The pitch for a subscription tracker is simple: it has its own cellular connection, so it reports location anywhere. That is genuinely useful. What the pitch leaves out is the arithmetic — $5 a month is $60 a year, $240 over four years, on a device that costs $50 and will probably be lost before the subscription ends.
Free-network trackers work differently. They have no SIM. They rely on nearby phones — iPhones and Androids — to anonymously relay their position. In a city with foot traffic, that is accurate to a few metres and updates in minutes. In a field, it does nothing at all.
The honest summaryFree networks are excellent for "the cat got out into the neighbourhood" and useless for "the dog bolted into open country". Choose based on where your animal would actually go.
Side-by-side
* Fi includes a base plan with limited live tracking; full features require a paid tier. Prices as published March 2026.
Where free networks fail
1. Open ground
No phones, no relay. If your animal escapes into farmland, a free-network tag will show the last place it was near a human. This is the single limitation that matters most, and no amount of clever engineering fixes it.
2. Real-time chase
Free-network updates are opportunistic — minutes apart in a city, hours apart in a quiet suburb at night. If you are actively chasing a moving animal, you want LTE. If you are checking whether the cat is in the neighbour's shed, free is fine.
3. Geofencing precision
Subscription devices give you a live geofence with instant alerts. Free-network tags alert on the next relay, which may be ten minutes late. For a cat that slips out daily, that is too slow. For a cat that has never slipped out, it is plenty.
What we recommend, by situation
| If your situation is… | Get |
|---|
| Indoor cat, city or dense suburb, occasional escape risk | NovTag or an AirTag |
| Outdoor-access cat in a rural area | Subscription LTE tracker |
| Dog with a habit of bolting | Subscription LTE, with a free tag as backup on the collar |
| Multi-pet household on a budget | Free tags on all, subscription on the one that actually escapes |
| Travel and crate tracking | Free tag — airports and hotels are the densest relay environments there are |
Why we built NovTag anyway
Because the alternative for most cat owners is nothing. A $240 four-year commitment is a hard sell for an animal that lives indoors, so people buy no tracker at all — and then the one time it matters, there is nothing on the collar. A $39.90 tag with no fee is cheap enough to be an insurance policy rather than a subscription decision.
NovTag is dual-mode: Find My and Find My Device for everyday precision, with an optional SIM slot for GPS + LTE fallback if you decide you want it. You can buy it, use it free forever, and upgrade only if your situation changes.