Best Apps for Teachers: Free Picks for Each Job

Most apps made for teachers charge the teacher nothing. The makers earn their money from schools, districts or parents, and the free plan a single teacher gets usually has a limit somewhere: the number of classes, of students, or of questions in a quiz. That limit decides which app fits your class, so it is the thing we looked for.

We went through each app’s Google Play and App Store listing and the pricing page on its maker’s site. Every app in the table is on both stores and also works in a web browser. Of the five apps this article named in 2019, Google Classroom and ClassDojo are still the two to start with, and Edmodo has closed.

Teacher apps compared

Prices are the makers’ own, in US dollars.

Running the class

Google Classroom is where assignments go out and come back. Its listing describes creating classes, handing out work, marking it and posting announcements, with every file kept in Google Drive. Google’s help pages add that parents and guardians can sign up for email summaries of a pupil’s upcoming or missing work. The app shows no ads label and nothing to buy on Google Play, and it is on the App Store too.

What you pay depends on your school, not on you. Google says the Education Fundamentals edition of Workspace, which includes Classroom, is available at no charge to qualifying institutions. Education Plus adds more and is priced on request. If your school has not signed up, Google’s help page says you can still use Classroom with a personal Google account, and gives a homeschool or a club as examples.

ClassDojo ties the classroom to home. Teachers and parents message each other, parents get photos and videos from the classroom, and the listing says it is used in 180 countries. The front page of ClassDojo’s site promises that it is free for teachers, forever. The in-app purchase on the store pages is ClassDojo Plus, which the listing describes as an extra for parents.

Planning lessons

Planboard is a lesson planner with a timetable. You write and share plans, attach files and photos, tie lessons to curriculum standards, and everything syncs with the web version. Its Google Play and App Store listings both say it is 100% free for teachers.

One caution. Planboard came from a company called Chalk, and the listings now name PowerSchool as the maker. Chalk’s old website forwards to PowerSchool’s products for schools, where Planboard has no page of its own. The address of the web app still loads. We would use it, and keep a copy of anything important somewhere else.

Planbook Mobile is the paid alternative. Its listing gives the price as $20 a year after a 90-day free trial. Planbook’s own site would not show us a price list, so that figure comes from the store pages.

Quizzes and marking

Kahoot! turns a quiz into a game on the classroom screen, with pupils answering from their own devices. The listing says Kahoot! is free for teachers and their students. The free plan on its pricing page is called Kahoot! Go and allows 40 participants in a live game. More players and more question types come with the paid Kahoot!+ plans.

Wayground is the new name for Quizizz. Its plans page says the Basic plan is free for every teacher, forever. The comparison on the same page caps Basic at 100 students and 20 stored activities, with a limited set of question types, and schools and districts pay for the full version. A second app, Wayground for Teachers, marks paper. You photograph a completed worksheet or bubble sheet and the results go into your Wayground reports.

Socrative Teacher runs quick polls, quizzes and exit tickets and marks them for you. The free plan covers 5 quizzes, 1 room and 50 students per activity. Socrative says it is free for students on every device.

Plickers is the one for a classroom where the pupils have no phones or tablets. Each pupil holds up a printed card, and you scan the room with your own phone to collect the answers. The free account allows unlimited classes and sets of up to 5 questions. Plickers Pro removes the question limit.

ZipGrade marks multiple-choice tests on paper. You print its answer sheets, pupils fill them in with pen or pencil, and your phone’s camera reads each one. The listing says it works without an internet connection and syncs later. ZipGrade’s site says 100 papers a month are free, and unlimited marking is $6.99 for a year. For a large class, that is the cheapest thing in this article that costs anything.

If your pupils can reach a browser, Google Forms also makes quizzes that mark themselves. You set an answer key and points for each question. It needs a Google account and has no app to install.

Talking to parents

ClassDojo, above, already covers this for many teachers.

Remind sends class announcements and two-way messages without showing anyone your phone number, and its listing says messages can be translated into more than 90 languages. Remind calls the free version Remind Chat and says it is always free for teachers, with 10 classes per account and 150 participants per class.

Where you teach matters here. Remind’s help centre says its text messages can only be delivered to US and Canadian mobile numbers. Everywhere else, parents need the app or email. The same help centre says pupils under 13 cannot join classes outside the United States, and suggests that a parent joins in their place. Remind is now part of ParentSquare, which Remind’s site describes as the product for whole schools and districts.

Seesaw is built for primary classes. Pupils record their work with photos, video, drawing and voice, and families see it. The free plan, Seesaw Starter, now covers one active class of up to 35 pupils, 35 saved activities and five media items per post. Seesaw says Starter stays free. The rest is sold to schools.

TalkingPoints comes from a nonprofit and does one thing: two-way messages between teachers and families, translated into 150 languages. Families can receive them as ordinary text messages. Its site says individual teachers use it free. The Google Play listing words that as free for teachers in the US, so check that it reaches your pupils’ families before you depend on it elsewhere.

AI helpers for planning

These two run in a browser. MagicSchool has a plan it calls Forever Free for individual teachers, and a Plus plan at $8.33 a month billed yearly that removes the limits on what you can generate. Khan Academy’s Khanmigo is free for teachers and drafts lesson plans, rubrics and exit tickets. The same assistant costs learners and parents $4 a month. Khan Academy’s pricing page does not list the countries where the teacher version is offered, so you will find out at sign-up.

Which to pick

• Your school uses Google accounts: Google Classroom. It comes with the school’s account.
• Young children, and you want parents in the loop: ClassDojo. One app does the classroom and the messaging.
• Pupils have no devices: Plickers for questions in class, ZipGrade for tests on paper.
• Pupils have devices and you want a lively revision lesson: Kahoot! if the class is 40 or fewer, Wayground if it is larger. Its free plan allows 100 students.
• Parents who only read text messages, in the US or Canada: Remind.
• Families who speak a different language from you: TalkingPoints, if it serves your country.
• A lesson planner and nothing else: Planboard, with a backup.

For lessons over a video call, see our guide to free video calling apps. For writing worksheets and handouts, we cover word processing apps separately.

What happened to the old list

Edmodo is gone. Its owner, NetDragon, announced in August 2022 that the free Edmodo.com would shut down on 22 September 2022, and the address no longer leads to a classroom service. Google Classroom does the same job.

Class123 no longer turns up in a search of Google Play or the App Store, and its website did not load for us. PBS Kids Video is still on Google Play, but it is a video app for children from American public television, not a tool for the teacher’s own work, so we left it out.

Quick answers

What is the best free app for teachers?

Google Classroom for setting and collecting work, and ClassDojo for keeping parents involved. Both are free to the teacher.

Which app do teachers use to communicate with parents?

ClassDojo, Remind, Seesaw and TalkingPoints all do it. Remind’s text messages only reach US and Canadian numbers, so outside those countries parents need its app.

Is there a free lesson planning app for teachers?

Planboard’s store listings say it is 100% free for teachers. Planbook is the paid option at $20 a year after a 90-day trial.

Is there a free grading app for teachers?

ZipGrade marks 100 paper tests a month free using your phone’s camera. Google Forms, Socrative and Wayground mark quizzes taken on a device.

Is Edmodo still available?

No. NetDragon closed the free Edmodo.com on 22 September 2022.