Headline says "locate by phone number", but you need the other person's consent to see their location: Findup, a second bet from a copycat factory on its own hit
What it is A family location app: create a group, and once the other person accepts, see each other's live location on a map. The headline, though, says "locate by phone number".
Why it took off It hasn't really taken off: it's a Lifestyle-category clone, on a second account, of "Phone Number Tracker" from the same company, which already makes money. Keyword titles and paid acquisition got it 26k installs, and it only shows up on small charts in Nigeria and South Africa.
DHow you could follow it Not recommended from scratch. Teams that already have a money-making utility app could borrow the approach: swap package name, swap category, add a second account, and test traffic first on small-country category charts to grab more search slots.
- Data (updated daily) · first launch 2026-09-01 · 11-07 installs 26,230
Android · Total installs worldwide Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations). Google's detail page only refreshes install counts every other day, so a flat day doesn't mean nobody installed.
Phone Number Tracker - Findup is a family location app: create a group, and once the other person accepts, you see each other's live location on a map. Two months after launch it has 26k installs, not a single rating, and sits at the tail of the free Lifestyle charts in Nigeria and South Africa. It hasn't broken out. What's worth looking at is the playbook behind it: the same company already runs an identical app, 2.58M installs and top-grossing in about 20 countries. Findup is a copy with a new package name, new category, and new account. The space is already crowded, and I wouldn't follow it.
Philippine users were charged 965 pesos
On 2026 May 22, a Filipino user left a review on Google Play for "Phone Number Tracker" (package com.familycircle.locationshare, the original of Findup): they never subscribed or tapped the free trial, yet ₱965 was auto-charged to their GCash account, and the refund request keeps getting rejected. "This money was for my family and my allowance." 39 people marked it helpful. Four days earlier, another user wrote almost word for word the same complaint, except the money was their graduation fund. Someone else said they used it once and got charged twice, "2 × $15.66" (Google Play reviews, visible on the 11-06 page).
₱965 is roughly $14.99 with tax. Findup's in-app purchase on Play is also priced at one tier of $14.99.
What it is
The store title is "Phone Number Tracker," the highest-intent search term: people want to know where the owner of a number is. Tap in and the description describes something else: create a private family group, invite family members, share GPS location once they accept, plus "arrived home / arrived at school" alerts and location history. The last line of the description is a disclaimer: "Location sharing only works when both sides install the app, join the same group, and explicitly agree."
In other words, you can't find anyone just by their number. This is a family locator of the Life360 type, with neither more nor fewer features. The Play page is tagged "contains ads, contains in-app purchases," version 1.0.2, and it hasn't been updated since Sep 4.
How much it grew
| Date | Total installs | |
|---|---|---|
| 09-01 | Launched | |
| 09-15 | About 4,630 | Third-party estimate |
| 10-01 | About 8,590 | Third-party estimate |
| 10-29 | 16,506 | Google Play |
| 11-06 | 26,230 | Google Play, up 9,724 over 7 days |
There was a clear acceleration in early November, about 1,800 a day from 11-01 to 11-03, and in the last two days it dropped back to 900–1,200 a day. On charts it has only appeared in Nigeria's Lifestyle Top Free (listed every day since 10-29, ranked #117 to #181), and 11-06 was its first appearance in South Africa's Lifestyle Top Free at #180. Both charts have low thresholds; a few hundred installs a day is enough to get on them.
26k installs, 0 ratings. Either the app never prompts for a rating, or the people who install it barely open it. Either way, it doesn't look like word of mouth. A third-party estimate puts its October in-app purchase revenue on Play at under $5K (AppGazers, estimate).
