2022's Tractive Reviews [Features & Prices]

If you have a dog or cat, chances are you’re often worried about what your pet gets up to alone at home while you’re at work or on vacation. If that’s the case, the Tractive real-time GPS tracker for dogs and cats might be the answer to your problems.

There’s a reason why Tractive reviews are so positive—it’s a reliable pet tracker with many useful features for concerned pawrents to keep a watchful eye on their furry kids. To see if it’s the right product for you and your pet, check out our in-depth review where we’ll discuss:

• What Tractive is
• Main features
• Ease of use
• Pricing & plans
• Customer support
• Alternatives
• FAQs, and more.

What Is Tractive and How Does It Work?

Tractive is a company that provides real-time location trackers for pets and other animals using GPS and GSM technology. As part of the service, Tractive also offers an online platform, accessible via mobile apps or a browser, that allows pet owners to track their furry friends using interactive technologies.

Available in most regions across the globe, Tractive continuously adds innovative and cutting-edge features to its products. The latest is the ability to monitor the activity of your pet, similar to human fitness trackers. As it’s one of the top consumer pet tracking companies, most Tractive reviews are highly positive.

Via the physical trackers, pet owners are able to monitor the location and activity of their pets in real-time. The tracking device can easily be attached to most dog or cat collars and even have a built-in speaker.

Main Features

We were continuously impressed by the numerous advanced features Tractive has to offer. In particular, we’ll focus on:

• Interactive map]
• Augmented reality
• Real-time tracking
• Virtual fence
• Location history
• Sharing
• Activity monitoring
• Battery status

Throughout this Tractive review, we found that all its capabilities really make it possible to stay on top of all your pet’s movements, whether it’s a cat, dog, or any other animal. And the best part is, you don’t have to actively monitor your pet in real-time—many of the tools are also designed to track your pet when you’re not looking.

Some of its other features include being waterproof up to the IPX7-standard, a remote speaker and alarm system, night mode, and more.

As evident from many Tractive pet tracker reviews online, most users are impressed with the breadth of tools and features to help them keep track of every movement their pet makes.

Interactive Map

One of Tractive’s handiest features is the interactive map, particularly for users that own multiple pets. The interactive map has a Google Maps-like interface that displays streets, blocks, and other geographic information, just like a real GPS navigation app.

Tractive will also show your location along with the location of your pets with an activity tracker on the map.

Like many other Tractive GPS pet tracker reviews, what we found really useful is that you can select a pet and Tractive will route you from your location to where your pet is, just like on a map app. The locations are updated in real-time so you can see where your pets are moving to and try and intercept them. The map even shows the distance, altitude, and speed of your pet. The altitude, for example, can be useful when you’re hiking on uneven terrain.

As you can guess, it’s no wonder that reviews on Tractive GPS often see this as the platform’s main feature. It’s especially useful when your pets managed to get out and are roaming the streets, or you lost them somewhere.

Augmented Reality

As you may know, augmented reality (AR) is when you superimpose information on top of live visuals. With Tractive, you can use the AR feature by first going into your Live tracker. Tractive will then use the information provided by the GPS tracker on your pet, combined with the GPS and directional capabilities of your phone, to show where your pet is within the LIVE tracker.

According to us, and most other Tractive reviews, this special feature can be really helpful for locating your pet in challenging environments.

For example, if you’re pointing your phone in a certain direction and the pet is out of view to the left, and AR pin will pop up telling you to turn your phone to the left. On top of showing you the direction of your pet in relation to you, it also shows the distance.

Because the AR capability is GPS-based, it’s not super accurate when you and your pet are close together.

However, both the distance and directional accuracy improve the further apart you are, which is most important.

This functionality can be turned on or off simply by tapping the AR button within the LIVE tracker.

Real-Time Tracking

Apart from the above two ways of active tracking we’ve discussed so far in this Tractive GPS review, Tractive also stays on top of your pet’s activity in real-time. Within either the interactive map or LIVE tracker, your pet’s movements are updated every couple of seconds.

However, Tractive will also passively monitor your pet and give you occasional updates and alerts. We found this useful because you can have some peace of mind without actively monitoring your pet 24/7. Instead, you can rely on Tractive to give you updates on any unusual movements.

What’s more, more than one person can receive these alerts, so your pet sitter or relatives can also be alerted of potentially concerning movements.

Virtual Fence

This is just another one of the features we found during our Tractive pet tracker review that shows how the app goes above and beyond to help you keep track of your pets.

In the app, you can create both “Safe Zones” and “No-go Zone” to control where your pet is allowed to roam. On the interactive map, safe zones are shown in green, and no-go zones in red. Tractive will only notify you if your pet leaves or enters the safe zone.

On the other hand, Tractive will immediately warn you if your pet enters the “No-go Zone.” You can set more than one safe and no-go zones. So, you can set your house, your dog’s playdate’s house, and the local park as safe zones, for example.

Although it’s not the main aim of this device, it can come in quite handy along with other methods like CBD oil for dogs to do boundary or separation anxiety training.

Location History

There’s more to this Tractive GPS review than just its real-time tracking—another really helpful feature is that Tractive saves the location history of your pet’s movements.

