AI Tutoring Apps for Your Kids: Which Subscriptions Are Actually Worth It?
AI tutors now cost less than one hour of human tutoring for an entire school year. Here's which apps deliver and which ones you can skip.
One hour with a private maths tutor costs between €25 and €80 in 2026. A full year of an AI tutoring app for your entire family costs about the same.
That gap has quietly opened up over the past two years, and with September just around the corner, it's the kind of thing worth thinking about before the new school year kicks off. But like every subscription category, the AI tutoring space has a lot of noise. Some apps are genuinely excellent. Others are dressed-up revision sheets charging €10 a month for the privilege.
Here's a clear-eyed look at what's actually out there and how to decide what your family needs.
What AI Tutoring Apps Actually Do
This category is different from general learning apps like Duolingo or Masterclass. AI tutoring apps are designed to help a child work through their actual school homework — maths problems, essay structure, science concepts — rather than teach a separate skill at their own pace.
The best of them use something called the Socratic method: instead of just giving the answer, they ask guiding questions. "What do you know so far about fractions?" rather than "Here's the solution." This matters for two reasons. It actually helps children learn, and it's much harder to misuse for just getting answers handed over wholesale.
The Main Options (and What They Cost)
Khanmigo — €4/month (up to 10 children on one subscription)
Khanmigo is Khan Academy's AI tutor and currently the most credible option in this space. It covers maths, science, history, and English across all school ages, and one parent subscription covers up to ten children — which makes the €44/year feel like a very reasonable outlay for a family with multiple school-age kids.
The quality is high. It's genuinely Socratic in its approach and aligns with real school curricula. If you only pay for one AI tutoring subscription, start here.
Synthesis Tutor — €95/year (family plan, up to 7 children)
Synthesis started as the internal tutoring programme for SpaceX employees' children and opened to the public a few years ago. It focuses on maths and problem-solving, and the family plan at €95/year works out at under €8/month for as many as seven kids. It's particularly strong for ages 8–14 and has a more game-like interface that keeps children engaged.
Worth noting: it's narrower in subject coverage than Khanmigo, so it works best alongside rather than instead of.
Photomath Plus — €9.99/month (single user)
Photomath is primarily a maths app — you point your phone camera at a problem and it returns a step-by-step solution with explanation. The free version is genuinely useful for checking work; the Plus tier adds deeper explanations and animated tutorials.
The catch: it's single-user and only covers maths. At €9.99/month it's harder to justify as a standalone subscription unless you have a teenager who struggles specifically with maths and won't engage with a more conversational approach.
Socratic by Google — free
Google's Socratic app is excellent and completely free. Point a camera at any homework question — maths, science, history — and it explains the concept. It doesn't do the guided Socratic dialogue that Khanmigo does, but for quick concept checks and explanations it's surprisingly good.
Before subscribing to anything, try Socratic for a few weeks. If your children find it sufficient, you don't need to add another monthly charge.
The Real Decision: Free Tier vs. Paid
Most AI tutoring apps have a free tier that's genuinely useful. The paid tiers add depth, guided explanations, and the ability to track multiple children — but not every family needs those.
A practical way to approach it:
- Start with Socratic (free) and Khan Academy's free content for the first half-term.
- If your child regularly hits a wall that a quick explanation doesn't solve, add Khanmigo at €4/month.
- Only add Synthesis if you have multiple primary-age children and maths is the specific sticking point.
- Skip Photomath Plus unless maths is the sole concern — the free version covers most use cases.
The total cost of the Khanmigo + Synthesis combination for a family with two or more children is around €139/year. For comparison, four sessions with a human maths tutor costs roughly the same.
One Thing to Watch
Annual plans for these apps renew automatically, often in September when you've just signed up as the school year begins. SubManager's renewal alerts will notify you 14 days before any of these charges hit — useful given that annual education subscriptions are easy to forget by the time July comes around and the school year feels like a distant memory.
If you're testing a few options this autumn, tracking them in one place also makes it easier to decide what to keep and what to cut when you review mid-year.
What's Coming Next
AI tutoring is moving fast. Several platforms are adding voice interfaces so children can have a proper back-and-forth conversation rather than typing, and subject coverage is expanding across all the main apps. The free tiers are likely to get better, which means the paid case gets harder to justify unless the extras are specifically useful for your child's learning style.
For now, the honest answer is: try Khanmigo. If it works for your family, it's one of the few educational subscriptions that genuinely competes with paid alternatives at a fraction of the price.