Thirty minutes a day, five days a week. At about 20 minutes of targeted practice per gap skill, a child closes all 200 of them in roughly six months. The first 14 days are free.
Level Up vs. the alternatives
Level Up is the only program that combines everything a child needs to reach proficiency.
We put Level Up head to head with IXL, Khan Academy, Prodigy, Math Academy and private tutoring, on the twelve things a math program has to deliver for a child to actually get good at math. Every mark against another program comes from that company’s own published pages.
| What decides whether it works | Level Up | IXL | Khan | Prodigy | Math Academy | Tutor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| See the whole thing, and your child’s report, while you can still change your mind | ||||||
| Tells you which specific skills are missing | ||||||
| Goes back to earlier grades on its own when the gap is older | ||||||
| A skill only counts when it is proven across difficulty | ||||||
| Progress can never be taken away | ||||||
| Brings a skill back before it fades | ||||||
| No points, streaks or leaderboards | ||||||
| A goal your child chose, and a reward that means something at home | ||||||
| Covers all of K through 8 | ||||||
| Works without you sitting next to your child | ||||||
| You can see every problem your child attempted | ||||||
| A daily dose you can sustain for a whole school year | ||||||
| Does all twelve | 12 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 4 |
Does it Partly, or only if you do the work Does notCompetitor details verified August 2026. Every side-by-side is spelled out on the individual comparison pages below.
Level Up vs. a tutor
Level Up closes a gap in minutes, not hours.
Across hundreds of assessments of real families, the median child we assess is about two-thirds of a school year behind and is missing around 200 specific skills. Our own practice data says a gap skill takes about 20 minutes of targeted practice to close. On average, that means a child can close every gap we find in roughly 64 hours.
An hour with a private tutor costs about $50. In that hour a tutor can close about two gaps, and two is generous to the tutor. Closing 200 gaps therefore takes about 100 hours. Across the same six months that is roughly 17 hours a month, or about four sessions a week, which comes to about $830 a month.
Four sessions a week is not a number we picked to make a point. It is more than the three a week the research says tutoring needs in order to work, and it is the reason fewer than 2% of US students receive tutoring at anything like a high-quality level. It is not that families do not believe in tutoring. It is that almost nobody can buy it at the dose that does the job.
The skills and minutes figures are measured from our own assessments and practice logs, and describe the children we assess rather than children in general. The tutoring rate is a representative US figure, not a quote for any particular tutor.
One at a time
Level Up compared with each alternative.
In every case the criticism is the company’s own published wording. Each one has a full side-by-side page with every row spelled out, including what that program does better than us.
Level Up vs. IXL
A score that goes backwards is not a progress bar.
You do not have to take our word for this, because IXL publishes the mechanic itself: above a SmartScore of 90 a right answer is worth one or two points, a wrong one costs three to eight, and a child may need ten correct in a row to finish. So a child who gets five right and misses the sixth can watch the number fall further than the five right answers lifted it. Students describe exactly that, unprompted, in public reviews. Level Up never takes progress back, and a skill clears when your child has handled the harder versions consistently.
The full Level Up vs. IXL comparisonLevel Up vs. Khan Academy
A library is only free if your time is worth nothing.
Khan Academy is excellent, it is free, and if money is the binding constraint you should use it. But it is a library, and a library needs somebody who knows what to look for. Khan Academy is explicit about who: its own homeschool guide asks the parent to browse the content library and decide what the child should work on. If you already knew which skill was broken, you would not be reading a comparison page, and no video is going to tell you that a 5th grader’s trouble with fractions is really an unfinished piece of 3rd grade.
The full Level Up vs. Khan Academy comparisonLevel Up vs. Prodigy Math
The game is the reward. The math is the toll you pay to get back to it.
Prodigy is genuinely good at getting a reluctant child to start, which is the hardest problem in this category. What happens next is the question. The Johns Hopkins evaluation of Prodigy found a child would need roughly 888 questions to gain a single percentile point, and noted the lack of remediation and actual teaching in the product. Prodigy is candid about the rest: its own page says a membership makes the game “more exciting for students... without changing the educational experience”. Level Up sells your child nothing, ever.
The full Level Up vs. Prodigy Math comparisonLevel Up vs. Math Academy
The serious one. For a different child, and you pay before you look.
Math Academy is the closest thing to a real competitor on this page and it deserves the respect: it does mastery properly, it does spaced repetition properly, and it is built by people who care about the mathematics. Two things rule it out for most families reading this. Its earliest course is 4th Grade Math, so there is nothing at all for K through 3. And at the same $49 a month, you commit before you learn anything about your child, because in their own words they do not offer a free trial.
The full Level Up vs. Math Academy comparisonLevel Up vs. A private tutor
Tutoring works. At a dose almost nobody actually buys.
We are not going to argue with the research, because it is on tutoring’s side: across 96 randomised experiments, tutoring produced real gains. The catch is the dose. The Annenberg Institute’s design brief says the effective interventions run three or more sessions a week, and that studies have found little evidence that once-a-week tutoring is enough. Once a week is what a family budget and a family calendar actually allow, and fewer than 2% of US students get tutoring at anything like a high-quality dose.
The full Level Up vs. A private tutor comparisonFAQ
What parents ask when comparing.
What is the best alternative to IXL for K-8 math?
