Best Khanmigo alternatives for schools (2026)
1. Goblins
Goblins lets students speak and draw to learn math. That lets Goblin, the tutor, pinpoint exactly where mistakes and misconceptions arise. Help here moves first instead of waiting for a question. Teachers see who is stuck right now and get per-standard analytics after every session. The Gates Foundation funds Goblins.
“When they're doing the questions in Goblins, it's like I'm sitting there helping them. ... I can go into Goblins and I can look at literally the history of every question to see what the back and forth was.”
Rich Grell · HS Math Teacher, 22 yrs
“It's a little me in the computer. And it's like telling them, guiding them, questioning their thought processes. ... You have automatic homework help built into the program. And it's so powerful.”
Bobbye Graboyes · 26-year math teacher
“I get to in real time see how they're doing and if they understand it, and I can pull small groups. ... It's really, really been a game changer for me.”
Renee Schuch · 6th Grade Math · Deer Valley
Ask-first help goes unused. Khan Academy itself says only 15 percent of students with access regularly use Khanmigo, and it is redesigning the product this summer to step in first. Goblins has worked that way from day one. The free plan includes something none of these tools sell at any price, live 1-on-1 tutoring on every student's own work, with 15 live help-enabled problems per student each month, plus worksheet uploads, standards-aligned assignments, and teacher avatars, no credit card. Goblins Max makes live help unlimited and adds standards and engagement reporting across a school or district. Students work in whatever language they think in. We also wrote a deeper Goblins vs. Khanmigo comparison.
2. MATHia
MATHia is Carnegie Learning's AI-adaptive practice for grades 6-12, usually sold with its blended curriculum.
- LiveLab flags stuck or idle students to the teacher in real time.
- Its ESSA Tier 1 rating rests on a RAND trial of the full blended curriculum, not the software alone. The weighted average across 20,485 students is +0.04, and the marketed 'nearly doubled growth' is one year-two group at +0.21, which means the remaining groups averaged essentially zero.
- Reviews describe repetitive drill, a dated and buggy interface, and students pushed through without real understanding. Text-heavy word problems disadvantage weaker readers.
Pick MATHia for curriculum-integrated adaptive practice. Conversational tutoring is not what it does.
3. Magma Math
Magma Math is a K-12 formative assessment platform where students handwrite work digitally and AI reads it for the teacher. It is a teacher-facing insight tool, not a 1-on-1 tutor, and that is exactly what some classrooms want.
- Real-time heatmaps of how students solved, and read-aloud support in 140+ languages.
- Teachers report a limited question library, and independent critical scrutiny is still thin, a data gap rather than a clean bill of health.
- It reads finished handwriting for assessment. Nobody talks with the student mid-problem.
Choose Magma when the goal is teacher-visible insight into how students solved rather than tutoring depth. We also wrote a deeper Goblins vs. Magma Math comparison.
4. CK-12 Flexi
Flexi is a free AI tutor for math and science from the nonprofit CK-12 Foundation. Students type a question or photograph a problem and get hints and adaptive quizzes built on CK-12 content.
- Completely free, no paid tiers, with fallback to expert-written CK-12 material when the AI is unsure.
- CK-12's own limitations doc says answers are not always right and recommends cross-checking with other sources.
- Text-based homework help, weak for visual learners by its own account, with no live monitoring and no drawn work.
Right for: budget-constrained supplemental homework help at zero cost.
5. Edia
Edia sells AI math tutoring with diagnostics and adaptive intervention for grades 6-12, Pre-Algebra through AP, wrapped in a money-back outcomes guarantee. It reports 200+ districts and 500,000+ students, both self-reported figures.
- The money-back guarantee is graded by Edia's own internal model, not by state tests.
- Pricing is contact-sales only, and we found no independent teacher reviews.
- Its improvement numbers are unaudited vendor marketing with no independent study behind them. For scale, education researchers treat an effect under 0.05 SD as small and 0.20 SD as large, so ask for the study and the effect size.
Right for: districts that want an accountability-backed vendor relationship with contractual outcomes.
Frequently asked questions
Khan Academy's own adoption numbers say most students with access never touch Khanmigo. Ask-first help reaches the students who were going to be fine anyway. Khan Academy is rolling out a redesigned proactive Khanmigo to district partners in summer 2026 to close that gap, which tells you what the old model was missing.
Khanmigo costs schools $10 per student per year on the Enterprise Starter district plan, per Khan Academy's published pricing.
- Enterprise Starter covers up to 1,000 licenses and is purchasable by credit card without a PO.
- Above 1,000 licenses it is a custom Enterprise contract with PD and Clever or ClassLink rostering.
- Teacher accounts are free, and consumers pay $4 a month or $44 a year.
Only 15 percent of students with access to Khanmigo regularly use it, by Khan Academy's own admission.
- In July 2026 North Carolina slashed a proposed $10 million Khanmigo pilot to $500,000, with critics citing the lack of competitive bidding and open questions about educational value.
- The 2025-26 releases added LMS sync, mid-session image upload, and a multilingual beta.
No completed study shows Khanmigo improves test scores. Khan Academy wrote in late 2024 that efficacy studies were underway, and none has published a learning outcome since.
- The one peer-reviewed test, undergraduate physics students using Khanmigo against a plain Google search, found no significant difference.
- The first randomized trial of Khanmigo, registered through J-PAL, is expected to report around mid-2026.
The studies in the marketing measured Khan Academy the platform, not the AI tutor.
Only one Khanmigo alternative on this list has an independently accepted effect size, and it measured +0.04 SD. For scale, education researchers treat effects under 0.05 SD as small and 0.20 SD as large (Kraft, 2020).
- MATHia's ESSA Tier 1 rating rests on a RAND randomized trial of Carnegie's full blended curriculum, not the software alone. The weighted average across 20,485 students is +0.04, and the marketed 'nearly doubled growth' is one year-two group at +0.21, which means the remaining groups averaged essentially zero.
- Magma Math's ESSA Level II badge comes from Instructure's paid certification program, and the study behind it found no significant effect in grades 6 to 8, a result absent from the marketing.
- Edia's improvement numbers are unaudited vendor marketing with no independent study behind them.
- We found no efficacy studies for CK-12 Flexi.
Strip the subgroups and vendor metrics and one independent number is left, +0.04.
CK-12 Flexi is completely free with no paid tiers. Goblins is free for teachers, with 15 live help-enabled problems per student each month, standards-aligned assignments, worksheet uploads, and teacher avatars. Goblins Max, priced per school or district, makes live help unlimited.
Goblins is the only tool on this list that watches written work live, as the pencil moves. Magma Math reads digital handwriting, but after the fact and for the teacher's assessment view, not to tutor the student mid-problem. MATHia, Flexi, and Edia work from typed answers or uploaded photos. Goblin, the tutor, watches the pencil strokes as they happen and hears the student reason through them.
Goblins is the only voice tutor on this list. Students speak their reasoning in whatever language they think in and Goblin, the tutor, talks back while watching the work. MATHia and Flexi are typed, Magma is a handwriting assessment tool, and Edia's tutoring is mostly typed. Goblins is natively voice and handwriting, and typing stays supported for students who need it.
Khan Academy is redesigning Khanmigo to guide students through assignments instead of waiting to be asked, after testing from October 2025 through April 2026, because the students who most need help are exactly the ones who never ask. Goblins was built proactive from day one. Goblin, the tutor, watches the work and treats a stall as the signal to step in.
Yes. Goblins complies with COPPA, FERPA, and student data privacy laws in all 50 states.
Weighing other options? See how Goblins compares.
Or see how schools run Goblins across intervention tiers in our MTSS math guide.