What the market charges, what it is missing, and what we have to build before we can charge for this. Prices researched 2026-08-30; franchise figures are ranges by definition and several consumer prices come from aggregators rather than vendor pages.
Position against the $150–$350/month a family already spends at Kumon, Mathnasium, or RSM — not against $9.99 apps. But price the household, not the seat.
Math Academy charges $49/month and Wild Zebra $48/month, both per child. A homeschool family with three children pays them $144–$147/month. That per-child arithmetic is the sharpest pricing weapon available, and Duolingo’s fastest-growing product globally is its family plan.
| Tier | Price | Covers | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1 child, read-only mastery map, 1 animated lesson per branch, 5 printables/month | Printable worksheets are the highest-intent free acquisition channel in this market. The placement report is the conversion moment. |
| Learn | $16/mo or $129/yr | 1 child, full Socratic engine, all animated scenes, unlimited printables | Parity with Beast Academy and IXL core. Exists mainly to make the next tier look correct. |
| Homeschool ★ | $29/mo or $249/yr | Up to 3 children, plus builder, paper scan grading, multi-pedagogy tracks, curriculum-switch import, portfolio export | One fifth of a single Kumon subject and one tenth of Mathnasium, covering three children where competitors would charge $144. |
| Family / Tutor | $49/mo or $399/yr | Up to 6 children, plus scene editor, branded printable packets, roster and bulk scan grading | Matches the Math Academy price point but for a household or microschool rather than one seat. Highest LTV, lowest churn segment. |
| Microschool (later) | $99–$149/mo | Up to 15–25 students, cohort reports, invoicing | A bridge to B2B without a district sales motion. |
What has to exist before this can be charged for, ordered by whether it is disqualifying, differentiating, or optional.
Cannot charge money without these. None of them differentiate us; all of them are disqualifying if missing.
A 15-35 question adaptive diagnostic that ends in a mastery map showing exactly where the gaps are. This is the conversion event, not a feature.
A parent will not un-see a gap map. Math Academy leads with it and it is the demo that sells the product.
Competitors with it: 4
The full K-12 atlas with prerequisite edges, browsable before payment and indexable by search engines.
Parents want to see the map before paying; it doubles as the SEO surface.
Competitors with it: 1
Per-topic alignment to CCSS and at least five state standard sets, displayed on the topic page.
Non-negotiable for homeschool state reporting and for parent trust. IXL sets the bar.
Competitors with it: 3
Per-child mastery state, switching without re-login, one billing relationship.
Two or more children is the homeschool default. Math Academy and Wild Zebra charging full price per child is the market's biggest unforced error.
Competitors with it: 3
Minutes, topics mastered, current struggles, and one recommended action, delivered weekly without being asked.
The single cheapest retention lever in this category.
Competitors with it: 3
Roughly 1,200-1,500 topic nodes and 10,000+ distinct problems before a K-8 coverage claim is credible; 2,500 nodes and 20,000+ problems for parity with the serious tier.
Content volume is the first thing a sceptical parent checks. Parameterised generators turn this into "never the same worksheet twice", which is a stronger claim than a count.
Competitors with it: 3
Every topic node generates a randomised printable worksheet with an answer key.
Table stakes given Kuta, TpT, and Math Mammoth — and simultaneously the highest-intent free acquisition channel in this market.
Competitors with it: 3
Symbolic verification that each generated answer and each intermediate transformation is correct, before it renders.
An AI tutor that confidently teaches a wrong step is an unrecoverable trust event with homeschool parents, who talk to each other constantly.
No tracked competitor has this.
Annual-default pricing, monthly option, 30-day money-back, cancellation without a phone call.
Mathnasium, Kumon, and Cuemath opacity is a gift — frictionless cancellation is a marketing claim.
Competitors with it: 2
Verifiable parental consent, retention limits on children's data, a written information security program, and written third-party assurances from any model vendor touching children's data.
Full compliance with the amended COPPA rule was due 2026-04-22 and is already in force. Scanned worksheet photos and any voice feature put us squarely in scope.
Competitors with it: 3
The reasons a parent picks us over a $10 app or a free chatbot. Most are things a chat window structurally cannot do.
Problems are graphs of reasoning steps, so completing the square and the quadratic formula are both accepted and the system knows which route the student is on.
Every competitor including the new Socratic AI tutors runs a linear hint chain; Symbolab and Wolfram have one canonical path. Nobody has this.
No tracked competitor has this.
Named diagnostic codes per topic, reported as "she is treating −(x+3) as −x+3, in 4 of 6 problems this week".
The single most persuasive artifact you can put in a parent inbox, and nobody produces it. It justifies the price by itself.
No tracked competitor has this.
