Math Critters vs Prodigy
Both turn math practice into a game. One is free to start and one is a one-time purchase — and the difference in how they make money is the real difference between them. Here’s the honest version.
| Feature | Math Critters | Prodigy |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $14.99 once | Free to start; Premium membership $58.95/yr, with in-game upsells |
| Platform | Mac & Windows desktop app | Web browser and tablet apps |
| Works offline | Yes — fully. No account, no cloud sync, the save file lives on the computer | No |
| Account required | No | Yes |
| In-game store / upsells | None. There is no store inside the game. | Membership upsells inside the game |
| Data collected | None. No servers. | Account and progress data stored on their servers |
| Adaptive curriculum | No — practice, not a syllabus | Yes — curriculum-aligned, and it’s deep |
| Teacher / class tools | No | Yes |
| Ages | 5–11 | Roughly 6–14 (grades 1–8) |
Where Prodigy is better
Prodigy has vastly more content than Math Critters, adapts to a school curriculum, has real teacher tools used in real classrooms, and is free to start. If you want an adaptive, curriculum-aligned math platform — especially one a teacher can assign and track — Prodigy does more than Math Critters does, and you can try it without paying anything. We’re not going to pretend otherwise.
Where Math Critters is different
Most kids’ math apps are free, and then they aren’t. Coins, gems, treasure tracks, “unlock 2× rewards,” a membership your kid asks you for at bedtime. The game becomes the ad.
Math Critters costs $14.99 once. There is nothing to buy inside it, because we didn’t build anything to sell. Every critter is hatched by doing maths. That’s the only currency.
It also works with the internet completely off, needs no account, and collects nothing — there are no servers for it to talk to. And a wrong answer never ends a round: streaks reset, the question re-rolls, the critter tells you the answer. Nobody loses progress in this game.
Which one should you get?
Get Prodigy if you want an adaptive, curriculum-aligned platform with teacher tools, free to start — and the membership nudges inside the game don’t bother you.
Get Math Critters if you want math practice with no store inside it, no account, no data collected, and one price that covers the whole household — on a plane, in a car, anywhere.