The real star is the original
| Findup | Phone Number Tracker (the original) | |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Generation z apps (the account since 2022) | GENERATIONZTECH LIMITED (the company account) |
| Launched | 2026-09 | 2026-01 |
| Category | Lifestyle | Maps & Navigation |
| Installs | 26k | 2.58M, 2,400–9,000 a day |
| Rating | None | 3.5 stars, 2,077 reviews |
| Charts | Nigeria / South Africa Lifestyle Top Free #117 / #180 | 11-06 ranks #28 to #36 in the Navigation Top Grossing charts across about 20 countries, including Nigeria, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Mexico, and Poland, and #73 in the US Top Grossing chart |
| October revenue (est.) | < $5K | $6.9K to $32.9K |
The privacy policies of both apps point to generationztech.com, and they share one support email (Google Play, 11-06). The original's description still says "Find by Phone Number: quickly find family members with just a phone number." Findup's description is much more restrained and adds the disclaimer line.
2.58M installs but only 2,077 ratings, roughly one rating per 1,240 installs, which is what a paid-acquisition pool looks like (inference). So Findup isn't a new experiment. It's a copy of something already proven to make money, placed on a second account and a second category: it takes up another "phone number tracker" search slot, collects another category's chart exposure, and serves as a backup if the main account gets banned. Even the name "Findup" is borrowed: a location app with the same name has been on iOS since 2021 year, from a Turkish company, with 7,143 US ratings and a 4.47-star rating, and it has no connection to this one.
Who's behind it
GENERATIONZTECH LIMITED was registered in the UK in 2023 October, based in Cardiff, with a Pakistani director living in Pakistan (per UK Companies House). Across its two accounts it runs a set of utility apps: a video downloader with 25.9M installs, a deleted photo recovery app with 19.6M, screen mirroring apps at 13M and 4.25M, a VPN at 1.68M, an AI chat app at 720K, plus a location and period tracker (Google Play, 11-06). Third-party estimates put in-app purchase revenue on the Generation z apps account at $24K to $93K over 30 days on Play, not counting ad revenue.
This March, a developer of a screen-mirroring app wrote a competitive analysis on GitHub that named this company. The account was once renamed to a Polish smart-home company, "Nice - Polska"; their screen-mirroring app was deliberately placed in the Business category for ASO; and users complained that the ads were designed to look like app UI, tricking them into tapping.
Where users come from
- Store search (confirmed): the title is simply "Phone Number Tracker," and the description repeats family location tracker, GPS phone location tracker, kids location tracker, and family locator several times over.
- Paid acquisition (inferred): 4,600 installs and 0 ratings within two weeks of launch, then a sudden spike in early November, none of which looks like organic growth. I haven't seen its ad creatives, but tool publishers like this typically run Google App Ads in cheaper countries such as Nigeria, South Africa, and India.
- Small-country category charts (confirmed, low volume): it sits on the Lifestyle Top Free charts in Nigeria and South Africa, which brings a little organic exposure.
- Content and word of mouth: none. In 30 days, nobody on X mentioned "Findup" or this company, TikTok turns up no content about it, and there's no press coverage.
How the money comes back: the "locate by phone number" pitch draws many people who want to check a partner's or child's location (inferred). Once they install and find out the other person also has to install and agree, a $14.99 paywall appears, and ads add more. The original has 1-star reviews making up 21% of its total, and the opening complaints about unexpected charges are the cost of this model.
Who it's competing with
| Product | Scale (Google Play, 11-06) | How it compares |
|---|---|---|
| Life360 | 227M installs, #16 overall in the US Top Grossing chart | A legitimate family-safety subscription, without the phone-number gimmick |
| Phone Tracker By Number | 95.1M installs, launched 2014 years ago | The same number-lookup play, 12 years early |
| Findmykids, iSharing, Geozilla, Familonet | 24M to 83M installs | Established location brands for years |
| Phone Tracker GPS Location(Esame) | 15.9M installs, launched 2025-12 | The same tool app, with far more spend behind it |
| Phone Tracker: Family Tracker(Code Cookies) | 11.7M installs, launched 2026-08 | Launched in the same period, passed 10 million in three months |
| GPS Location Tracker Plus, NAICOO, and others | 200 million, up 40k to 900k in a week | Same-type apps launched this year |
| Google Find My Device, Samsung Find, Apple Find My | Built into the system | Free, with the same features |
Over the past year alone, more than a dozen same-type apps have launched and passed a million installs. Functionally, Findup is no different from them, and the scale gap is two to three orders of magnitude. Its only distinction is that it sits behind an original that's already on the top-grossing charts.
