LifeLock vs Aura vs Identity Guard: Prices and Features Compared

LifeLock (now sold as a Norton/Gen Digital brand at lifelock.norton.com), Aura, and Identity Guard are the three biggest names in identity theft protection, and their plans overlap enough that picking one mostly comes down to three questions: how much credit monitoring you need, how large an insurance safety net you want, and how many family members you're covering. Aura bundles the most device security (antivirus, VPN, password manager) into every tier and scales insurance up to $5 million per adult on its Family plan. LifeLock's Total plan has the highest single-plan reimbursement ceiling at up to $3 million and leans on Norton's fraud-recovery infrastructure. Identity Guard is the cheapest way to get dark web and bank-account monitoring, but its entry-level Value plan skips credit monitoring entirely.

How LifeLock, Aura, and Identity Guard compare at a glance

All three services monitor for dark-web exposure of your personal data and offer some form of identity-theft insurance and U.S.-based restoration support if your identity is stolen. Where they diverge is credit-bureau coverage, device-security extras, and how insurance coverage scales by plan. The table below summarizes each company's mid-tier plan, which is the closest apples-to-apples comparison across all three, based on each company's own published pricing pages as of this writing.

LifeLock (Norton) pricing and plans

LifeLock is now published under Gen Digital's Norton umbrella at lifelock.norton.com, and its standalone identity-protection lineup has three tiers, plus two Norton 360-bundled options that add antivirus and VPN:

• LifeLock Core — $12.49/mo billed monthly, or $10.42/mo billed annually ($124.99/yr). Covers 2 credit bureaus, monitors 2 financial accounts for alerts, includes dark web monitoring, and carries identity-theft reimbursement up to $1.05 million with $25,000 in stolen-funds coverage.
• LifeLock Advanced — $19.99/mo billed monthly, or $16.67/mo billed annually ($199.99/yr). Steps up to 3-bureau monitoring, 5 monitored accounts, up to $1.2 million in reimbursement, $100,000 in stolen-funds coverage, and up to $5,000 in scam reimbursement.
• LifeLock Total — $34.99/mo billed monthly, or $29.17/mo billed annually ($349.99/yr). LifeLock's top tier for "complex financial portfolios," with unlimited account alerts, up to $3 million in reimbursement, $1 million in stolen-funds coverage, and up to $10,000 in scam reimbursement.

LifeLock also sells Norton 360 with LifeLock Select and Norton 360 with LifeLock Ultimate Plus, which bundle Norton's antivirus and VPN with identity monitoring for households that would rather buy device security and identity protection together instead of pairing LifeLock with a separate antivirus suite (a category covered in our antivirus comparison). Every LifeLock plan can be extended to family coverage for two adults, with an option to add children, and annual plans carry a 60-day money-back guarantee. Full current pricing and the complete feature grid are on LifeLock's own plans page.

Aura pricing and plans

Aura's structure is built around household size rather than feature tiers — every plan gets the same core monitoring and device-security stack, and the price scales with how many people (and devices) you're covering:

• Individual — $15/mo billed monthly, or $12/mo billed annually. Covers 1 adult and up to 10 devices, with $1 million in identity theft insurance.
• Couple — $29/mo billed monthly, or $22/mo billed annually. Covers 2 adults and up to 20 devices, with $2 million in insurance per adult.
• Family — $50/mo billed monthly, or $32/mo billed annually. Covers up to 5 adults plus unlimited children and devices, with $5 million in insurance per adult.
• Aura Kids — $13/mo billed monthly, or $10/mo billed annually. A parental-controls-focused plan for households that mainly want to protect children rather than adult credit files.

Every Aura plan — not just the top tier — includes 3-bureau credit monitoring, dark web and SSN exposure monitoring, bank-account fraud monitoring, an Experian credit lock, and a U.S.-based fraud remediation team. Aura also bundles antivirus, a VPN, a password manager, and safe-browsing protection into every plan at no extra cost, which is the biggest structural difference from LifeLock and Identity Guard, where device security is either a separate purchase or not offered. Family plans add child SSN monitoring, parental controls with content filtering and screen-time limits, and spam call/message protection. Aura offers a 14-day free trial and a 60-day money-back guarantee on annual plans; current figures are on Aura's pricing page, with a fuller feature breakdown on its identity theft protection product page.

Identity Guard pricing and plans

Identity Guard's three tiers are Value, Total, and Ultra, each available in individual or family configurations:

• Value — Individual $8.99/mo (or $7.50/mo annual); Family $14.99/mo (or $12.50/mo annual, covering 2 adults + unlimited children). This entry tier does not include credit monitoring — it covers dark web monitoring, bank/card transaction monitoring, and $1 million in identity theft insurance.
• Total — Individual $19.99/mo (or $16.67/mo annual); Family $29.99/mo (or $25/mo annual, covering 5 adults + unlimited children). Adds 3-bureau credit monitoring with monthly credit scores, an Experian credit lock, and an annual credit report, while keeping $1 million in insurance.
• Ultra — Individual $29.99/mo (or $25/mo annual); Family $39.99/mo (or $33.33/mo annual, same 5-adult family structure as Total). Identity Guard's top tier raises insurance coverage to up to $5 million.

Every tier includes dark web monitoring, bank account and credit/debit card monitoring, USPS address-change monitoring (Identity Guard's approach to catching mail-based identity fraud), "White Glove" fraud resolution support, and a U.S.-based customer care team. The practical takeaway is that Identity Guard's cheapest plan is genuinely the least expensive of the three services, but shoppers who specifically want credit monitoring — arguably the single most requested feature in this category — need to budget for Total or Ultra rather than Value. Identity Guard's plans page has the current pricing and full feature breakdown.

