The five approaches, side by side
| Approach | What it is good at | Where it falls short | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple Screen Time | Time limits, downtime, app restrictions, purchase approval. Built into iOS, free, nothing to install. | Its web content filter is blunt: it over-blocks ordinary pages and still misses others, and it shows you nothing about what your kid actually saw. | Every iOS family, as the baseline layer. |
| Google Family Link | The same baseline on Android and Chromebooks: app approval, screen time, location, account supervision. Free. | Web filtering leans on SafeSearch and Chrome settings rather than reading pages. Supervision loosens significantly once a teen turns 13. | Every Android family, as the baseline layer. |
| DNS filtering (router or device-level) |
Covers every device on the network at once, including consoles and smart TVs. Cheap or free. | Stops applying the moment a device leaves the house wifi. Works on whole domains, so it cannot tell a safe page from an unsafe one on the same site. | Households wanting one broad net across many devices. |
| Monitoring apps (Bark, Qustodio and similar) |
Reach into texts, email and social accounts and alert you to signals like bullying, self-harm or predatory contact. This is real ground no browser can cover. | Coverage varies by platform and can break when apps change. The covert varieties tend to fail hard the day a kid discovers them. | Worries centred on who is contacting your kid and what they are saying. |
| Shaka Surf + Shaka Safe | The browser itself, built for kids. Four age levels, page-by-page reading as each page loads, a reason on every block and a button to ask you about it, and a timeline your kid sees too. | It is a browser. It does not cover games, messaging apps, other apps, or a device you do not manage. iOS first, and not yet released. | Worries centred on what your kid runs into on the web, and on older kids who resent being policed. |
Last reviewed September 2026. Competitor features change; check the current details with each vendor before deciding.
Shaka vs. Apple Screen Time
These are not alternatives, and we would rather you ran both. Screen Time is the better tool for every question that ends in how long or which app, and it is free and already on the device. Use it.
The gap it leaves is inside the browser. Screen Time’s “Limit Adult Websites” is a single switch over Safari with no middle setting, no reason given to the kid when something is blocked, no way for them to ask you about it, and no record you can look at afterwards. A ten-year-old and a sixteen-year-old get the same filter. That is the part Shaka Surf replaces: four age levels instead of one switch, a reason on every block, an ask button, and a timeline you can both see.
Choose Screen Time alone if your worry is time and apps, or your kid is young enough that they only use a tablet you hand them. Add Shaka Surf if your kid browses the web on their own and you want to see it and shape it by age.
Shaka vs. Google Family Link
Same story, different platform. Family Link is the right baseline for Android and Chromebooks and we would not try to replace it. Two things are worth knowing: its web filtering mostly comes down to SafeSearch plus Chrome’s own site settings rather than any reading of the page, and its supervision powers change considerably when a supervised child turns 13.
One honest limitation on our side: Shaka Surf is launching on iOS first. If your family is on Android today, Family Link plus a DNS filter is the sensible setup, and we are not yet an option for you.
Shaka vs. monitoring apps like Bark or Qustodio
This is the comparison where we most often say “buy the other thing,” or at least “buy both.” Monitoring apps look at texts, email and social accounts and raise an alert when something in the language suggests bullying, self-harm, or an adult grooming a child. Shaka Surf cannot see any of that. It is a browser. If the thing keeping you up at night is who is in your kid’s DMs, a monitoring service addresses it and we do not.
Where we differ is in posture. Most monitoring is built for the parent to look at without the kid thinking about it much. We think that trade goes bad around age twelve: kids work out that they are being watched, and the response is almost never to behave differently where you can see. It is to move somewhere you cannot. So Shaka is deliberately built the other way. Your kid sees the same timeline you do, the first screen they open spells out what you can see, and there is no hidden mode and no silent tightening. We lose some visibility by that choice. We think we get back a kid who still browses in front of you at fifteen.
If you use a monitoring app, our one suggestion is to tell your kid it is there and what it looks at. Visible monitoring holds up over years. Secret monitoring tends to buy months.
Shaka vs. DNS filtering
DNS filtering is genuinely good value: one setting covers every device in the house, including the ones with no parental controls at all. Keep it if you have it.
Two limits. It works at the level of the whole domain, so it can block a site but cannot tell the difference between a harmless page and a harmful one on a site that hosts both, which describes most large platforms. And it applies to your network, so it stops the moment your kid is on cellular data or at a friend’s house. Shaka Surf’s filtering rides inside the browser app, so it travels with the device, and Wave Watch™ reads the actual page rather than the domain name.
Shaka vs. a kids’ walled-garden app
Curated kid apps, the ones with a fixed library of approved videos and games, are excellent for preschoolers and run out of road fast. Somewhere around eight or nine, a kid needs to look things up for school, and being handed a toy version of the internet starts to feel like a message about how much you trust them.
Shaka Surf starts in roughly the same place, an allow list with no search for the youngest level, and then keeps going: search with safe search forced on, then the open web behind a filter, then open water with a light touch. Same app, four age levels, so you are not migrating your kid to a new browser the year they outgrow the garden.
When Shaka is the wrong choice
Worth saying plainly.
- You are on Android today. We are iOS first. Family Link plus DNS filtering is your setup for now.
- You need something this week. Shaka Surf and Shaka Safe have not launched yet. Everything else on this page has.
- Your worry is messaging, not browsing. A browser cannot see DMs. A monitoring service can.
- You want covert monitoring. We will not build it. If you need a kid not to know, we are not the tool.
- You want a single setting that makes the internet safe. Nobody has that one, including us. The layers that do work take an evening to set up.
What we would actually tell a friend
Turn on the free device controls that came with the phone, because they cost nothing and cover the hours. Put a real filter on the browser your kid uses, because that is where the accidents happen. Add a monitoring service if messaging is your specific worry. Keep the devices out of bedrooms overnight, which is worth more than any of the software. And tell your kid what you can see, because that is the layer that still works when they are at someone else’s house.
We built the browser part. The rest of it we would recommend to you whether or not you ever use ours.