If it were you
The verdict: worth knowing about, but I wouldn't chase it. What you can learn here is how a copycat publisher stacks extra placements inside a profitable category, not an open opportunity.
Who it's for: teams already making utility apps on Play, with paid acquisition capability and a proven category in hand, who can borrow the "second account + second category" approach.
Who it's not for: indie developers who want to build a location app from scratch. This category has brands like Life360, dozens of tool publishers with far larger ad budgets, and free built-in system features. The way it makes money depends on a gap between title and reality plus charges that are hard to refund, so the reputation and account risk all falls on you.
How to do it (if you already have a money-making utility app):
- Take the same product, change the package name, category, and brand name, and launch it on a second account, with separate privacy policy and support contacts.
- Write the title with the words users actually search for, but spell out in the description what the app really does and which permissions it needs. That's the baseline for passing review and avoiding complaints.
- Test with low-barrier small-country category charts, such as Nigeria and South Africa, before deciding whether to scale up paid spend.
How to acquire users: store search plus app ads in low-cost countries. Products like this have almost no content or word-of-mouth channels.
When to get in early: there is no window here. People have been buying this keyword for over a decade, and new players keep arriving this year.
What would show I'm wrong: if Findup climbs to top-grossing charts in dozens of countries within two or three months, the way the original did, that would show a second-account copy alone can unlock meaningful new installs, and the approach deserves a closer look. Conversely, if it or the original gets delisted over the title and charge complaints, that's a sign this route has reached its risk limit.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one Phone Number Tracker (sibling original from the same company, com.familycircle.locationshare) Android 2026-01 2.58M installs, 3.5-star 2,077 ratings, ranked #20–28 in Navigation Top Grossing across about 36 countries; AppGazers estimates October $6.9K–$32.9K Same product, but listed under the company account in Navigation; Findup sits on the personal legacy account in Lifestyle, with only a single $14.99 in-app purchase tier Life360 Android 2010 227M installs, #16 overall in the US Top Grossing chart A legitimate brand's family-safety subscription, not relying on the "locate by number" gimmick Phone Tracker By Number(Family Locator inc) Android 2014 95.1M installs The same number-lookup capture play, 12 years early, and roughly three orders of magnitude larger in scale Phone Tracker: Family Tracker(Code Cookies) Android 2026-08 11.7M installs A same-type app launched in the same period passed 10 million in three months, showing this keyword can be bought; Findup just didn't push hard Phone Tracker GPS Location(Esame Marketing) Android 2025-12 15.9M installs, up 7k in 280 days A same-type tool app with far larger ad spend Findmykids / iSharing / Geozilla / Familonet Android 2012–2018 24M–83M installs, Top Grossing across several countries Years running a family-location brand with real retention Google Find My Device / Google Maps location sharing, Samsung Find, Apple Find My Big-company features Years Built into the system; Samsung Find has 51.9M installs Free, system-level, same features Findup: Phone Location Tracker(Who Analytics) iOS 2021-01 US store, 7,143 ratings, 4.47 stars The name originally belonged to a different "Findup" app; the two aren't related. The Play version is piggybacking on the name. - Where users come from
- Confirmed Store search / ASO keyword title: the title is literally Phone Number Tracker, and the description repeats keywords like family locator, GPS phone location tracker, kids location tracker several times over.
