Let's start with the thing most "Khan Academy alternatives" articles won't say: Khan Academy is excellent. It's completely free, run by a nonprofit, and its video lessons plus mastery practice cover every grade. As pure free math instruction, nothing on this page beats it, and we're not going to pretend otherwise.
Full disclosure, since one of our recommendations below is our own product: we make Infinilearn, a free math RPG for grades 4-9, and this is Infinilearn's blog. We've flagged our entry clearly so you can apply the appropriate skepticism.
So if Khan is free and excellent, why are you searching for alternatives? Almost always because it isn't working for one specific child — and "isn't working" has several very different causes. Switching platforms without naming the cause is how families end up churning through five apps in a semester. So this guide is organized by failure mode: figure out which one describes your middle schooler, then look only at the alternatives built for that problem.
First, Name Why Khan Isn't Working
- Motivation failure: the content is fine; your child just won't voluntarily open it. Khan runs entirely on self-motivation — there's no built-in accountability and it's not a game — so this is by far the most common failure. You need practice that doesn't require willpower.
- Format failure: your child does the videos and still doesn't get it. Some kids don't learn well from watching someone explain; they need to touch the idea. You need visual and puzzle-based approaches.
- Structure failure: your child will work, but drifts without a plan — rewatching comfortable topics, skipping the hard ones. You need diagnostics and accountability.
- Human failure: the gaps are deep enough, or the frustration high enough, that no software is going to fix it. You need a person.
Failure Mode 1: Motivation — Game-Based Practice
If the problem is that no math happens voluntarily, the fix is a format your child doesn't fight. Note what these are and aren't: games deliver practice, not instruction. They replace the drilling half of Khan, not the teaching half.
1. Infinilearn
Best for: Grades 4-9 · Price: Free (optional premium) · Format: Fantasy RPG
This is ours — bias warning restated. Infinilearn is a fantasy RPG where students battle monsters, complete quests, and fight bosses across 15 zones, and every attack, spell, and ability is powered by solving a real math problem matched to Common Core standards. The design bet is that the game has to be worth playing on its own merits, or reluctant kids see through it in a week.
The detail most relevant to a family leaving Khan for motivation reasons: the adaptive engine tracks accuracy topic by topic, and weapon attacks pull problems from the student's weakest subjects. A 7th grader who's solid on integer operations but shaky on two-step equations will simply meet more equation problems mid-battle — nobody has to assign anything. That's the self-directed targeting Khan expects students to do themselves, done automatically. The entire game is free — every zone, quest, and boss, all of the grades 4-9 math, no ads, nothing gated. The free parent dashboard shows accuracy by topic for one child; optional premium ($9.99/month or $59.99/year as of this writing) adds deeper family insights and student cosmetics only, never math content or progression.
Pros: full game free with no ads; adaptive practice aimed at actual gaps; built specifically for the middle school band; safe multiplayer with preset phrases only. Cons: practice, not lessons — it doesn't replace Khan's instruction; grades 4-9 only; multiple choice format; browser-based with no native mobile app; newer and smaller than the incumbents on this list.
2. Prodigy Math
Best for: Grades 1-5 (formally 1-8) · Price: Free; membership about $9.95/month · Format: Fantasy RPG
Prodigy is the most recognized math game in American schools: a polished wizard-and-pets RPG with native mobile apps where casting spells requires answering math questions. The math itself is genuinely free at every level, and many kids already have accounts from school.
Two caveats for a Khan-refugee family. First, Prodigy covers grades 1-8 but leans strongly elementary; middle schoolers often read it as a little-kid game, and once that detector fires, the motivation benefit evaporates. Second, the optional membership (about $9.95/month, roughly $60-120/year depending on plan) gates the rewards — pets, gear, member-only areas — that make the game motivating, so expect membership requests. We've compared it directly with Khan in Khan Academy vs Prodigy.
Pros: free math, heavy polish, mobile apps, elementary kids love it. Cons: elementary-leaning tone for middle schoolers; motivational rewards sit behind the membership.
If your child is deeply math-avoidant rather than just game-motivated, our guide to math games for reluctant learners goes further into what actually re-engages a kid who has decided math isn't for them.
Failure Mode 2: Videos Don't Land — Visual and Puzzle Approaches
Some students can watch a clear explanation three times and still not own the idea, then grasp it in minutes when they can drag it around a screen. If that's your child, the alternative to Khan isn't a different lecturer — it's no lecturer.
3. ST Math
Best for: K-8 conceptual understanding · Price: School-purchased · Format: Visual puzzles
ST Math, from MIND Education, teaches math with almost no words at all: students help JiJi the penguin through puzzles where the concept is the mechanism, and early puzzles use no words or numbers whatsoever. It's exceptional for conceptual understanding and for language learners, precisely because nothing depends on parsing an explanation. The honest limitation: it's sold to schools, not really something a family can easily buy. Check whether your child's school already has a license — many do — before assuming it's out of reach.
