging every few days to about a week. If you often forget, it will be flat on the day you need it.

Getting your cat used to it

• Start with the collar. Let your cat wear the collar indoors for a few days, first without the tracker and then with it.
• Set a home zone. Most GPS trackers let you mark your home as a safe zone or Wi-Fi zone. The tracker saves power while your cat is home and alerts you when it leaves.
• Test it yourself first. Walk a loop around your area with the tracker and see how accurate the app is before you rely on it.
• Charge at a fixed time. Charge it when your cat is indoors anyway, in the evening or overnight.
• Expect a rougher fix indoors. Under a roof or in a shed the tracker sees few satellites. It then often falls back on Wi-Fi or a mobile mast, which is less precise.

A tracker is most useful in tense periods, such as your cat's first trips outside or the weeks after a move. If you would rather keep your cat closer to home, read our tips on keeping cats in the garden. Taking your cat on a long trip? See how to travel with a cat by car.

Frequently asked questions