AirTag

Key facts

• Cheapest way to put a finder on a collar — no subscription, ever
• Find My network pings, not live GPS — updates depend on passing iPhones
• A ~$1/mo coin cell is the entire running cost
• A backup finder, not an escape-alert system

Our verdict

The AirTag stickers at $29, but the receipt above is the real price: $65 over three years, or about $1 a month in running costs after the box arrives. There is no subscription, and there never has been — what you pay at checkout plus consumables is the whole story.

Consumables run about $1/mo (CR2032 battery yearly) and are not proprietary, so you can shop around. The core function keeps working if the app, cloud, or your Wi-Fi goes down — a reliability point we weight heavily.

Who it's for: suburban backup finder, not a GPS tracker. Cross-shop the rivals in its category on the right, or open the full true-cost breakdown for the year-1 vs 3-year view.