TextNow’s Yello! sells for $149.99 upfront with a $19.99 monthly plan. It looks like a normal touchscreen handset, and it cannot install an app, open a browser or reach a social network.
Yello! is the newest of eight products now sold to parents as a child’s own device, and the cheapest of them is not a mobile phone at all.
Prices across the group run from $68 for a Pinwheel landline to $240 for the standard Bark Phone, a range wide enough that buyers are choosing between three different ideas of what a child’s first device should do.
Bark takes the monitoring route. The handset is Samsung Galaxy hardware running Bark’s own software; calls and texts work only with approved contacts, and the software scans messages, email, photos and supported apps for signs of bullying, grooming, sexual content or suicidal ideation, then alerts a parent.
The company lets parents unlock browsing and apps in stages as a child ages, and charges $240 for the standard model with plans from $29 a month.
Gabb removes the risk instead of watching for it. There is no browser, no app store and no social app. The child gets calling, texting and a preloaded set that includes camera, calendar and calculator, plus a music library the company markets as worry-free. Handsets start at $159.99, service at $24.99.
Pinwheel sits between the two. Parents approve each app, set routines and modes, and can leave a phone with nothing but calls and navigation during school hours. Handsets start around $119, with a caregiver subscription from $14.99 a month that does not include cellular service; that is bought separately through participating carriers.
Teracube’s Thrive, launched in 2022 on a modified Android build called Thrive OS, offers app-by-app approval, filtered browsing, per-app and overall time limits and location history. Because it behaves more like a conventional smartphone, it is usually pitched at older children. The device costs $99, plans from $35 a month.
Two of the companies have gone back to the wall jack, which is where the low end of the ladder now sits.
Pinwheel sells landlines at $68 and $79. Ooma’s MyPhone costs $99.99 with service from $7.99 a month and offers a trusted circle of contacts, scheduled quiet hours, address-based 911 and a call-log portal, with no texting at all. Tin Can charges $100 for a Wi-Fi handset shaped like a tin can, with free calls between its own users or $9.99 a month for calls to any approved contact.
Waffle opened preorders this month for a $119 home phone and a $169 handheld with three buttons that makes voice calls and plays voice notes. Shipments begin November 23.
A landline tier exists because the first-phone decision is usually about reachability rather than computing. A parent who wants to know a child reached home does not need a device that can install anything.
What separates the tiers is who ends up holding the subscriber more than the bill of materials. Hardware prices sit in a $99 to $240 band that leaves limited room above component cost, and the recurring charge underneath varies by more than four times: $7.99 a month for Ooma, $9.99 for Tin Can, $14.99 for Pinwheel’s portal, $19.99 for TextNow, $24.99 for Gabb, $29 for Bark and $35 for Teracube.
Cheap handsets also change who the competition is. At $99, a Teracube Thrive costs about what an entry-level conventional smartphone costs, and a parent comparing the two is choosing between a restricted device and an unrestricted one at a similar price.
That spread is the part worth watching. A $7.99 service and a $35 service are selling the same first job, and the difference is mostly how much software sits between the child and the network.
Carrier arrangements split the same way. Pinwheel sells hardware and a caregiver portal and leaves cellular service to third-party carriers. TextNow, a Canadian telecom operator, sells its own plan, and Ooma sells a home service tied to an address.
Each company is also building a family of devices around a single account. Bark’s higher tiers add internet access and unlimited texting inside the same plan. Gabb sells Gabb Guard, which blocks spam calls and unwanted texts, as an optional service. Pinwheel sells a $160 smartwatch next to its handsets and its two landlines.
Teracube comes at the category from the other direction. It sells the Thrive handset itself, with plans from $35 a month, and the modified Android build is the product, not an add-on to somebody else’s hardware.
The design philosophies also create different handover problems. A phone that removes features has a clean story at 8 and a harder one at 13, when a child wants messaging apps that classmates already use. A phone that unlocks in stages keeps the same subscriber and changes what is being sold each year.
Bark’s staged unlocking puts that transition inside one product. Gabb’s approach puts it at the end of the product, which is the reason its pitch leans on how long a family can stay with a restricted device.
None of these companies publishes unit sales, and the category’s size is hard to establish from the outside. What is visible is the number of entrants and the direction of prices: more products below $200 than a year ago, and more of them without a browser at all.
TextNow’s entry matters for a second reason. A telecom operator selling a stripped-down handset alongside its own plan can price the bundle, while hardware-first companies have to recover the device and the software in one transaction or a subscription.
Waffle’s first shipments on November 23 will test the low end of the ladder. Pinwheel’s landline price of $68, Ooma’s $7.99 service and Tin Can’s free tier have already set the floor for what a parent is asked to pay for a device that only makes calls.
Whether that floor holds depends on something the price list cannot show: how many families buy a second device when the first one is outgrown.