Pros: concepts built visually from the ground up; great for kids who tune out verbal explanation. Cons: effectively school-only; skews K-8 rather than deep middle school rigor.
4. DragonBox (Algebra 5+ / 12+)
Best for: Algebra intuition · Price: About $8 one-time per app · Format: Mobile puzzle game
DragonBox's algebra apps are the best few dollars in math software. They teach the actual moves of equation-solving — isolate, balance, cancel — as puzzle mechanics, before the student even realizes it's algebra. For a 6th or 7th grader about to meet one- and two-step equations, an afternoon of DragonBox builds intuition that makes the formal version feel familiar. The limits: the content is finite (kids genuinely finish it), and it's mobile only.
Pros: brilliant, cheap, builds real algebraic intuition. Cons: finite content; a supplement, not a curriculum; mobile only.
5. Desmos and GeoGebra
Best for: Grades 7-9 visualization · Price: Free · Format: Graphing and geometry tools
Not games and not courses — free tools, and for 8th grade content they're quietly transformative. Slope and linear functions are ideas many students memorize from videos without ever seeing; ten minutes of typing equations into Desmos and watching the line respond as you change the numbers teaches what a dozen re-watched lessons don't. GeoGebra does the same for geometry. Best used side-by-side with whatever instruction your child already has.
Pros: free; makes graphing and geometry tangible; no account friction. Cons: tools, not curricula — they need a purpose walking in.
Failure Mode 3: Needs Structure and Accountability
Khan will let a student rewatch comfortable videos forever. If your child works fine under structure but flounders without it, what you're shopping for is diagnosis plus enforced sequence — and this is the category where you'll actually pay.
6. IXL
Best for: Targeted gap-closing, test prep · Price: About $20/month · Format: Skill drills
IXL is comprehensive K-12 skill practice with precise Common Core alignment and the best diagnostic in the consumer market: it pinpoints your child's working level strand by strand and prescribes exactly which skills need work. That's the structure Khan lacks. The tradeoffs: it teaches very little, the drill format is a hard sell for reluctant kids, and its SmartScore system — where wrong answers near the top of a skill erase real progress — frustrates as many students as it motivates.
Pros: unmatched diagnostics and standards precision; strong parent reporting. Cons: about $240/year; drill format; adds structure but not motivation.
7. ALEKS
Best for: Rigorous, sequenced mastery · Price: About $20/month · Format: Adaptive coursework
ALEKS, from McGraw Hill, covers roughly grades 3-12 and beyond, and is the most assessment-driven option here: periodic "knowledge checks" rebuild a pie chart of exactly which topics the student has mastered, and the system only offers topics the student is ready to learn. It's rigorous, thorough, and widely used in schools. It is also, honestly, dry — this is coursework, not a game, and a student who wouldn't do Khan out of boredom will not find ALEKS more charming. Choose it for the structure, with your eyes open about the experience.
Pros: genuinely adaptive; knowledge checks keep the map honest; rigorous sequencing. Cons: about $20/month; the driest experience on this list.
Failure Mode 4: Needs a Human
Some situations are past software. If the gaps run two or more grade levels deep, if math has become an identity ("I'm just bad at it"), or if every platform ends in shutdown, the honest alternative to Khan Academy is a person: a private tutor, a tutoring center, a teacher offering before-school help, or a strong high schooler for a fraction of professional rates. Costs vary enormously by region, format, and credentials, so shop locally — but even a short engagement can be decisive, because a human does the one thing no platform can: notice the exact moment understanding breaks and adjust in real time. A common pattern that works: a tutor to rebuild the foundation and the confidence, with a free platform carrying the daily practice between sessions.
The Honest Conclusion: Most Families Should Add, Not Replace
Here's where we land, having just spent two thousand words on alternatives: for free instruction, nothing beats Khan Academy. Not the paid options, and not us. If your child needs a concept taught and Khan isn't working, the answer is usually a different on-ramp to the same library — shorter sessions, a parent nearby, a visual tool alongside — not a lesser library.
What most families actually need is to add the missing piece: Khan for teaching, plus a game for voluntary practice, or a diagnostic tool for structure, or a tutor for the deep repair. The failure modes above aren't reasons to abandon free instruction; they're a map of what to bolt onto it. For the broader landscape of what's available at $0, our roundup of free math websites for students covers the full field.
The Bottom Line
Don't replace Khan Academy; diagnose it. If the problem is motivation, add game-based practice — that's the gap Infinilearn was built for, and the full game is free for grades 4-9. If videos don't land, go visual: ST Math through school, DragonBox for algebra intuition, Desmos and GeoGebra for graphing. If the problem is drift, pay for structure — IXL or ALEKS, about $20 a month each. And if the problem is deeper than any platform, get a human. The families who succeed here aren't the ones who find the one perfect app; they're the ones who correctly name the problem and add the one tool that solves it.