- Inferred Paid acquisition (likely Google App Campaigns, targeting cheap countries): 4,630 installs and 0 ratings within two weeks of launch; from 11-01 to 11-03 it suddenly sped up to about 1,800 a day; the original app had 2.58M installs but only 2,077 ratings. The ad libraries don't track this developer, so no creatives were captured.
- Confirmed Small-country category chart exposure: since 10-29 it has sat on the ng Lifestyle Top Free chart at #117–181 daily, and entered the za Lifestyle chart at #11-06 180.
- Confirmed Multi-account / multi-category stacking + name borrowing: the same company's identical app is already in Navigation; this one is placed in Lifestyle under a different account, and it uses the name of Findup, an existing iOS brand.
Why Phone Number Tracker - Findup (com.phone.location.tracker.family.locator.gps) manages to chart
Store: Google Play | Developer: Generation z apps (an old personal account of GENERATIONZTECH LIMITED) | Launched 2026-09-01 | Research date 2026-11-06
Bottom line
It's not really something that "broke through". The Pakistani team GENERATIONZTECH took its already-profitable Phone Number Tracker (com.familycircle.locationshare, company account, 2.58M installs, roughly #20–28 on the Navigation Top Grossing chart in 36 countries) and changed the package name, changed the category, borrowed a name, and published a second copy on another developer account. Two months in: 26k installs, zero ratings, and it only squeezed into the Lifestyle Top Free charts in Nigeria and South Africa at #117 and #180. The tactic is what's worth learning: capture high-intent searches for "phone number location" with a misleading pitch, while the product is actually a family locator that requires both sides to install the app and grant permission to each other, then monetize with IAP and ads. It also relies on multiple accounts and multiple categories to resist bans and occupy more search slots.
1. Data (googleplay library, 2026-10-29 to 11-06; earlier figures are AppstoreSpy estimates from app_day_ext)
| Date | Cumulative global installs | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 09-01 | Launched | |
| 09-15 | 4,630 | AppstoreSpy estimate; 4,600 within two weeks of launch, roughly 300 a day over the first two weeks |
| 10-01 | 8,590 | About 250 a day in late September |
| 10-27 | 16,504 | About 300 a day in October |
| 10-31 | 18,802 | |
| 11-03 | 24,136 | Up 5,334 over three days from 11-01 to 11-03, roughly 1,800 a day |
| 11-06 | 26,230 | Up 9,724 over 7 days, roughly 900–1,200 a day in the last two days |
- Ratings: 0 (the Play page doesn't show a rating score); the review library has no reviews for it either. 26k installs with zero ratings suggests the in-app rating prompt isn't firing, or users barely open it. This doesn't look like organic word of mouth.
- Charts: it has only charted on the Nigeria Lifestyle Top Free chart (present daily since 10-29, at #117–181), and 11-06 it first hit the South Africa Lifestyle Top Free chart at #180. The bar for small-country Lifestyle charts is low; a few hundred installs a day is enough to get listed.
- Monetization: the Play page says "contains ads + in-app purchases", and there's a single IAP at $14.99 (app_snap). AppGazers estimates October Play IAP revenue < $5K and October downloads 5.4K–16.2K (AppGazers).
- Version 1.0.2, last updated 2026-09-04; no updates in the two months since launch.
