Best AI math tutor 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. Nothing else on this list works that way, the rest wait for a question or grade an answer. Teachers see who is stuck right now and get per-standard analytics after every session. The Gates Foundation funds Goblins.
“I cannot split myself up into 30 pieces. ... It truly is powerful because there's like 30 of mes in the computer.”
Bobbye Graboyes · 26-year math teacher
“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
“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
The Goblins 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. Free also covers 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.
2. Khanmigo
Khanmigo is Khan Academy's AI assistant, a chat panel that speaks and types alongside Khan Academy content. It is the cheapest paid option here and the most instructive cautionary tale.
- District pricing starts at $10 per student per year, credit-card purchasable up to 1,000 licenses, with LMS sync and a multilingual beta shipped over 2025-26.
- Khan Academy has admitted only 15 percent of students with access regularly use Khanmigo, and is redesigning it to be proactive for summer 2026 because ask-first help went unused.
- It sees photos of finished work attached to questions, not the work as it happens, and North Carolina just cut its proposed $10 million pilot to $500,000.
Right for: Khan Academy classrooms that want a low-cost chat layer over content they already use.
3. Third Space Learning Skye
Skye is a voice-based 1-on-1 AI math tutor from Third Space Learning, a company with a decade of live human tutoring behind it. It guides reasoning through dialogue rather than giving answers, grades 3-10, Common Core aligned.
- Real voice conversation with content written by teachers and math experts, plus an explicit no-training-on-student-data claim.
- Flat per-school pricing from $5,000 a year with unlimited sessions, which removes per-seat budget anxiety.
- Students speak or type, but Skye does not watch written work. The math happens on paper it cannot see.
- The AI tutor is a newer line on a human-tutoring business, so the depth of the AI-only track is hard to judge.
Right for: budget-predictable voice-first tutoring without per-student licensing.
4. MATHia
MATHia is Carnegie Learning's AI-adaptive practice for grades 6-12, usually sold with its blended curriculum. It is adaptive practice rather than a conversational tutor.
- 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 interface, and students pushed through without real understanding.
Right for: adaptive practice integrated with a full curriculum adoption.
5. Edia
Edia sells AI math tutoring with diagnostics and adaptive intervention for grades 6-12, 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 there are 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. We also wrote a deeper Goblins vs. Edia comparison.
6. 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.
- CK-12's own limitations doc says answers are not always right and recommends cross-checking, and calls the text format weak for visual learners. No live monitoring, no drawn work.
Right for: budget-constrained supplemental homework help at zero cost.
Replacing a specific tool? We keep cited lists of IXL alternatives, Khanmigo alternatives, and DreamBox alternatives, plus head-to-head comparisons on the compare hub.
Frequently asked questions
A school AI math tutor is teacher-assigned, rostered, covered by a student data agreement, and visible to the teacher. A consumer homework app solves the problem a student photographs, which is why teachers treat those as cheat tools. A real tutor teaches toward understanding instead of handing over answers. Every tool on this list clears that bar. Photomath-style apps do not.
Goblins is the only AI math tutor on this list that watches written work live, as the pencil moves. Skye is voice, but students' written math happens where it cannot see. Khanmigo accepts photos of finished work attached to questions. MATHia, Edia, and Flexi work from typed answers. Magma Math, a teacher-facing formative assessment tool rather than a tutor, reads digital handwriting after the fact for the teacher.
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.
AI math tutoring in 2026 is priced three ways: per student, flat per school, or behind a sales call.
- Khanmigo's Enterprise Starter is $10 per student per year, per Khan Academy's published pricing.
- MATHia with Carnegie's blended curriculum runs roughly $35 to $45 per student per an Evidence for ESSA listing. Confirm with the vendor.
- Skye starts at $5,000 per school per year flat, with unlimited sessions.
- Edia does not publish pricing. It is contact-sales only.
- Goblins is free for teachers, with Goblins Max priced per school or district.
Skye is voice-first, and Khanmigo speaks and listens. Goblins does both while Goblin, the tutor, watches the student draw as they talk, in whatever language they think in. MATHia and Flexi are typed.
Only 15 percent of students with access to Khanmigo regularly use it, by Khan Academy's own admission. Access is not adoption.
- Khan Academy is rolling out a redesigned proactive Khanmigo to district partners in summer 2026 because ask-first help went unused.
- In July 2026 North Carolina cut a proposed $10 million Khanmigo pilot to $500,000 amid questions about educational value.
A tutor that waits to be asked mostly goes unused.
Most AI math tutors for schools have never published an independently measured effect size, and the best-evidenced tool on this list averaged +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 +0.04 average covers Carnegie's whole blended curriculum, and the 'nearly doubled growth' in its marketing is one year-two group at +0.21.
- Khanmigo itself has no completed outcome study. The one peer-reviewed test found no significant advantage over a Google search, and its first randomized trial reports around mid-2026.
- Edia's improvement statistics are unaudited vendor marketing with no independent study behind them.
- Skye and Flexi have no independent efficacy studies.
The best independent result on this list is +0.04, and it belongs to a whole curriculum.
A live AI tutor and adaptive practice software are different purchases, and vendors blur the line. MATHia, Edia, and Flexi lean toward adaptive practice and diagnostics: the software adjusts what comes next. A live tutor works the current problem with the student and intervenes mid-problem, before the wrong answer lands. Decide which one you are buying before comparing prices.
Yes. Goblins complies with COPPA, FERPA, and student data privacy laws in all 50 states.