Friend
Built so that cost isn't the reason your child can't talk to their best friend.
£2.50 / month
Or £27 / year — saves about 10%.
Start a Friend familyUp to 3 people in the family.
Pricing
One subscription per family.
We charge for the product. Nothing else. No ads, no data sold, no upsells aimed at your children — ever.
Every new family gets a 90-day free trial, starting when the family is created. The prices below are what you'll pay after the trial. Families already using Shoal will be told well in advance before any charges begin.
Most families
Full
For families with more than one child, or more than two adults, or both.
£4 / month
Or £38.40 / year — saves 20%.
Start a Full familyUp to 10 people in the family.
Prices in pounds sterling. VAT shown at checkout where applicable.
Same product, either way
The only thing that changes between Friend and Full is how many people can be in the family. Every feature is in both plans.
- Encrypted messaging — encrypted on your device before it's sent
- Admin oversight, built into the encryption
- Time limits and schedules per child
- Cross-Family Conversations, with both sides approving
- Children in the family without an email address
- Family devices — a shared phone or tablet kids can pick up
- Belong to as many families as your life requires
- Voice notes, message statuses, offline support, push notifications
- No ads. No data sold. Ever.
The 90-day trial
When you create a family, that family gets 90 days free. No card up front. The clock starts the day you create the family — not the day you sign up — so you've got room to come back next weekend and try Shoal properly.
We'll nudge you well before the trial ends. If nobody in the family has subscribed by day 90, the family enters a 30-day read-only window: existing messages stay readable, but no new messages can be sent or received. During that month you can subscribe to reactivate, transfer the family admin role to another adult who'd like to subscribe, or export the chat history. After 30 days, the family and its messages are permanently deleted.
What "per family" really means
One subscription covers every person in your family — children, parents, step-parents, grandparents — and all of their devices. You aren't charged per user. You aren't charged per device. We don't want you doing arithmetic every time you add Granny to the chat.
If you belong to more than one family — a divorced household, a stepfamily group, an extended-family chat — each family has its own subscription, paid by whoever created it. You don't pay twice for being in two families.
The plans connect to each other
A child on the Friend plan can chat with a child on the Full plan, and vice versa, as long as both families' family admins approve the connection. The Friend plan exists specifically so that the difference between £2.50 and £4 a month isn't the thing standing between your child and their friend.
Pause if you need to
Families have lulls — a year abroad, a stretch where the kids are with the other parent, the gap between your eldest growing out of Shoal and your youngest growing into it. You can pause your subscription for up to twelve months without losing any data, and come back when it matters again.
Cancel any time
Monthly subscriptions can be cancelled from inside the app, with no friction, at any point. Annual subscriptions don't auto-renew if you turn renewal off in settings. We don't make this hard.
What we'll never do
Show advertising. Sell or share your data with anyone. Train AI on your family's messages. Run upsells aimed at your children. Charge you to export your own conversations. Charge extra for encryption. These aren't promotional promises — they are the reason Shoal exists at all.
Frequently asked questions
Why per family and not per user?
Because the family is the thing we're trying to serve. Per-user pricing punishes you for adding the people we want you to add — your kids' grandparents, the second parent, the shared family device that gets passed between siblings. One price, everyone in.
Which plan should I pick?
If you'll have one child in the family and one or two adults looking after them, the Friend plan is for you. If you have more than one child, or want grandparents and step-parents in the family group, you'll want Full. You can upgrade at any time if your family grows.
What happens when my child grows out of Shoal?
You cancel, or pause if you've got younger children who'll need it in a few years. Teens shouldn't be on a parental-oversight messaging app forever — that isn't the product we're building.
What about VAT?
Prices on this page are in pounds sterling. We'll show VAT clearly at checkout where it applies — UK customers will see VAT-inclusive prices at point of sale.
What if my friend's family can't afford even the Friend plan?
Get in touch — [email protected]. We don't want a kid's friendships limited by household circumstance. We're a small team and can't promise anything blanket, but we'd rather hear about the specifics than have someone locked out.
Can I get my data out of Shoal?
Yes. You can download a human-readable HTML archive of your family's chat history at any time — during an active subscription, during the read-only window after a trial ends, or before account deletion. No Shoal-specific software is needed to read it.
How does payment work?
By card, through our payment processor. Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported on mobile. We don't take or store your card details directly — they go to the processor.
Start a family.
Free for 90 days. Passwordless sign-in. Bring whoever you want.