2. Key finding: it's a clone of a proven hit
The same company has a nearly identical app under the company account "GENERATIONZTECH LIMITED" (googleplay library, 11-06):
| Findup (this product) | Phone Number Tracker (the original) | |
|---|---|---|
| Bundle ID | com.phone.location.tracker.family.locator.gps | com.familycircle.locationshare |
| Account | Generation z apps (old personal account, since 2022) | GENERATIONZTECH LIMITED (the company account) |
| Launched | 2026-09-01 | 2026-01-06 |
| Category | LIFESTYLE | MAPS_AND_NAVIGATION |
| Installs | 26,230 | 2,578,160 (about 2,400–9,000 a day) |
| Rating | None | 3.5 stars / 2,077 reviews (1 stars 437 reviews, 5 stars 929 reviews) |
| In-app purchases | $14.99 | $4.99–$39.99 |
| Charts | ng / za Lifestyle Top Free 117 / 180 | 11-06 charts on about 20 country Navigation Top Grossing charts (ng, my, vn, in, hk, id, sa, sg, th, ph, za, tr, ae, ar, mx, pl, nl, etc.) at #28–36, and #73 on the US Top Grossing chart |
| AppGazers October estimate | Revenue < $5K | Revenue $6.9K–$32.9K, downloads 56k–263k |
Both apps' privacy policies are hosted on generationztech.com, and the support email for both is [email protected] (googleplay library, app table). The original has 2.58M installs but only 2,077 ratings, and roughly 1,240 installs are needed to get 1 ratings, which is a classic paid acquisition footprint. So Findup isn't a new product. It's a clone of a category that's already proven to make money, moved to a second account and a second category: it grabs a second "phone number tracker" search slot, rides the Lifestyle chart for extra exposure, and has a backup if the main app gets banned.
3. Who the developer is
- GENERATIONZTECH LIMITED, registered in the UK under company number 15207614,2023-10-12, registered address in Cardiff; the director is Ehtisham Elahi, a Pakistani national living in Pakistan (Companies House; stefanpledl's gist).
- The "Generation z apps" account library has 5 apps totaling 62.8M installs: Music & Video Downloader HD 25.9M, Restore My Old Deleted Photos 19.6M, Cast Phone to TV 13M, TV Cast 4.25M, Findup 26k. The company account also has Phone Number Tracker 2.58M, Tetra VPN 1.68M, Gen AI Assistant 720k (googleplay library). It's all utility-app volume: screen casting, photo recovery, downloaders, VPN, AI chat, location.
- A competitive-analysis gist (2026-03-31, written by the developer of the screen-casting app LocalCast) named this company: it says the account was once renamed "Nice - Polska Sp. z o.o.", impersonating the Polish smart-home company Nice / FIBARO; the casting app was placed under the Business category as an ASO tactic; and users complained that "the ads are designed like the app UI to trick clicks" (gist). 11-06 On the Play page I can see the developer name has been changed back to "Generation z apps".
- AppGazers estimates that the account's 8 apps brought in a combined $24K–$92.9K in Play IAP over 30 days (AppGazers); ad revenue is not included.
4. The name is borrowed
"Findup: Phone Location Tracker" already exists on iOS: Turkish company Who Analytics 2021-01 publishes it, with 7,143 US-store ratings at 4.47 stars (iTunes lookup, 11-06). Generation z apps uses the same brand name "Findup" on Play, unrelated to that app. This looks like brand squatting, possibly aimed at capturing Android searches for the iOS app's brand term. No official Play version of that app turns up.
5. Competitors
"Phone number / family locator" is a red ocean on Play, with dozens of utility makers. Looking only at apps launched in the past year, more than a dozen have passed a million installs (googleplay library, 11-06):
- Established brands: Life360 (227M installs, #16 on the US Top Grossing overall chart), Findmykids (83.3M), Find my Phone - Family Locator / Sygic (47.6M), iSharing (33.2M), Geozilla (29.9M), Familonet (24.7M).
- Big-tech features: Google Find My Device / Google Maps location sharing, Samsung Find (51.9M, since 2024), Apple Find My.
- Old-school "lookup by number" bait: Phone Tracker By Number / Family Locator inc (95.1M, 2014), Mobile Call Number Locator (49.3M).
- 2025–2026 new copycat tools: Phone Tracker GPS Location / Esame (15.9M, 2025-12), GPS Location & Phone Tracker / QuickTools (16.5M), Location Tracker Phone Tracker / Lite Tools (16.6M), Phone Tracker: Family Tracker / Code Cookies (11.7M, launched 2026-08, passed 10M within three months), GPS Location Tracker Plus (2.63M, up 7k in 910 days), GPS Tracker & Location Tracker / NAICOO (2.37M, up 7k in 410 days).
