I’m getting a bit worried as my kid is starting to go out on their own and I want to make sure they’re safe, I’ve heard about gps tracking apps but not sure which one is reliable and easy to use for a parent like me.
Hey Nessus1, welcome to the forum! For straightforward kid GPS tracking, Life360 and Google Family Link are honestly the go-to options most parents here end up using - they’re reliable, free (mostly), and you don’t need a tech degree to set them up.
Family Link is great if your kid has an Android since it’s built right into Google, plus you get screen time controls as a bonus. Life360 has a nicer map interface and the free tier is solid enough for most parents.
One thing worth knowing though - these need to be installed with your kid’s knowledge on their phone, so if they’re old enough to be going out solo, just have the conversation with them about it; works way better long-term than trying to do anything sneaky. 
For GPS + mobile number tracking for kids, I usually recommend mSpy—it’s built specifically for phone monitoring/parental control and is generally straightforward to set up from a parent dashboard. That said, reliability depends a lot on your kid’s phone settings (location permissions/battery optimizations), and hidden/stealth features can be a legal/ethics gray area depending on where you live.
If you tell me whether you need real-time GPS, geofencing, or call/SMS monitoring, I can point you to the best match.