Is this the same Aura as the digital picture frame?

No. Aura's parental-controls and online-safety service (aura.com) is a different company from Aura Home, which makes the smart picture frames. This page is about the parental-controls app.

What's the difference between the Kids plan and the Family plan?

The Kids plan is the parental-controls-only tier Aura built with Common Sense Media — filtering, screen time, and monitoring for unlimited kids. The Family plan adds adult identity-theft protection, credit monitoring, a VPN, and antivirus for up to five adults.

Does Aura replace Apple Screen Time or Google Family Link?

No — it sits on top of them. Keep the device's built-in controls doing the OS-level work and use Aura for cross-device alerts, game-chat monitoring, and the wellbeing insights the native tools don't offer.

Can my kid get around it?

Determined kids can work around any control — a second account, a friend's phone, a VPN. Aura raises the floor and flags a lot, but it's a safety net, not a wall. What keeps kids safest is a kid who'll tell you when something goes wrong.

Aura Parental Controls – WISE Score & Parent Review

Name: Screenwise
Author: Screenwise

Where to Find

App Store

Google Play

Screenwise Verdict

Aura is the buy-one-thing answer to a job that's normally spread across Apple Screen Time, your router, and a separate monitoring app. It filters content, caps screen time, schedules bedtime, and watches 200+ games and social apps for the things that scare parents most — cyberbullying, predators, self-harm talk — then surfaces them as alerts instead of a firehose of raw messages.

What sets it apart from Bark or Qustodio is the wellbeing score: a research-informed indicator of how your kid is doing online, developed with clinical psychologists, paired with a weekly snapshot meant to start a conversation rather than replace one.

It's a paid layer on top of the free controls already built into the device, not a substitute for them — and like every monitoring tool, it works best when your kid knows it's running and why. The Kids plan Aura built with Common Sense Media is the lighter, controls-only tier; the Family plan adds identity-theft protection, a VPN, and antivirus you may or may not need.

If you want one app that covers most of the bases and points you toward talking instead of just watching, Aura is a strong pick. Don't let the dashboard stand in for the conversation.

Age Fit

Built for parents of school-age kids through teens — roughly 5 to 17. Most useful once a kid has their own phone, tablet, or gaming PC; less relevant for the toddler years, when a hard time cap and co-watching do the job.

WISE Breakdown

Wholesome

74

Built around family safety and a kid's digital wellbeing rather than engagement — the wellbeing score and weekly snapshot are designed to start conversations, not just hand parents a transcript. Loses some ground because heavy monitoring, used in secret, can erode the trust it's meant to protect.

Imaginative

22

A utility for parents, not a creative space for kids. It filters, limits, and monitors; there's no play, building, or exploration in it. A low score here is expected for a control app and isn't a knock on what it does.

Safe

86

Safety is the entire point, and Aura is strong at it — content filtering, predator and self-harm alerts across 200+ games and social apps, screen-time and bedtime controls, no ads. A small deduction because any tool collecting this much data about a child is itself something to weigh, and no filter is bypass-proof.

Enriching

58

More than a blunt blocker: the wellbeing insights, weekly snapshots, and the Common Sense Media family device agreement give parents real material for ongoing conversations about digital life. Enriching for the parent-kid relationship when used that way, rather than for the kid directly.

Parent Info

✓

Why It Might Be Great

One dashboard instead of five: filtering, screen-time limits, bedtime scheduling, and monitoring live in a single app across iOS, Android, and Windows.
Catches the high-stakes stuff — alerts for cyberbullying, predator contact, and self-harm language across 200+ games and social platforms, including in-game chat on PC.
'Pause the Internet' and scheduled bedtime cutoffs give you a real off-switch without confiscating the device.
The wellbeing score and weekly snapshot are built to start a conversation, not just hand you a pile of your kid's private messages.
The Common Sense Media partnership adds a grade-by-grade family device agreement — a genuinely useful starting point for setting expectations together.

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What to Watch For

It's a subscription, not a one-time setup — the Kids plan runs about $10/month billed annually, and the Family plan more.
Monitoring a teen without telling them reliably backfires; Aura works best out in the open, paired with an agreement you both sign.
It layers on top of device controls — you still want Apple Screen Time or Family Link doing the OS-level work underneath.
Coverage depends on the platform: deep game-chat monitoring is a Windows-PC feature, and the app needs iOS 16+ or Android 12+.
Like any safety dashboard, it can lull you into thinking the alerts replace checking in. They don't.

Conversation Starters

"What would feel fair to you about what I can and can't see on your phone?"
"If something online ever scared or upset you, who would you want to tell first?"
"Should we fill out the family device agreement together so we both know the rules?"
"What's one app limit you think is reasonable, and one you think is too strict?"

What Parents Ask

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