After-School Hobby Apps: Which Music, Art, and Coding Subscriptions Are Actually Worth It?
Piano apps, coding platforms, and art tools all promise to unlock your child's potential. Here's what they actually cost — and which ones earn their keep.
Every September, the same thing happens. Your child comes home excited about something new — piano, coding, drawing — and within two weeks you've signed up for a subscription. By December, the app hasn't been opened in six weeks. You cancel it in January. Repeat the following September with a different app.
Most families don't realise how much they spend on hobby subscriptions that children use intensely for a month and then abandon. It's one of the most common patterns in family subscription spending — short-lived enthusiasm, long-running billing.
But some of these apps genuinely deliver. The difference between the ones worth paying for and the ones that quietly drain your account each month comes down to a few key factors — and the price you pay matters enormously depending on when and how you subscribe.
Music Apps: The Biggest Category, and the Most Expensive
Piano and instrument apps have exploded in the last few years. The pitch is compelling: instead of €50–80 for a single hour with a private tutor, your child gets unlimited guided lessons for about the same annual cost.
The reality depends heavily on which app you choose and whether your child is intrinsically motivated enough to practice without a human pushing them.
Simply Piano (JoyTunes) is the most widely used piano learning app for families. The family plan covers up to five profiles across all JoyTunes apps (Simply Piano, Simply Guitar, Simply Bass) and costs around €23/month or €190/year when billed annually. The app uses your device's microphone to listen as you play and gives instant feedback. It works best with children who already have some interest — it's not great at creating initial motivation, but excellent at sustaining it once it exists.
Flowkey runs at roughly €19/month on a rolling monthly basis, dropping significantly for longer commitments. It has a slightly larger song library than Simply Piano and a cleaner interface, which makes it popular with older teens and adults. For younger children, Simply Piano's gamification tends to work better.
Yousician covers piano, guitar, ukulele, bass, and singing — all under one subscription at around €10–17/month depending on the plan. If you have multiple children interested in different instruments, this breadth can make it better value than specialised apps. Quality per instrument is slightly lower than the dedicated options, but the variety is real.
One thing to watch: piano apps only work if your child actually has something to play on. A decent entry-level digital keyboard costs €100–200. That's worth factoring into the real first-year cost before you compare it to tutoring.
SubManager's spending breakdown makes it easy to see whether your music app subscription is in the same ballpark as what you'd pay for in-person lessons — sometimes the comparison surprises families in both directions.
Coding Apps: Better Value at the Lower End
Children's coding subscriptions are generally cheaper and cover more than one child under a single fee, which makes them better value than music apps.
Tynker charges around €15/month on an annual plan and covers up to three children. It uses Scratch-like block programming for younger kids and transitions into real JavaScript and Python for older ones. The Minecraft modding integration is a genuine hook for children who already play it — the app can suddenly feel like part of something they care about rather than separate educational content. Good for ages 6–14.
CodeMonkey is one of the most affordable options at €6–10/month depending on the plan. It's designed for ages 5–14 and teaches text-based coding through game-based challenges — so children are writing actual code sooner than they would with purely visual tools. It has a strong track record in schools, which also means your child's teacher may already be familiar with it.
Free alternatives worth knowing about: Scratch (scratch.mit.edu) is completely free and genuinely excellent for younger children. If your child is 6–9 and just getting started with coding, it's worth trying Scratch first for a few weeks before paying for anything. Many children will be satisfied with the free option for a year or two.
The honest truth about coding apps is that intrinsic interest matters even more here than with music. A child who wants to build games or apps will use these tools enthusiastically. A child who isn't particularly interested will complete a few levels and stop, regardless of how much you paid.
Art and Drawing Apps: Mostly Free Tools Win Here
The digital art space for children is dominated by high-quality free or one-time-purchase options rather than subscriptions.
Procreate (iOS/iPad) is a one-time purchase of around €12 — not a subscription — and is the most powerful drawing app available for children and adults alike. If your child has an iPad, this is almost always the right call over any subscription-based alternative.
Autodesk Sketchbook is free across all platforms and genuinely capable. For most children, it's more than enough.
Subscription-based art apps tend to charge €5–10/month for content (tutorials, guided projects) rather than for the drawing tools themselves. Unless your child specifically needs structured lessons with a curriculum, the free tools plus YouTube art tutorials will cover most of what a subscription provides.
Where subscriptions make more sense is structured art education programmes with guided curriculum, feedback, and progression tracking — but these tend to be in the €25–40/month range and are closer to online tutoring than app subscriptions.
The Real Question: Is the Subscription Actually Being Used?
The single most important factor in whether any hobby subscription is worth paying for isn't the price or the features — it's whether your child actually opens it.
A good rule of thumb: if the app hasn't been used in the last 14 days, it's unlikely to recover. Children who are genuinely engaged with a hobby app use it consistently, often daily. An app that's been untouched for two weeks has almost certainly run its course, even if your child insists they'll get back to it.
SubManager's renewal alerts can be set to notify you 14 days before any subscription renews. That gives you a natural checkpoint: open the app's usage history, check whether it's been active, and decide before the payment goes out rather than after. It's a small habit that prevents a lot of automatic renewals on apps that have quietly stopped being used.
A Practical Comparison
| App | Monthly Cost | Annual Cost | Children Covered | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simply Piano Family | ~€23 | ~€190 | Up to 5 | Piano, ages 6–16 |
| Flowkey | ~€19 | ~€100 (annual plan) | 1 | Piano, teens/adults |
| Yousician | ~€10–17 | ~€90–150 | 1 | Multiple instruments |
| Tynker | ~€15 | ~€130 | Up to 3 | Coding, ages 6–14 |
| CodeMonkey | ~€6–10 | ~€70 | 1 | Coding, ages 5–14 |
| Scratch | Free | Free | Unlimited | Coding, ages 6–12 |
| Procreate | One-time €12 | — | Device shared | Drawing/art |
The pattern is clear: music apps are the most expensive category, coding apps offer decent family coverage, and art is largely free if you skip the structured subscription programmes.
Before You Sign Up in September
One habit that prevents most of the waste: start with a monthly subscription, not annual. It costs a little more per month, but it lets your child's actual engagement determine whether you upgrade. If they're still opening the app twice a week after two months, switch to annual and lock in the lower rate. If they've moved on, you've spent €20–30 instead of €150.
The families who get the most value from hobby app subscriptions aren't the ones who pay for the premium tier immediately. They're the ones who let their children prove genuine interest first, then invest in the annual plan once that interest has been demonstrated.