So, for example, if your pet keeps escaping from the safe zone and you don’t know-how, you can use this information to try and find their escape route, but you can also use it just to find out what your pet is up to during the day so you can plan according to their habits.

Just keep in mind location history is only available to Premium plan users, so if you want this feature, you can check how much Tractive costs to own with the Premium plan further below.

Sharing

As mentioned, a single Tractive account can be shared between more than one user, and you can also create alerts for other persons even if they don’t use the Tractive app itself. However, the best way is to share the GPS tracker app with your friends and family, or anyone else you trust to help with your pet in an emergency.

Activity Monitoring

This is a new feature introduced due to popular demand in Tractive GPS reviews by existing users. This feature allows you to keep track of the daily activity level of your pet like you’d track your own activity using a fitness watch or app.

The feature tracks their active minutes, rest minutes, and calories burned so you can make sure your dog or cat stays appropriately fit and active according to their breed, age, and health.

Battery Status

The tracker you put on your pet is battery-powered, so it will need to be charged from time to time. Luckily, you don’t have to guess when, as Tractive will keep monitoring the battery’s power level and alert you when it’s due for a charge. As many reviews on Tractive GPS confirm, this is a great safety feature to avoid getting caught with a flat battery at a critical time.

This feature is extra important because, unfortunately, Tractive’s devices have a fairly disappointing battery life of just 2–3 days. While it’s often much shorter, in reality, some of its competitors offer a battery life of up to 3 months.

Ease of Use

As part of our Tractive dog tracker review, we also wanted to see how easy it is to use since it would be a huge problem if you had to struggle to access a particular tracking feature when you need to quickly locate your pet.

So, here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how to start using Tractive:

1. First, go to the Tractive website and click the “My Tractive” button:
   
2. Sign in by linking your social accounts or by providing your email and password:
   
3. That will take you to your Tractive dashboard. As you can see, you’ll immediately be presented with a map. If you have any active trackers, you’ll be able to see the location and movements of your pets here:
   
4. Of course, you’ll need to separately buy an actual tracker to use Tractive. You can click on any of the buttons on the home page to browse Tractive’s dog or cat trackers. Tractive offers both dog and cat trackers, which is a clear advantage we found over its competitors in our Tractive GPS pet tracker review. The trackers mostly differ in terms of design and size, and some of the cat tracker options come with a collar as well.
   
5. You can then proceed to checkout the tracker. Before you complete your purchase, you’ll also be given the opportunity to choose a subscription plan. You’ll receive a unique Tracker ID with your purchase. If you log back into your dashboard and click the “Activate New Tracker” button, you can enter the code to link the tracker to your Tractive account:
   

While we mostly focused on the browser app for our Tractive GPS pet tracker review, it also conveniently comes in a mobile app with a user-friendly interface for Android and iOS. Both apps have high user reviews on their official app stores, with 4.7 and 4.6, respectively.

Being able to have Tractive on all your mobile devices makes it so much easier to always stay updated on your pets’ activity. Furthermore, because the tracker is a device that attaches to your pet’s collar, it doesn’t matter whether you have a small or large dog breed—they’re equally easy to track.

Pricing Plan Subscription

Unfortunately, Tractive doesn’t offer a free plan or trial. To use the service, you’ll need to purchase the physical tractive and choose one of the two subscription packages. If you’re wondering exactly how much does Tractive cost to own, we’ll break it down for you below:

As you can see, the Basic plan really only comes with the essentials, such as GPS, live, and activity tracking. It’s good for individual pet owners who just want to monitor their dog or cat’s movements, and don’t need advanced features like worldwide coverage or location history.

That being said, families or those with a larger support network will benefit from the sharing option in Premium, and its other features are also nice to have.

That brings us to the next question, how much are Tractive GPS collar trackers?

Both the dog and cat collar trackers cost $49.99 each. In our opinion, that’s not at all expensive, considering their long lifespan and the fact they’ll give you peace of mind regarding your beloved furry friend.

All-in-all, most Tractive plans may seem quite expensive to the everyday user, particularly as you have to pay for most of them upfront. However, when you really stop and think about the product’s advanced features, it seems a reasonable price to pay for the safety and security of your pet.

Customer Support

Most Tractive GPS pet tracker reviews from existing users are very positive, with a 4.6 rating on Trustpilot from 10,685 reviewers, partly due to how accessible the customer support is, which you can reach via email or live chat. Keep in mind that priority support is also available for Premium subscribers.

Alternatives

Here are some of the top alternatives according to our own and other Tractive GPS tracker reviews:

From the get-go, one of the key features we found during our Tractive review that distinguishes it from other products is that it’s suitable for both cats and dogs. Meanwhile, most competitors only have dog-appropriate tracking collars.

Generally speaking, Tractive also has a more impressive set of features. It’s one of the only platforms with such advanced live tracking and AR capabilities as well as a remote speaker system for training.

The only thing that’s not as advanced yet are its boundary training and health monitoring, but these are not essential features.

Is Tractive Worth It?

Yes, we believe Tractive is an excellent tracking service for any dog or cat owner. Not only does it have unique features like AR, but it’s a reliable and user-friendly product for many pet owners if Tractive pet tracker reviews are anything to go by. With all the built-in safety nets such as battery status tracking, app sharing, and instant alerts, it’s a small price to pay for peace of mind when it comes to your furry family member.