A bar model that grows with the numbers in this problem, a balance that tips with this equation, a motion track for this word problem. The animation is the argument, not decoration.
ST Math proved visual-first math works at scale but decoupled it from symbolic work. Mathigon has interactivity without progression. Nobody binds animation to problem semantics.
Competitors with it: 2
Scan a completed printable, get per-step credit, and update mastery automatically.
Thinkster charges $100+/mo for the human version. It is also our answer to screen-time objections, which is the largest unaddressed parent concern in the category.
Competitors with it: 2
The same mastery node shown Singapore-style, Russian-style, classical-drill-style, or Kumon-style, over one shared mastery model.
Literally zero products do this, and parents already shop by pedagogy name. RSM built a $2,000-3,500/yr business substantially on a pedagogy label.
No tracked competitor has this.
"We used Saxon 5/4 through lesson 60 and Beast Academy 3A-3C" maps onto our graph as presumed-mastered, then verified by targeted probes.
Homeschoolers change math programs constantly and lose all continuity. Nothing addresses this; IXL textbook skill plans are the closest and are one-directional.
No tracked competitor has this.
A PDF of hours logged, topics covered with standards codes, and work samples from scanned worksheets.
Homeschool state reporting is a real annual chore in about half of states. Owning it makes us the system of record — the one defensibility a model provider cannot ship as a feature.
No tracked competitor has this.
Automatic review scheduling so mastered topics stay mastered, driven by the prerequisite graph.
Math Academy's actual moat, and the thing their customers rave about.
Competitors with it: 2
One authoring pass produces both an assignable interactive lesson and a print-ready PDF.
Parity target is Kuta quality with MagicSchool ease. Strong for the tutor and microschool segment, which is the highest-LTV, lowest-churn buyer.
Competitors with it: 2
A daily target, a streak, and XP tied to minutes of focus — deliberately not a game that eats the learning time.
36% of kids-app cancellations are "child lost interest". But our buyer is a parent suspicious of Prodigy, so the loop must be quiet.
Competitors with it: 3
Real value, wrong order. Efficacy evidence is the exception: P2 to build, P1 to instrument for from day one.
Expose the actor rig, keyframe, and expression studio to users rather than keeping it internal.
Almost no parent will use it, but it is a killer tutor/microschool feature and a marketing asset via shareable scenes. Keep internal-authoring-only at first.
Competitors with it: 1
An enrichment track for the olympiad-adjacent segment.
High affinity and strong word of mouth, small addressable market.
Competitors with it: 1
App store presence where parents search.
Web-first with parent-owned billing sidesteps the 30% cut, the Kids Category constraints, and the new App Store Accountability age-signal APIs. Add mobile once ARR justifies the compliance work.
Competitors with it: 3
A Thinkster-style paid upsell where a human reviews scanned work.
Proven $99+/mo upsell, but human-labour economics.
Competitors with it: 2
A quasi-experimental study leading toward an ESSA evidence tier.
P2 in build order but P1 in narrative order: instrument for it from day one so the study is possible in year two. Tutor CoPilot's Stanford RCT (+4pp mastery, +9pp for weaker tutors) is the best borrowed evidence for Socratic scaffolding in the meantime.
Competitors with it: 2
Reduced-motion honoured everywhere, keyboard-navigable step entry, screen-reader-accessible math via MathML/ARIA rather than images, captions for animated models.
An animation-heavy product has real accessibility exposure, and institutional buyers cannot adopt without a VPAT.
No tracked competitor has this.
16 of 25 have a published consumer monthly price.
adaptive practice · K-12 mastery, launched via YC S26
$39/mo or $279/yr
YC S26; pilot at a MA charter school, ~150 students, ~1.8x expected NWEA MAP growth (uncontrolled)
solver · Everyone
Free, on free and paid personal plans
ChatGPT for Teens launched 2026-08-18. This is the commoditisation event: they shipped the headline feature at $0. The answer is to compete on what a chat window structurally cannot do.
curriculum · Homeschool families
[S] $149/yr single child; ~$195-198.50/yr family up to 10 children
This is the pricing structure to copy.
adaptive practice · Schools, K-5
[V] Home $99/student/yr ($49 each additional); classroom from $370/20 students
Small, school-focused
adaptive practice · Parents and schools, PreK-12
[S] $9.95/mo single subject, $19.95/mo four subjects; $79-$159/yr; +$4/mo per extra child up to 10
~5,300 math skills; "1 in 5 US students"; owns Teachers Pay Teachers, Rosetta Stone, ABCya
Sets the bar on standards mapping, which is a genuine purchase criterion. Its brand liability is our positioning gift.
authoring · Teachers and tutors
[S] Single-user lifetime $150 (1 program) to $700 (6); site licence $400-$1,850
The parity target for worksheet generation quality. Their "infinite" claim is the model for our generator marketing.
