You are standing in a shop, or looking at a store listing, and the game says PEGI 3 or E for Everyone. The obvious reading is “this is fine for my child.” The accurate reading is narrower: an assessor found no violence, language, fear or sexual content that would push it higher. That is a genuinely useful piece of information, and it is not the same question as whether the game is good for a five-year-old.
Almost everything parents actually worry about in a kids game, relentless advertising, in-app purchases aimed at children, data collection, open chat with strangers, sits outside what the age number measures. This guide explains what each system checks, what it skips, and how to close the gap yourself.
Short answer: age ratings are content ratings. They tell you about violence, language, fear, sex, drugs and gambling. They do not tell you whether a game is stuffed with ads, pushes purchases, collects data, or lets strangers message your child. For children under about 8, check the age rating first, then check the four commercial labels separately: contains ads, in-app purchases, data safety, and whether it works offline.
The four systems you will actually meet
ESRB (North America)
The Entertainment Software Rating Board rates games sold in the US, Canada and Mexico. Its tiers run E (Everyone), E10+ (Everyone 10 and older), T (Teen, 13+), M (Mature, 17+) and AO (Adults Only, 18+), with RP meaning Rating Pending.
The part most parents miss is the third block on an ESRB label. Beyond the letter and the content descriptors, there is a line of Interactive Elements: In-Game Purchases, In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items) for loot boxes, Users Interact for player-to-player communication, Shares Location, and Unrestricted Internet. For a young child those five phrases carry more weight than the letter does. A game can be rated E and still say Users Interact and In-Game Purchases, which is a very different proposition from an E-rated game with neither.
PEGI (Europe and the UK)
Pan European Game Information uses numbers rather than letters: 3, 7, 12, 16, 18. The number is a content threshold, not a recommendation of the right age to enjoy the game. PEGI 3 means nothing in the game is unsuitable for a three-year-old; it emphatically does not mean a three-year-old will understand it.
PEGI pairs the number with pictogram descriptors, violence, bad language, fear, gambling, sex, drugs, discrimination, and since 2020 an in-game purchases pictogram, extended to flag paid random items. That last one is the one to look for. PEGI 3 with the purchases pictogram is a very common combination in free mobile games aimed at small children.
Google Play (IARC ratings, plus two labels and a badge)
Google Play does not rate games itself. Developers fill in a questionnaire through the IARC system, the International Age Rating Coalition, and it issues the right rating for each region automatically: an ESRB rating for the US, PEGI for Europe, USK for Germany, ClassInd for Brazil and so on. It is self-declared, and it is audited afterwards rather than before, which is worth remembering. A wrong answer on the questionnaire produces a wrong rating until somebody reports it.
Two separate labels on the listing matter more for young children than the rating does: a “Contains ads” tag under the title, and an in-app products line showing the price range. Both are independent of the age rating. So is the Data safety section, which is the developer's declaration of what the app collects and shares.
Google also runs a Teacher Approved programme. Apps in the Play Store's Kids tab carrying that badge have been reviewed by teachers and child development specialists against criteria that do include appeal, learning value, and ad experience, not just content. It is the closest thing on Play to a quality judgement rather than a content threshold, and it is a reasonable shortlist to browse. It is also not exhaustive: plenty of good small apps have never been through it.
Apple App Store
Apple runs its own scheme rather than using IARC. It historically used four tiers, 4+, 9+, 12+ and 17+, and in 2025 moved to a finer five-tier set, 4+, 9+, 13+, 16+, 18+, with an expanded developer questionnaire covering things like in-app controls and communication features. As on Play, the rating is generated from the developer's own answers and reviewed afterwards.
How the tiers line up
Roughly, though the systems genuinely disagree on individual games:
- ESRB E ≈ PEGI 3 or 7 ≈ Apple 4+ or 9+
- ESRB E10+ ≈ PEGI 7 or 12 ≈ Apple 9+
- ESRB T ≈ PEGI 12 or 16 ≈ Apple 13+
- ESRB M ≈ PEGI 18 ≈ Apple 16+ or 18+
The disagreements cluster around cartoon violence, which PEGI treats more strictly at the bottom end, and around gambling mechanics and language, where thresholds differ by country. If two systems disagree about a game your child wants, the stricter one is usually reacting to something real.
What no age rating checks
This is the section worth keeping. Every one of the four systems above is built to answer a question about content. None of them is built to answer these:
- How aggressive is the advertising? The label tells you ads exist, not that a video fires every ninety seconds, or that the close button is a three-pixel cross. There is no rating tier for that.
- How hard does it push purchases? “In-app purchases” covers both a single $2 unlock and an endless gem shop with countdown timers. Same label, opposite experiences.
- What does it collect? Age ratings say nothing about advertising identifiers, location, or analytics SDKs. That lives in the Data safety card, and in whether the developer claims COPPA compliance.
- Who can talk to your child? ESRB's Users Interact flags it; PEGI and the store ratings largely do not. An E-rated game with open voice chat is a completely different risk from one without.
- Is it any good for this child? No rating knows your six-year-old is scared of the dark, or that your eight-year-old reads fluently. That judgement stays with you.
The trap in one line: the most ad-saturated, purchase-pushing game in the store can legitimately carry the friendliest possible rating, because nothing in it is violent. That is not a failure of the rating system; it is a question the rating system was never asked.
