Math apps for kids with no subscription: free, pay once, or subscribe

Khan Academy, Zearn and XtraMath's Standard plan are free, so the cheapest math app with no subscription costs nothing. If you would rather buy once, the one-time options we could confirm are Hit the Button's app at £3.49, Plusy's unlock at $29, and one-time passes listed in the App Store for 99math and DoodleMath.

11 minute read · Updated October 9, 2026

A note on fairness: we make Plusy, one of the pay-once apps on this page. The free apps here cost less than Plusy and two of the subscriptions cost less per year. Prices were read on each app's own site or App Store listing on 5 October 2026.

Which math apps for kids have no subscription?

Math apps with no subscription come in two kinds. Free ones: Khan Academy, Khan Academy Kids, Zearn's family account and XtraMath's Standard plan. Pay-once ones: Hit the Button's app, Plusy's unlock, and the one-time passes that 99math and DoodleMath list in the App Store beside their subscriptions.

Most other well-known math apps for children are subscriptions, billed by the month or the year. Two of the cheapest paid options on this page are yearly plans. The table sorts the apps by how you pay.

Which math apps are completely free?

Khan Academy is completely free: a nonprofit with courses from kindergarten through grade 12 and early college. Khan Academy Kids is free for ages 2 to 8, with no ads and no subscriptions. Zearn says families can create an account for free. XtraMath's Standard plan is listed as free forever.

• Khan Academy. Lessons and practice across the whole school math curriculum, free, as its site says. The paid part is Khanmigo, an AI tutor, at $4 a month or $44 a year for parents and learners.
• Khan Academy Kids. A free app for ages 2 to 8 covering early reading and math, on iPhone and iPad, Android and Amazon tablets, as listed on its site.
• Zearn. A nonprofit math platform for kindergarten to grade 8 with on-screen teaching and paper-and-pencil work in each lesson. Its family page says families can create an account for free. Schools pay for their own accounts.
• XtraMath. A daily fact fluency program. The Standard plan is $0, and a family can add Family Pro at $6 a year for three children, as listed on its pricing page.

If cost is your one test, stop here. These four cover teaching and daily fact practice between them. The apps further down earn their price only when they solve something these do not.

Which math apps are a one-time purchase?

Few math apps for children are sold as a single purchase. We could confirm four on 5 October 2026: Hit the Button's app at £3.49, Plusy's unlock at $29, a 99math Math Pass at $149.99 and a DoodleMath membership at $169.99. The last two are listed in the US App Store beside monthly and yearly plans.

Hit the Button: £3.49 once

Hit the Button is a quick-fire mental math game from Topmarks, aimed at 5 to 11 year olds: number bonds, times tables, division, doubling, halving and square numbers, in one-minute games or with no countdown. The app is £3.49 on the UK App Store, with no in-app purchases listed and up to 30 player profiles on a device. We could not open the US listing to confirm a dollar price. Topmarks also has a browser version on its own site. That page would not open for us on the day, so we cannot confirm what it costs.

Plusy: $29 once

Plusy is our app: arithmetic practice for ages 6 to 12, with lists made from your child's own homework and written column methods. It is free to start, and every road, world and game is open on a free account. Unlock Plusy is one payment of $29, in US dollars on the web. It removes the heart limit and gives up to 50 worksheet scans and 50 AI lists a month. It opens no extra content. See unlock Plusy.

The unlock is for one account, and one account holds one child, so a second child means a second account. Hit the Button's single purchase covers many profiles on one device, which is a better deal for a large family.

99math: a one-time Math Pass at $149.99

99math is a fast math facts game for grades 1 to 6 that its App Store page describes as free for everyone. The paid Math Pass is listed there as in-app purchases at $9.99 a month, $59.99 a year, or $149.99 for a lifetime pass.

DoodleMath: a one-time membership at $169.99

DoodleMath is personalized daily math practice for kindergarten to grade 5 that works offline. Its US App Store listing gives a single-child subscription at $10.99 a month or $94.99 a year and a family plan for up to 5 children at $18.99 a month or $179.99 a year, with a 7-day trial. The same listing shows an in-app purchase named as a lifetime membership for one user at $169.99. We did not find that option described on its website, so confirm it in the app before you count on it.

Which math apps are subscriptions, and what do they cost?

Most paid math apps are subscriptions. On 5 October 2026 the yearly prices we could confirm ran from $6 for XtraMath Family Pro and £7.20 for Times Tables Rock Stars up to $179.99 for a DoodleMath family plan. The table gives each figure with its currency and where we saw it.

IXL and Mathletics are subscriptions too. We could not open IXL's membership page on 5 October 2026, and the Mathletics page we read did not show a price, so their prices are on their own sites. A price in an app store can differ from the price on the same company's website, so compare both before you subscribe.

What does a year cost under each model?

Over one year the free apps cost nothing, the two small subscriptions cost under $10 or £10, Plusy's unlock costs $29, and the larger subscriptions cost from about $60 to $180. Over three years a one-time price stays put, while a subscription is paid three times.

The three-year column assumes today's price holds and that you keep paying, which a family may not. These apps do different things, so the cheapest row is not the best buy for every child. Pounds and dollars are shown as listed and are not converted.

Is a subscription ever the better deal?

A subscription is the better deal when it is cheap, when it covers several children, or when you need it for a short time. Times Tables Rock Stars at £7.20 a year for up to three children costs less over three years than Plusy's $29 for one child, and one month of a broad program can cover a school break.

• Pick a subscription if the yearly price is small, the plan covers all your children, you want a full curriculum that keeps growing, or you only need a month or two.
• Pick a one-time price if you expect to use the app for years, you dislike renewals and trial end dates, and the app does the one job you need.
• Pick free if it does the job. Often it does.

Before any free trial, check three things: whether a card is asked for up front, the date the first charge lands, and where to cancel. Sumdog, Monster Math and Mathletics each say on their own pages that the trial needs payment details. Some parents report on Trustpilot that they were charged by SplashLearn after a trial they thought they had cancelled. That is a small set of reviews, and other families rate the app highly on the App Store.

Where does Plusy fit, and what are its limits?

Plusy fits a family that wants arithmetic practice for one child aged 6 to 12 and wants to pay once or not at all. It is free to start, with hearts as the limit on free play, and $29 removes that limit for good. It is not a full curriculum, and the free apps above cost less.

On a free account a round uses one heart, wrong answers cost nothing extra, and hearts come back on their own over time and with a new day. Tests and replays are free. A free account also includes one worksheet scan and one AI list a day. See what are hearts and scan a worksheet.

Plusy's limits, plainly: whole-number arithmetic, and fractions up to mixed numbers (no multiplying or dividing fractions). No decimals, money, time or geometry. Ages 6 to 12. One child per account. The app is in 14 languages. It runs in the browser today, an iPhone and iPad app is on the way, and there is no Android app. No teacher dashboard and no reports. The Terms say payments are non-refundable except where the law requires. For a billing question, write to support@plusy.app.

You can try the whole of Plusy before paying anything. Start free. For a wider look at what each app is for, see the best math apps for kids 6 to 12.

How we checked

On 5 October 2026 we read each app's own pricing or home page and, where the price is set in an app store, its App Store listing. We printed a figure only when we saw it that day, with its currency and place. We did not buy each plan, and we did not test every app with children.

Plusy is not affiliated with the apps named here, and the names belong to their owners. Prices and features were checked on 5 October 2026 and change, so check each site before you buy.

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