Cost guide · Updated August 2026

How much does Medical Guardian cost?

$31.95 to $46.95 a month, plus $0 to $199.95 for the equipment, with no long-term contract. That works out to roughly $383 to $763 in the first year. Fall detection is a paid add-on on top.

Medical Guardian does not publish any of that. Their own site has a question headed “How much do your systems cost?” and answers it with a phone number. The figures above are from SeniorLiving.org’s August 2026 comparison, which discloses that it earns commissions from providers. Confirm your own quote before ordering.

Where we stand: Call Mabel sells a daily phone call for older adults, so we compete with Medical Guardian for some of the same families. We have never tested their hardware and this is not a hands-on review. Everything below is either a sourced figure or something Medical Guardian says about itself, labelled as such.

Medical Guardian against the alternatives

ProviderEquipmentMonthlyYear oneContract
Medical Guardian$0–$199.95$31.95–$46.95$383–$763None
MobileHelpNone$29.95–$49.95$311–$599None
Bay Alarm Medical$0–$199$27.95–$64.95$335–$978None
Life Alert$197 install$49.95–$89.95$796–$1,2763 years, required

Medical Guardian sits in the middle on price and at the top on device choice. Against Life Alert it is roughly half the first-year cost with no contract, which is the comparison most people are actually making. Full detail on that one: what Life Alert costs.

Check the price with fall detection switched on. It is an add-on on both the Guardian Flex and the MGMove, not part of the base monitoring fee. Fall detection is usually the reason families start shopping, and comparing one company’s base price against another’s all-in price is the easiest mistake to make here.

What you get

From Medical Guardian’s own product pages, read on 25 August 2026:

  • Guardian Flex. Their newest and lightest unit. GPS, two-way voice, battery lasting up to five days, wearable three ways, three colours.
  • MGMove. A smartwatch-style device with step counting, weather and reminders. Battery life is up to 24 hours, so it needs charging daily.
  • Monitoring. UL-certified, US-based, with redundant backup centres, covering police and fire as well as medical.
  • What they claim about themselves. Over 600,000 families, 9.9 out of 10 from NCOA, 4.7 in Google. Their figures, not ours.

SeniorLiving.org rates them 4.5 out of 5 and recommends them for people who want a lot of device options, while flagging that fall detection is an add-on and not always accurate. That last point is worth taking seriously: no fall detection on any brand is perfect, and it produces both misses and false alarms.

Medical Guardian frequently runs seasonal promotions, and there was one live when this page was written. Discounts come and go, so treat the list prices above as the planning figure and ask what the rate reverts to after any introductory period.

What a button cannot do

The honest limit of every product on this page. A button works when someone falls, is conscious, is wearing it, and presses it. Remove any one of those and it does nothing.

It also misses the slow changes. Skipped meals. Sleeping all afternoon. The same story twice in a week. Sounding flat for a fortnight. Nobody presses a button for those, and they are usually what shows up first.

If falls are the worry, buy the medical alert system. Call Mabel is a daily phone call. No button, no monitoring centre, no ambulance, and we would rather say that here than have you discover it at the wrong moment. Where a call fits is the other twenty-three hours: $29.97 a month, on the phone they already have, landline included, with a voice call to up to three family contacts when something sounds off.

Also worth reading: Call Mabel compared with Medical Guardian and the full medical alert comparison.

Questions people ask

How much does Medical Guardian cost per month?

Between $31.95 and $46.95 a month for monitoring, depending on the device, plus $0 to $199.95 for the equipment itself. Medical Guardian does not publish these figures. Their own site carries a question headed "How much do your systems cost?" and answers it by inviting you to call 1-800-668-9200. The numbers here come from SeniorLiving.org's comparison, updated August 2026.

What does Medical Guardian cost in the first year?

Roughly $383 to $763, covering twelve months of monitoring plus any equipment charge. That is well below Life Alert, which runs $796 to $1,276 in year one and requires a three-year contract. Medical Guardian sells month to month with no long-term commitment, which is the more important difference for most families.

Is fall detection included with Medical Guardian?

No. Fall detection is a paid add-on on both the Guardian Flex and the MGMove, not part of the base monitoring price. This matters because fall detection is usually the reason families are shopping in the first place, and it is easy to compare a base price against a competitor's all-in price without noticing. Ask what the total is with fall detection switched on before you compare anything.

Does Medical Guardian require a contract?

No. Medical Guardian sells month to month, as do MobileHelp and Bay Alarm Medical. Life Alert is the outlier in this market with a required three-year term. If you are weighing Medical Guardian against Life Alert, the absence of a contract is worth more than most of the feature differences.

What do reviewers say about Medical Guardian?

Independent reviewers generally rate it well for device choice and features. SeniorLiving.org gives it 4.5 out of 5 and describes it as suited to people who want lots of device options and feature-rich systems, while noting that fall detection is an add-on and is not always accurate. Medical Guardian itself cites a 9.9 out of 10 from NCOA and 4.7 in Google, and says it serves over 600,000 families. We have not tested the hardware ourselves and this page does not pretend to be a hands-on review.

Is a daily check-in call a substitute for Medical Guardian?

No. Medical Guardian is emergency response: a button, a monitoring centre and an ambulance. Call Mabel is a daily phone call and does none of that. If falls are the worry, buy the medical alert system. What a call covers is the slower things a button never catches, because nobody presses a button because they have stopped eating properly or repeated yesterday's story. Some families run both.

For the other twenty-three hours

A daily call on the phone they already have. $29.97 a month, no device, no contract.

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