Credit monitoring, dark web, and SSN monitoring compared

All three services monitor the dark web for your Social Security number, email addresses, and other personal data appearing in breach dumps or on criminal marketplaces, and all three will alert you if that happens. Where they differ is credit monitoring depth and default inclusion:

• LifeLock monitors 2 bureaus on Core and 3 bureaus (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion) on Advanced and Total, with account-alert limits that scale by tier (2, 5, and unlimited monitored accounts, respectively).
• Aura includes 3-bureau credit monitoring with near-real-time alerts on every plan, including its cheapest Individual tier — there's no credit-monitoring upsell.
• Identity Guard monitors 3 bureaus with monthly credit scores only on Total and Ultra; its Value plan has no credit monitoring at all, only dark web and bank/card monitoring.

If you specifically want to check whether your own accounts have already leaked in a past breach before paying for ongoing monitoring, our guide to checking Have I Been Pwned is a free first step, and the FTC's own identity-theft recovery hub at IdentityTheft.gov is worth bookmarking regardless of which paid service you choose, since it's free and covers the same recovery steps a company's restoration team would walk you through.

Identity theft insurance and restoration support compared

Every plan from all three companies includes some form of identity-theft insurance (reimbursement for out-of-pocket costs like lost wages, legal fees, and stolen funds) and access to a restoration or remediation team that helps you work through recovery. Coverage limits vary widely by tier:

• LifeLock tops out at up to $3 million in reimbursement on the Total plan, with $1 million specifically earmarked for stolen-funds reimbursement and up to $10,000 in scam reimbursement — the highest single-plan ceiling of the three.
• Aura scales insurance per adult rather than per household: $1 million on Individual, $2 million per adult on Couple, and $5 million per adult on Family, so a five-adult Family plan represents substantially more total coverage on paper than either competitor's top tier.
• Identity Guard offers $1 million on Value and Total, rising to up to $5 million on Ultra.

These figures are the companies' own published policy limits and, as with any insurance product, are subject to the actual policy terms, exclusions, and claims process — read the linked policy documents on each company's plans page rather than relying on the headline number alone.

Family and multi-person plans compared

Families with kids to protect will find real structural differences here, not just price differences:

• LifeLock family coverage is built around 2 adults, with the option to add children's identity monitoring.
• Aura Family covers up to 5 adults plus unlimited children and unlimited devices for one flat price, and includes child-specific SSN monitoring, parental controls, screen-time limits, and cyberbullying/predator-alert features for gaming and social platforms — features aimed at protecting kids' devices, not just their credit files (children rarely have credit files to monitor, which is itself a common way thieves exploit a child's clean SSN).
• Identity Guard's Total and Ultra family tiers also scale to 5 adults plus unlimited children, matching Aura's household size at a comparable or slightly lower price, though without Aura's parental-control and device-security extras.

If your family's biggest exposure is old accounts and data scattered across people-search sites rather than active monitoring going forward, it's worth pairing whichever service you choose with a manual cleanup — see our walkthrough on opting out of data brokers and people-search sites, since none of these three services scrubs that existing exposure automatically.

Which one should you choose?

There's no single "best" identity theft protection service — the right pick depends on what you're actually trying to cover:

• Want the most bundled for one price, including device security? Aura is the only one of the three that includes 3-bureau credit monitoring, antivirus, VPN, and a password manager on every plan without an upsell.
• Want the largest single-plan insurance ceiling and already use Norton products? LifeLock Total's $3 million reimbursement limit is the highest of any single plan discussed here, and the Norton 360 bundles let you consolidate antivirus and identity protection under one Gen Digital account.
• Want the lowest entry price and don't need credit monitoring yet? Identity Guard Value is the cheapest plan of the three, though you'll need to upgrade to Total for credit monitoring.
• Covering a household of 5 adults plus kids? Aura Family and Identity Guard's Total/Ultra family tiers both scale to 5 adults; Aura adds more device-security and parental-control extras at a comparable price point.

A quick checklist before you buy

Whichever service you're leaning toward, verify these details on the company's own plans page before subscribing, since pricing and included features change over time:

• Does the plan include 3-bureau credit monitoring, or only 1–2 bureaus (or none)?
• What is the actual insurance/reimbursement ceiling for the specific tier you're buying, not just the top-tier headline number?
• Is device security (antivirus, VPN, password manager) included, or would you need to buy it separately?
• How many adults and children does the family tier actually cover, and does it include child-specific SSN monitoring?
• What's the cancellation policy and is there a money-back guarantee window?

Bottom line: what to do next

All three services will monitor your SSN and personal data for dark-web exposure and help you recover if your identity is stolen — the real decision is about scope and budget. If you want the broadest single-price bundle, start with Aura's plan quiz on its pricing page. If you're already a Norton customer or want the highest insurance ceiling, compare LifeLock's three tiers directly on lifelock.norton.com. If cost is the deciding factor and you're comfortable starting without credit monitoring, Identity Guard's Value plan is the cheapest entry point, with a clear upgrade path to Total once you want bureau-level credit alerts. Whichever you choose, pull up the company's current plans page before you subscribe — all three companies adjust pricing and included features periodically, and the numbers above reflect what each company had published at the time of writing.

Written bySana Qureshi

Sana Qureshi runs the security and privacy desk. She reports on actively exploited vulnerabilities, vendor patches and data breaches, and covers the password managers, VPNs and authentication tools readers use to protect themselves. Her alerts cite vendor advisories, CISA and the CVE record directly.

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