It depends on which part of IXL is not working, and for most families it is not the content. IXL gives you thousands of skills and leaves the choosing to you, and its SmartScore can fall further on one wrong answer than it rose on five right ones. Level Up is built the other way round: it finds the specific skills your child is missing, puts them in an order, and never takes progress back. You can see the whole thing, including your child’s report, in the first 7 days without paying anything.
What is the best Khan Academy alternative for K-8 math?
If the problem with Khan Academy is that nobody is choosing what your child works on, then what you want is not another library. Level Up runs an assessment first, names the specific skills that are missing, and puts them in an order. If the problem is cost, there is no better free option than Khan Academy and we would not pretend otherwise.
What is a good Prodigy alternative if my child only wants to play?
That is the hard case, and worth being honest about: if a game is the only thing that gets your child to open a math app at all, Prodigy is doing something valuable. The trade is that the game supplies the motivation and the math is the toll. Level Up is the alternative for a child who will sit down for 25 focused minutes, because every one of those minutes goes on a skill the assessment found missing.
Why does my child cry over IXL?
Usually because of the SmartScore, and it is a design choice rather than anything your child is doing wrong. IXL’s own guide states that above 90 a correct answer adds one or two points while a wrong one costs three to eight, and that a child may need as many as ten correct answers in a row to finish. Getting most of them right and still going backwards is demoralising for an adult, let alone a nine-year-old. Level Up never takes progress away: a wrong answer tells the program what to work on next, and that is all it does.
Can I try Level Up before paying?
Yes, and this is where Level Up differs sharply from the paid alternatives. The first 7 days cost nothing. Your child takes the assessment, you get the written report, and daily practice starts, all before anything is charged. IXL does not publish a free trial for family memberships, and Math Academy states plainly that it does not offer one, so with both of those you are subscribing in order to find out whether you needed to.
Is Khan Academy enough on its own?
It depends on how much of the work you want to do. Khan Academy is a library, and its own homeschool guide asks the parent to browse the content and decide what the child should focus on. That is a real job: choosing the topics, keeping the order sensible, noticing when something from two grades back is the actual problem, and remembering to come back to a skill before it fades. Level Up does all of that for you, and it is the difference between having the material and having a plan.
Is Prodigy actually teaching my child math?
Less than the time in it suggests. The Johns Hopkins evaluation of Prodigy found a child would need roughly 888 questions to gain a single percentile point, and noted the lack of remediation and actual teaching in the product. Prodigy is candid about the rest: its own page says a membership makes the game more exciting without changing the educational experience. If a game is the only way your child will start, it has real value. If your child will sit down for 25 focused minutes, those minutes buy far more on Level Up.
Is Math Academy better than Level Up?
Not for a K-8 family. Math Academy is a serious program with a strong mastery engine, but its earliest course is 4th Grade Math, so there is nothing at all for kindergarten through third grade, and its placement reports a level by area rather than the skill-by-skill picture a parent can act on. At the same $49 a month it also offers no free trial, so you commit before you learn anything about your child. Level Up covers all of K to 8 and shows you the report inside the first 7 days.
Can I use Level Up alongside Khan Academy or IXL?
Yes, and plenty of families do while they decide. They are different tools: Khan Academy teaches a topic once you know which topic, and IXL drills a skill once you know which skill. Level Up is the part that tells you which one, keeps the order right, and brings a skill back before it fades. Start the trial, read the report, and you will at least know what to point the others at. Most families find they stop needing to.
Is a math app better than a tutor?
For closing gaps at a dose a family can sustain, yes. The research on tutoring is clear that it works and equally clear about the dose: three or more sessions a week, which almost nobody buys. Of the children we assess, the median is missing about 200 skills, and Level Up closes them in roughly six months at $49 a month. Matching that with a tutor, even giving the tutor two gaps a session, means about 100 sessions over the same six months, which comes to about $830 a month at roughly $50 an hour. The tutor is not worse. It is just a different order of money for the same result.
Why is Level Up more expensive than IXL or Prodigy?
Because it does the work those two leave to you. IXL math-only is $9.95 and Prodigy’s math is free, and both are fair prices for what they are: a practice library and a game. Neither will tell you which skills your child is missing, take them back through the earlier grade that actually broke, walk them through a problem they are stuck on, or bring a skill back the week before it fades. Level Up does all twelve of the things on this page, and you can see every one of them free for 7 days before you decide.
Is Level Up right for my child?
For most children, yes. It works whether your child is ahead, on track, or a long way behind, because the assessment starts by finding the actual level rather than assuming the one on the box, and the practice adjusts from there. There are three cases where we would tell you to look elsewhere: if your child will not work without an adult sitting beside them, a tutor buys something software cannot; if your child is past 8th grade, Level Up stops there; and if you do not have a computer or tablet, the hands-on tools will not work on a phone screen.
Does Level Up work on a phone?
No. The assessment and the daily practice need a computer or tablet, which means a laptop, desktop, Chromebook or iPad. The hands-on tools need room to work and a phone screen is too small for them. The parent dashboard works on any device, phone included.
Still deciding? Look at our results, or start the trial. It costs nothing for 7 days, the assessment takes about 30 to 40 minutes on a computer or tablet, and the report will tell you more about your child’s math than this page can. Or see everything Level Up does.
Ready when you areFind the gap today.