Best co-parenting apps compared: pricing, court-approved claims, and what each one is actually built for

Written by our research team · Published August 7, 2026Pricing and features verified against each vendor’s own site on this date. This is general information, not legal advice.

What is a co-parenting app?

A co-parenting app is a shared workspace for two separated parents. The standard feature set is a messaging thread neither side can edit, a shared calendar carrying the custody schedule and parenting time change requests, an expense log with reimbursement tracking, and an information store for medical details, school contacts and the like.

The underlying promise is that moving these conversations into one app makes them calmer and creates a record. Both halves are real, and the second is why family law professionals often suggest one. A message with a first-viewed timestamp settles arguments about whether something was communicated in a way that a screenshot of a text thread does not.

What matters when choosing is that these products are not variations on a single idea. They emphasise different things, and the differences show up exactly when a situation gets difficult.

The best co-parenting apps at a glance

Prices read from each vendor’s own pricing page on August 7, 2026. Coparently publishes its pricing through a script that did not return a figure we could verify, so we have left it out rather than quote a number we could not confirm. Disclosure: Documented is our own product. It is in the table because parents searching for a co-parenting app often turn out to need something else, not because it competes with the apps above on their own ground.

OurFamilyWizard

The oldest and most widely referenced of the co-parenting apps, and the one family law professionals name most often. Its four tiers run from a basic subscription at $9.17 a month with 1 GB of storage and receive-only calls, through Essentials at $12.50, Premium at $18, and Max at $24.99. Higher tiers add documented video and audio calls, a writing assistant that rewrites messages to reduce heat, GPS-verified check-ins at exchanges, unlimited storage, and certified records that are notarized, printed and mailed.

It is the most complete option and the most expensive one. If the dispute in your case is about several things at once, it covers the most ground.

TalkingParents

Built more narrowly around the record itself. Its three tiers are $7, $16 and $32 a month, and the emphasis throughout is that the communication log cannot be altered or deleted by either parent. Higher tiers add accountable calling and a sentiment scanner that flags the tone of a message before it is sent.

If the core problem in your case is what was said and when, this is the most focused of the three.

AppClose

For years AppClose was the answer to the question of whether there is a free co-parenting app. That has changed. It now charges $7.99 a month, which still makes it the cheapest of the major three, and it offers a 60 day free trial with no card required and free accounts for parents in need. It states it does not sell data or serve ads, and does not push users onto annual plans. We cover it in more detail on our AppClose comparison page.

2houses, Coparently and the smaller co-parent apps

2houses is worth knowing about for one structural reason: it charges per family rather than per parent, at $14.17 a month billed annually, and states that only one parent needs to pay. In a situation where the other parent is unwilling to spend money on an app, that removes an argument.

Coparently, Peaceful Parent and amicable occupy the same space with smaller feature sets. Custody X Change is a different kind of product: it builds parenting plans and calculates schedules rather than carrying day to day communication.

Documented, and why it is not on this list in the usual way

Documented is our own product, so treat what follows accordingly. It is included here because a large share of people searching for a co-parenting app are not actually looking for one, and it is worth saying so plainly.

Every app above is built on shared access. Two accounts, one thread. That design is right when both parents will use it, and it is the reason family law professionals recommend them. It also means the tool inherits the other parent’s cooperation as a dependency.

Documented does the opposite thing on purpose. There is no field for a second parent, because there is no second person to add. It holds your own account of your own parenting time, sealed and independently time-stamped at the moment you save it, so that a note written tonight can be shown later to have existed tonight and to be unchanged since. It carries no messages between households and never will.

So it is not a co-parenting app, and it does not replace one. If you and the other parent can both use OurFamilyWizard, AppClose or TalkingParents, use one of them. The two tools answer different questions: a co-parenting app answers what passed between you, and a private record answers what happened on your own time. Plenty of parents end up needing both.

Is any co-parenting app actually court-approved?

No. This is the most common misunderstanding in the category, and it is worth being precise about, because parents make decisions on the strength of it.

There is no court-approved co-parenting app, because there is no approval program. No court in any of the 50 states certifies software, and neither does any federal court. There is no list to be added to and no standard to be met.

What genuinely happens is narrower. In a specific case, a judge can order two parents to communicate through a named app, usually where unmoderated contact has become a problem. That is a real order, binding on those parents, and it is what vendors mean when they say an app has been court-ordered. AppClose, for instance, says its records have been court-ordered in every U.S. county. Read carefully, that is a claim about judges having required its use, not about any court having endorsed the product.

The practical consequence: choosing an app because it is marketed as court-approved does not tell you your records will be accepted. Admissibility turns on the rules of evidence, principally authentication under Federal Rule of Evidence 901 and the hearsay exceptions at Rule 803, and on your own jurisdiction’s version of them. It does not turn on which vendor you paid. Our guide on what actually holds up in family court covers that in full.

Do both co-parents need the same app, and the same plan?

The same app, yes. That is not a policy choice, it is what the product is: a shared thread has to have two people in it.

The same plan, usually not. OurFamilyWizard and TalkingParents both sell subscriptions per account, so each parent picks and pays for their own tier, and one can sit on a cheaper plan than the other. 2houses is the exception worth remembering, since it states one account covers the family and only one parent needs to pay.

Cost, and whether there is a free co-parenting app

Across the major options the honest answer is that the free co-parenting app is largely gone. AppClose held that position for years and now charges $7.99 a month. What remains is trials: 60 days at AppClose, 30 days at TalkingParents, 14 days at 2houses, and a 30 day refund window at OurFamilyWizard.

