Khanmigo Review: What It Costs and Whether It Works

Khanmigo is Khan Academy’s tutor. It sits on the same lessons families already use, and it asks questions instead of dropping a final answer on the screen. The price is public: $4 a month or $44 a year for learners and parents, and free for teachers.

We used it across math, science, reading, and writing with school-age students. It is the most straightforward paid tutor we tested, and it is still a chat with limits.

What Is Khanmigo?

Khanmigo is the tutoring chat inside Khan Academy. It is built for K-12 homework and practice, not as a general chatbot. The teaching style is guided questioning: it keeps asking until the student tries the next step.

What you are actually getting:

• Help across math, science, reading, writing, and other Khan Academy subjects
• A question-led chat that withholds the final answer
• Progress tied to Khan Academy’s existing practice
• Filters that push the chat back toward the assignment
• Parent tools for chat history and moderation alerts
• A teacher workspace that districts buy separately

The product name is Khanmigo. Use that name on the current pricing page, not an older label for the paid plan.

Khanmigo Pricing

Prices below are the ones Khan Academy publishes for Khanmigo. Check khanmigo.ai/pricing before you pay, in case a promotion changes the checkout.

The learner price is the whole home offer: $4 a month or $44 a year. A page that quotes only the monthly figure is missing the yearly option. Students under 18 can’t buy Khanmigo themselves. A parent or guardian signs up and adds them, or a participating school turns it on.

Is Khanmigo free for students?

Sometimes. A student in a participating class can get Khanmigo because their teacher or district turned it on. That access is free to the family.

Not by default at home. A homeschool student, or any child whose school is not on Khanmigo, needs the learner or parent plan at $4 a month or $44 a year. Do not plan on a free home account.

Teachers do not pay. If you are the teacher of record, start with the free teacher tools and confirm what your own children are allowed to use under that login. Do not assume a teacher seat covers every homeschool child in the house.

Is Khanmigo Worth It?

Buy it if a child gets stuck on homework and will tolerate questions instead of answers. The $44 yearly plan is the better of the two published prices when you expect to use it most months. Writing, debate, and coding prompts are where the chat earns the fee, because those tasks need a back-and-forth more than a worksheet key.

Skip it if the child is very young and needs pictures, a lap, and a person. Skip it if the real need is a human who can diagnose a learning disability, teach a lab, or sit for an hour on one essay. Khanmigo will not escalate to a person.

Cost against a human tutor. TutorOcean is a marketplace: a free student account, then each tutor’s own hourly rate, commonly something like $12–$120 an hour. A year of Khanmigo is $44. One of those hours can cost more than that year, and it can also be the hour you actually needed. Read our TutorOcean review if you want a person instead of a single chat.

A general chatbot is the other comparison people make. ChatGPT Plus is $20 a month. Khanmigo is $4 a month or $44 a year and is tied to course material and parent alerts. Plus is the broader tool. Khanmigo is the one built to refuse the final answer.

Effectiveness and User Reviews

The query behind this page is whether Khanmigo works, not only what it costs. Here is the honest split.

What Khan Academy has published. Khan Academy has written up classroom pilots and teacher feedback since the tutor launched: teachers use it for lesson help and student practice, and the design goal is questioning rather than answer-giving. Those reports are the vendor’s own account. Read them as such, and read the date on the post. They are not a substitute for an independent test-score study.

What we saw. Students who already knew the rough idea finished problems they had been avoiding, because the chat would not skip ahead. Students who wanted the answer got frustrated and tried to trick the chat. That is the product working as designed, and it is also why some kids say they “hate” it on a bad night.

What is still missing. We do not have a large independent 2026 trial that says Khanmigo raises grades by a specific amount. Do not trust a review that quotes one. Judge effectiveness at home by a simpler test: after the chat, can the child do a new problem of the same type without opening it?

Parent controls matter for that test. Khan Academy says you can read the chat history and get moderation alerts. Use them for the first two weeks. The history shows whether the child is reasoning or stalling.

What Worked in Testing

The price is the obvious advantage, and it holds up only because the chat is actually attached to practice. A stuck student can go from the conversation to a Khan Academy exercise on the same skill. Standalone chats make you do that switch yourself.

Safety choices are stricter than a general chatbot. The conversation is pushed back to the assignment, off-topic requests get redirected, and the parent history is there. That is the right shape for a K-12 tool. It is also why the chat feels plain. There is little visual explanation inside the thread. Kids who need a diagram still have to open the video.

Writing help was better than we expected. The chat will argue with a thesis and ask for evidence. It will also, if you let it, inch toward drafting sentences. Keep the rule that the student writes the sentence.

Where It Falls Short

The interface is a text thread. Visual learners fight it. The model sometimes states a date or a step with too much confidence. We caught that on history “why” questions and on multi-step algebra. Follow-up questions fixed some of it. A parent still has to notice.

There is no human backup inside the same subscription. When the chat is lost, you need another plan. TutorOcean’s review is the marketplace option. A language-only need is a different product: see the Duolingo Max review for practice that is not a homework tutor.

Very young children are a mismatch. The tone can simplify, and the content is still a chat window.

Khanmigo and Other Tools

ChatGPT Go ($8 a month) and Pro (from $100 a month) are other OpenAI tiers. They are not school products, and they are the wrong comparison if what you want is a tutor that stays on the assignment. Prices for those tiers should be read on OpenAI’s pricing page.

Google’s Socratic app was discontinued and folded into Google Lens, so it is no longer a separate homework app. Use Khanmigo, a person, or the course videos. Do not send a child to a discontinued homework app under a new name without checking what the tool does now.

How to Use It

1. Confirm whether a teacher already provides access. If yes, do not pay twice.
2. If you are paying, choose monthly at $4 while you test, then $44 for the year if the chat is still open in week three.
3. Read the history. The moderation alerts are part of the product, not an extra.
4. Make the child attempt the problem first. Khanmigo is for the stall, not for the blank page.
5. Pair the chat with the video on the same skill. The thread will not draw the picture.

The Bottom Line

Khanmigo earns 4.6/5 because the published price is low and the chat is willing to be annoying in the useful way. It asks another question. That is the whole product.

Best for: Homework stalls, writing feedback, coding questions, and families already inside Khan Academy. Teachers, who do not pay.

Skip it if: You need a person, your child is too young for a text tutor, or a district login already covers them.

Start at Khanmigo’s pricing page. If the child can explain the next problem without the chat, keep the plan. If every session ends with a begged-for answer, you do not have a tutoring habit yet, and $4 will not create one.

Language practice is a separate decision. Duolingo Super is $12.99 a month on the US App Store, and Max is about $29.99 a month; see the Duolingo Max review.