adaptive practice · Serious students 4th grade to university, and adults
[V] $49/mo per student; no free trial; 30-day money-back; cancel anytime
~2,500 hand-built topics in a knowledge graph, 3-4 knowledge points each; bootstrapped
The proof that the market will pay 5x IXL for a credible mastery engine. Their graph is the moat and they talk about it publicly.
curriculum · Homeschool families
[S] Teaching Textbooks ~$43-67 per level, up to $216.95 for 4-8 kids; Time4Learning $24.95-$39.95/mo; Math Mammoth ~$40 per grade
tutoring · Parents, K-8
[S] $45-$295/mo; entry ~$60-68/mo with a coach; typical $100-150/mo
Our scan loop is the automated version of their core value proposition, at a fifth of the price.
adaptive practice · Families, grades 2-9
$48/mo per child, opened to families in 2026
$8M raised total ($6M seed 2026); founded 2024; "tens of thousands of students"
The closest direct competitor. Their public pitch is nearly verbatim our differentiator: general chatbots do not keep track of what a student knows over time.
solver · Students
Declining subscription business
Q1 2025 subscribers −31% to 3.2M, revenue −30%; layoffs 22% then 45%; stock −99%
The clearest available evidence that "answers" is a commoditised, AI-destroyed business. Never position as an answer engine.
adaptive practice · Everyone, K-12 and beyond
[V] Khan Academy free; Khanmigo $4/mo or $44/yr; free for US K-12 teachers
FY24-25 revenue ~$117.5M (~$90.4M contributions); 185M registered learners; 10,000+ videos
The price-anchor problem: $4/mo makes AI tutoring feel like it should be nearly free. Do not compete on breadth or price.
tutoring · Parents, PreK-12
[S] $140-$200/mo per subject typical; up to $275 in NYC; registration ~$80, materials ~$30
~1,500 US centres; Kumon Connect rolling out as a tablet+stylus version of the same worksheets
The value anchor and the thesis target simultaneously: their weakness is precisely our product.
tutoring · Parents, K-12
[S] $150-$500/mo; most commonly $300-$350/mo suburban; assessment fee $99-$200
1,000+ centres
tutoring · Ambitious parents, K-12
[S] $2,000-$3,500/yr; $150-$500/mo by grade; online $166-$444/mo
50+ branches
Direct evidence for the multi-pedagogy thesis: a $2-3.5k/yr business built substantially on a pedagogy label.
curriculum · Schools; free for families
Free for students, teachers, and families; paid district accounts
501(c)(3) with state-level free deals
Sets a $0 anchor for curriculum-grade quality.
adaptive practice · Ambitious parents, ages 6-13
[S] $16/mo or $100/yr; online+books bundle $160/yr; sibling add-on ~$65/yr up to 6
[V] 1,000+ lessons, 20,000+ problems, 1,000+ videos, 20 digital guide books
adaptive practice · Consumers
[S] Super $83.99/yr; Super Family $119.99/yr for up to 6; Max $29.99/mo
Standalone Math app removed Nov 2023, folded into the main app; redesigned Sept 2025, now spans grades 2-12
The pricing and gamification benchmark. Their family-plan growth is the single strongest argument for pricing the household rather than the seat.
authoring · Teachers
[S] MagicSchool Plus $8.33/user/mo annually or $12.99/mo; Brisk Pro ~$9.99/mo
Brisk raised $15M (April 2025)
Khanmigo Teacher Tools being free for US teachers sets the floor at $0 for AI worksheet generation.
visual · Teachers and curious learners
Free, no premium tier
Amplify owns both. They have shown no consumer intent in five years — watch, do not panic.
solver · Students needing homework help
[S] $9.99/mo or $69.99/yr; free tier with basic steps
adaptive practice · Parents of children 6-14
[S] Free game; membership $9.95-$19.95/mo, $58.95-$118.95/yr; 25% family discount on 2+
100M+ registered users; $125M Series B
Our buyer is often a parent who is specifically suspicious of Prodigy. That shapes our gamification choices.
visual · Districts; free for homeschool families
[S] Homeschool free; school site licence from $3,500/yr for up to 150 students
Long-running, widely deployed
solver · Students and adults
[V] Wolfram Pro for students $9.99/mo or $60/yr; [S] Mathway $9.99/mo, Symbolab $29.99/yr
adaptive practice · Parents of children aged 5-11
[V] Individual $35/mo or $300/yr; Family (up to 7) $29/mo or $119/yr; lifetime $999-$1,499
Spun out of Synthesis School
The published family annual ($119) is cheaper than the individual annual ($300) — almost certainly a promotion artifact. Re-verify before citing.