Two things are worth weighing beyond the monthly figure. Most of these products bill annually or every two years, so the real commitment is a year of cost, not a month. And where each parent pays separately, the household cost of a co-parenting app is roughly double the advertised price.

Communication: secure messaging and unalterable records

Secure messaging is the feature every one of these apps leads with, and the substance behind it is that neither co-parent can edit or delete a message after sending it. Every message is securely stored on the vendor’s servers rather than on a phone either parent controls. Combined with first-viewed timestamps, that resolves the two arguments that recur most often in these cases: what was actually said, and whether the other parent saw it.

A detail worth checking before you commit is how each app handles notifications. A notification that reveals the full message on a lock screen is a problem in a household where the phone is not always private, and the apps differ in how much control they give you over that.

Some tiers add tone assistance, rewriting a message to be less inflammatory before it goes out. Whether that helps depends on the relationship. It reliably makes the written record look more reasonable, which is not nothing.

Shared calendar and custody schedule

The shared calendar carries the parenting schedule and, more usefully, the change requests against it. A request to swap a weekend that is made, accepted or declined inside the calendar becomes part of the record rather than a disputed memory. If your friction is mostly about schedule changes, this feature matters more than messaging.

Most of these apps will also hold a visitation schedule alongside the regular rotation, including holidays and any virtual visitation arrangement, and will show both co-parents the same view of it. That sounds minor until you have argued about whose turn a holiday was. Where a calendar earns its keep is the notification it sends when the other co-parent edits an entry, since a silent change to a shared calendar is worse than no shared calendar at all.

What these calendars do not do is tell you what actually happened. A calendar records the plan. Whether the exchange happened at the scheduled time is a separate fact, and it is the one that tends to be contested. Our guide on 50/50 custody schedules and what each one asks you to document covers that distinction.

Expense tracking, shared expenses and reimbursement

Shared expense tracking logs a cost, attaches the receipt, and tracks whether the other parent reimbursed it. OurFamilyWizard layers payments on top through OFWpay, with the number of included payments rising by tier.

This is the feature most likely to justify the subscription on its own, because reimbursement disputes generate a long tail of small arguments and a per-item record with receipts attached ends most of them. See what child support actually covers for which costs are typically in scope.

App privacy: what a co-parenting app can see, and who else can

A point that gets little attention. In a co-parenting app, everything you write is visible to the other parent by design, and in many cases to third parties who have been granted access, including attorneys, guardians ad litem and parenting coordinators.

That is appropriate for communication. It is a poor fit for your own notes. Anything you would not want read aloud by the other parent’s attorney does not belong in a shared app, and the temptation to write a frank account of a difficult exchange inside the thread is a trap worth naming.

The best co-parenting app for high conflict

In genuinely high conflict cases the useful features are a narrow set: an unalterable message record, first-viewed timestamps, documented calls, and the ability to grant an attorney access. TalkingParents is built around exactly that, and OurFamilyWizard’s higher tiers cover it with more besides.

The harder truth is that a shared app can also become the venue for the conflict rather than a container for it. A message written to be read later by a judge is still a message your co-parent reads tonight, and some parents find the thread escalates precisely because both sides know it is being kept. Where contact itself is the problem, the approach that tends to help is reducing it, which is what parallel parenting describes, and keeping your own record separately.

What if the other parent will not use the app?

This is the scenario the category does not answer, and it is common.

Every co-parenting app depends on the other parent creating an account and continuing to use it. If they refuse, disengage after a month, or use it only when it suits them, the shared record has gaps precisely where your case needs it. No feature fixes this, because participation is the product.

What stays within your control is your own record. A contemporaneous log, written close to when something happened, does not need the other parent’s cooperation to exist. Courts weigh records partly on when they were made and why, which is the ground covered by Federal Rule of Evidence 803(1) for a statement made while or just after perceiving something, and 803(6) for records kept as a regular practice rather than assembled for a hearing. Our guide on keeping records when the other parent will not cooperate goes through it.

How to choose a co-parenting app

• Start from your actual dispute. Communication problems point to TalkingParents, mixed disputes to OurFamilyWizard, cost sensitivity to AppClose, and an unwilling payer to 2houses.
• Check whether your order already names one. If a judge has ordered a specific app, that decision is made.
• Price the household, not the account. Where each parent subscribes separately, double the sticker price.
• Use the trial for the hard case. Sixty days at AppClose and thirty at TalkingParents are long enough to see how the app behaves during a real disagreement.
• Test the support team while you are still in the trial. Send one question and see what comes back. If you ever need a record exported under time pressure, that response time is the thing that will matter.
• Ignore court-approved marketing. It describes no certification and predicts nothing about admissibility.
• Keep your own record either way. A shared app records the conversation. It does not record your parenting time.

Frequently asked questions

References

This article explains general concepts and is not legal advice. Documented is not a law firm. Custody procedure and the rules of evidence vary by state; confirm specifics with an attorney licensed in your state or your court’s self-help center.

• OurFamilyWizard pricing page, read August 7, 2026
• TalkingParents pricing page, read August 7, 2026
• AppClose home page, read August 7, 2026
• 2houses pricing page, read August 7, 2026
• Custody X Change order page, read August 7, 2026
• Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 803: Exceptions to the Rule Against Hearsay (see (1) and (6))
• Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 901: Authenticating or Identifying Evidence

Pricing changes without notice. Figures above were read from each vendor’s own site on the date shown and are not re-verified automatically.

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