Rate a game yourself in five minutes
For a child under about 8, this sequence catches nearly everything a rating misses:
- Read the age rating and its descriptors, not just the number. The pictograms and interactive elements carry the detail.
- Look for “Contains ads” under the app title, and read the in-app products price range. A range topping out at $99.99 tells you what the business model is.
- Open Data safety and expand it. For a young child's app, “No data collected” and “No data shared” is the answer you want. Anything about advertising or marketing is a flag.
- Check the permissions. A jigsaw game asking for contacts, microphone or precise location has a reason, and it is not jigsaws.
- Install and play it once yourself, then repeat in airplane mode. A game that works offline is not serving ads or phoning home while your child plays. Our offline games guide explains why that single test is so revealing.
Our safe download checklist walks the same ground line by line, and the red flags guide covers what to do when something looks wrong after install.
“Is this specific game suitable for my child?”
The common case is a child naming a game you have never heard of. A workable order of operations:
- Find its store listing and read the rating, descriptors and labels as above. If there is no listing at all, and it lives only on a browser games portal, treat that as unrated, because it is.
- Check an independent review. Common Sense Media publishes age recommendations that factor in themes, difficulty and commercial pressure, and it is routinely a year or two stricter than the official rating. Where they differ, the gap itself is the information.
- Search the game's name with the word “chat” or “multiplayer”. Open communication with strangers changes the answer more than any content descriptor.
- Watch three minutes of gameplay footage. Faster than installing, and it shows you the pace, the noise and the interruptions.
For the age brackets themselves, our guide to the safest video games for kids by age gives a starting point per year, and safe mobile games covers the phone-specific side.
Ratings on the device, not just in the shop
A rating only helps if something enforces it. On Android, Google Family Link can restrict Play downloads by content rating and require your approval for every install; the parallel controls are in Play's own parental controls. Worth knowing: approval and payment are separate settings, so an approved install can still lead to a purchase unless you have also required authentication.
Do not over-trust the enforcement either. Filters act on the rating, which is self-declared, so a mis-rated game passes straight through a correctly configured filter. Controls narrow what reaches your child; the five-minute check above is what tells you whether the thing that got through is any good.
What to look for instead, for under-8s
For the 2 to 8 bracket specifically, the rating is close to a formality, almost everything aimed at that age is E or PEGI 3, so it separates nothing. These five do the separating:
- No ads at all, verified in airplane mode rather than trusted from the description.
- No in-app purchases, or a single up-front price. See apps without subscriptions.
- Works offline, which rules out streamed advertising by design.
- No data collected, stated on the Data safety card.
- No chat, no external links, no social sign-in.
A game clearing those five is child-friendly in the sense parents actually mean, whatever letter is on the box.
Frequently asked questions
What is the child-friendly rating for video games?
There is no single global one. In North America the ESRB rates games E for Everyone, E10+, T for Teen, M for Mature and AO for Adults Only. In Europe and the UK, PEGI uses 3, 7, 12, 16 and 18. Apple's App Store uses its own tiers, which moved in 2025 from 4+, 9+, 12+ and 17+ to a five-level set of 4+, 9+, 13+, 16+ and 18+. Google Play issues ESRB, PEGI or other regional ratings automatically through the IARC questionnaire. E, PEGI 3 and 4+ are the most child-friendly tiers in their respective systems.
Does a PEGI 3 or E rating mean a game is safe for my child?
It means an assessor found no violent, frightening, sexual or language content that would push the game to a higher tier. It does not mean the game is free of advertising, in-app purchases, data collection or chat with strangers, because no age rating system measures those. A heavily ad-supported game aimed at four-year-olds will usually still carry the friendliest possible rating.
What does Teacher Approved mean on Google Play?
Teacher Approved is a Google Play programme where teachers and child development specialists review apps in the Kids tab against criteria including age appropriateness, learning value, appeal to children and the advertising experience. It goes further than a content rating because it judges quality rather than only checking for unsuitable content. It is not comprehensive, so a good app may simply never have been submitted.
Who decides a game's age rating?
For boxed and major releases, a rating board such as the ESRB or PEGI assesses submitted material. For most mobile and digital games, the developer completes a questionnaire, through IARC on Google Play or Apple's own form on the App Store, and the rating is generated from those answers. That makes the majority of mobile ratings self-declared and audited after publication rather than before.
How do I check whether a specific game is suitable for my child?
Read its store listing for the age rating and its content descriptors, then check separately for a Contains ads tag, the in-app products price range, and the Data safety section. Look up an independent review such as Common Sense Media, which tends to recommend an older age than the official rating. Search the game's name with chat or multiplayer to find out whether strangers can reach your child. Then watch a few minutes of gameplay footage before installing.
Do age ratings cover in-app purchases and ads?
Only partially, and never as a tier. PEGI adds an in-game purchases pictogram, and the ESRB lists In-Game Purchases and In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items) among its interactive elements. Google Play shows a separate Contains ads tag and an in-app products line. None of these affects the age number itself, and none of them measures how aggressive the advertising or the purchase prompts actually are.
What rating should I look for for a 2 to 8 year old?
For that age the rating separates almost nothing, since nearly every game aimed at young children is rated E or PEGI 3. Judge on the commercial side instead: no advertising, no in-app purchases or a single small up-front price, full offline play, no data collected, and no chat or external links. Those five distinguish calm apps from ad-driven ones far better than any age tier.
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