The 2 Best Bluetooth Trackers for 2025

Top pick

If you use an iPhone and want to track your stuff, Apple’s AirTag is easily the best option. Compared with the competition, this tracker has two distinct strengths that make it our top choice: The AirTag uses Apple’s huge network of devices to assist in finding the area where you left your lost item, and precision tracking makes it easier for you to locate the exact spot. Taken together, these two features mean you’re more likely to find what you’re looking for with the AirTag than with any other Bluetooth tracking system.

Apple’s Find My network has a huge number of devices that can look for your stuff.  Since 2019, Apple’s Find My app has used Bluetooth in every iPhone, iPad, and Mac that’s on the network — that’s a billion devices — to passively and anonymously find lost iPhones, Macs, and even contacts who share their location. AirTags use the same system to report the location of any item you attach them to. In practical terms, this means if you leave your AirTag-equipped keys at the coffee shop, for example, as long as someone there at some point has an Apple device, the keys’ location will be reported to you (and the person with the iPhone or other Apple device who identified it will never know). Although Tile’s trackers work the same way, they do so on a far smaller scale — it’s much more likely that the customer sitting one table over has an iPhone than a Tile or the Life360 app.

Setup is foolproof. Thanks to Apple’s control over both the hardware (the iPhone or iPad and the AirTag) and the software, activating a new AirTag is seamless. When you unpack a new AirTag and place it next to your phone or tablet, a pop-up appears on your screen, much like when you’re pairing a set of AirPods or an Apple Watch. Once you tap Connect, you can set a name for the AirTag and register it to your Apple ID. There are no settings or menus, and the entire process takes under a minute.

You track and manage your AirTags in Apple’s Find My app, where you can see the location and options for each tag. You can also rename or remove an AirTag on this screen, with the latter option resetting it completely, unpairing it from your Apple ID and allowing someone else to use it as if it were new. You can connect up to 16 AirTags to an account.

When you lose an AirTag, you can enable Lost Mode in the Find My app. If someone finds the AirTag (and the item it’s attached to), they can tap the AirTag with their phone to see contact information for returning the item to its owner.

The Precision Tracking feature helps you pinpoint your AirTag’s exact location. The other key feature of the AirTag works once you know your tracker’s general location. Like the iPhone 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 lineups, AirTags support a wireless connection known as Ultra Wideband, which allows for precision locating at relatively short distances. Once you’re in the general vicinity of your AirTag (say, the coffee shop where you left your keys), you can tap the Find button in the Find My app. The app then shows you the direction and distance to the AirTag in question, and your phone vibrates as you get closer and allows you to play a sound to assist in your search. In our testing the AirTag’s tracking signal took a moment to lock on, but once it did we were thoroughly impressed by the system’s accuracy.

Compared with Tile’s trackers, AirTags have a much shorter Bluetooth range. Apple doesn’t state any specific figures, but we found that the tracker maintained a connection to our test iPhone for only 30 feet or so. On the face of it, that doesn’t sound great, but Apple’s much, much larger crowd-finding network and precision locating are more important factors, since that’s what will make it more likely that you’ll recover stuff you’ve truly lost.

It has a sleek design. With its glossy, white plastic front and metal back, the AirTag looks and feels a lot like a pin-back button you might put on a jean jacket or backpack. The diameter is a little larger than a quarter, and the tracker is actually about a millimeter or two thicker than many iPhones, although its curved design makes it feel thinner. You have the option to add custom engraving when you order from Apple, with up to four characters (letters and/or numbers) or selected emoji; if you buy the four-pack, you can get different text on each. Noticeably absent is any sort of attachment mechanism such as a key-ring hole or adhesive back. Instead, you have to buy an extra accessory. Of course, Apple sells a handful of its own, and plenty of third-party companies sell all sorts of designs, as well.

It can chirp if you use the Find My app or Siri to ping it. The tune plays for about six seconds, with a repeating series of beeps. We found both the tone and the volume sufficient to help us find the AirTag when it was hidden around our testing space, comparable to what we’ve experienced with Tile trackers. If your AirTag is buried under a pile of clothes, for instance, you may not hear it, but the tone should otherwise be audible as long as you’re in the same room.

Each AirTag runs on a removable, user-replaceable battery. It’s the only Apple device that actually makes the replacement process easy. When the battery runs low (which, in our testing, happened after a little over a year of use), the Find My app notifies you, and you can swap in a new CR2032 battery by twisting off the AirTag’s metal back, removing the old battery, and popping the new one in. Even with this accessible design, AirTags are IP67 rated, so they should survive being under 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes, although Apple warns: “Splash, water, and dust resistance are not permanent conditions and resistance might decrease as a result of normal wear.”

It will automatically tell you if you’ve left something behind. You can toggle the alerts on and off per device, and you can set exceptions — say, if you don’t need to be alerted every time you leave home without your AirTag-armed backpack — with small, medium, or large separation radiuses, depending on the sensitivity level you need.

You can easily share AirTags. If there’s an item that you want everyone in your household or family to be able to track, such as a suitcase or a bike, you can share the AirTag’s location with up to five people. You can also share the location of a lost tracker with third parties, including airlines, to help expedite the process of finding lost luggage. Under Lost Items in the Find My app, you can turn on the Share Item Location feature to generate a link to share with the airline. The links will go dead when the AirTag is marked found or when the owner manually stops sharing the tracker’s location. (The link automatically expires after seven days.) The feature is currently supported by more than 15 airlines, with more being added over time.

You can find and disable an AirTag that is following you without your knowledge. When AirTags launched, there was widespread concern that the very thing that made Apple’s Bluetooth trackers so good at finding stuff — the extensive Find My network — would also make it easy for abusers to track their victims without their knowledge. And that has happened. But Apple has introduced several features over the years that make it more difficult, including partnering with Google to ensure that both iPhone and Android users receive alerts when Bluetooth trackers are detected near them.

Now when an AirTag or other Find My–compatible device (such as a pair of AirPods) is detected with you, your iPhone or Android phone will receive a notification regarding the tracker’s presence with information about who it belongs to and directions for disabling it.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Your AirTag can’t find your iPhone. Unlike Tile’s trackers (and some others), the AirTag doesn’t have any way to ring your phone if it’s nearby. So if it’s your iPhone that’s lost, you’ll have to rely on the Find My app on another Apple device to find it.

You can’t attach an AirTag directly to an item. Key rings and loops cost extra, so the actual cost is higher than the price of the tracker itself, unless you plan on just tossing one loose into a bag or pocket (which we at Wirecutter often do). Apple’s accessories all cost at least as much as a single AirTag, effectively doubling the price. Obviously, you can save quite a bit by buying from a third-party accessory maker.