Compared with these, Findup has no feature difference (group creation, live location, geofencing, track history are all standard), and its scale is two to three orders of magnitude smaller. Its only real difference from the others is "who's behind it": it's a copy of an identical app that is already on the Top Grossing charts in 20 countries.
6. Where users come from
- Store search + keyword title (confirmed): the title "Phone Number Tracker" uses the highest-intent search term outright, and the description stacks family location tracker, GPS phone location tracker, kids location tracker, and family locator several times over. It's standard ASO.
- Paid acquisition (inferred, no direct evidence): 4,600 installs and 0 ratings within two weeks of launch, and the jump from 11-01 to 11-03 to about 1,800 a day looks nothing like organic growth. The original's 2.58M installs with only 2,077 ratings show the same bought-traffic signature. The googleads / metaads libraries don't track this developer (Gen AI Assistant's record is no_ads), and searching "findup phone tracker" on TikTok only turns up other companies' content, so I can't confirm which platform it's running on. The usual playbook for utility makers is Google App Campaigns targeting cheap countries like Nigeria, South Africa, and India.
- Chart exposure (confirmed, but small): listed at #117–180 on the Nigeria / South Africa Lifestyle Top Free charts, which brings a bit of organic traffic.
- Content, creators, media: on X (x-radar, 30 days), "Findup" and "generationztech" each show 0 posts; TikTok has no content about it. None.
7. How the money comes back
The phrase "phone number tracker" attracts people who want to secretly check someone else's location (a partner, a child). After installing, they find they need the other person to install the app and agree to share, and that's when the app pushes a subscription or a $14.99 IAP; add ads, and some users pay back the cost. The original's 3.5-star rating, with 1 stars at 21%, is typical reputation for this kind of app. Install costs in cheap countries are low, so ads plus a bit of IAP can cover them.
8. How many people know about it
Few people know about it yet: no media coverage, 0 discussion on X and TikTok, and no public revenue figures. The only public material is the gist naming the developer. But the "phone number tracker" niche is already crowded, with dozens of look-alike utility apps launched in a single year.
9. What others can borrow
- Once a category is proven to make money, replicate it on a second account and a second category: it occupies more search slots, captures more category chart exposure, and leaves a backup if the main account is banned.
- Put the exact term users search for in the title (even if it overstates what the product does), then write "requires mutual permission" in the description to get through review.
- Test first in low-barrier small-country Lifestyle charts such as Nigeria and South Africa.
- Note: overstating features in the title, borrowing another brand's name, and impersonating a company all carry a real risk of Google delisting or account bans. This developer has already been named in a gist.
10. Still unclear
- Which ad platform it bought traffic on and at what bid: no creatives found.
- Whether the 0 rating was never prompted or was cleared: unverified.
- Subscription structure: the Play page only shows one $14.99 price, and whether the app has a weekly subscription is not verified.
- Will it scale like the original? Right now it's about 1,000 installs a day, too early to tell.
Sources
- googleplay library (agent-im server, app / app_profile / app_snap / app_day / app_day_ext / chart_rank, 2026-10-29 to 11-06)
- Play page: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.phone.location.tra…
- AppGazers:appgazers.com/reports/apps/android-com.phone.location.tracke… ;appgazers.com/reports/apps/android-com.familycircle.location… ;appgazers.com/reports/developers/android-Generation+z+apps
- Companies House:find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/1…
- Competitor analysis gist: gist.github.com/stefanpledl/d83b8aa21c22ff947149a38143861f8f
- iOS Findup:apps.apple.com/us/app/findup-phone-location-tracker/id154972…(iTunes lookup 2026-11-06)
- x-radar (30 days), TikHub TikTok search, 2026-11-06