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• IXL vs Prodigy vs Brighterly: Best Pick for 2025

IXL vs Prodigy vs Brighterly: Best Pick for 2025

Determining the pros and cons of educational platforms can cost parents lots of effort, disappointment, and money. This will help you make a sound decision between IXL vs Prodigy vs Brighterly. Relying on my tutoring experience, I’ll break down these platforms’ teaching methods, prices, and features for you. 

Key points

• Brighterly is a reading and math educational platform that offers plenty of free materials. Their core service is professional 1:1 tutoring with gamified and effective teaching methods.
• IXL is the resource for self-paced learning on multiple subjects for K-12 students. It contains thousands of drill-based exercises with no detailed explanations or feedback.
• Prodigy is an educational game that is highly entertaining and can boost math, English, and science skills, but it is not enough for personalized educational support.

IXL vs Prodigy vs Brighterly: Comparison

The main difference between IXL vs Prodigy vs Brighterly is the depth of educational support for students. While Prodigy is built as an educational game and IXL is a set of drill-based exercises that lack in-depth explanations, Brighterly is the resource that offers free drill-based worksheets with full tutoring support that include gamified approaches.

	Brighterly	IXL	Prodigy
Primary focus	Math, reading & ELA	Math, language arts, science, and social studies	Math, science, and reading
Price	From $17.3 per lesson	From $9.95 per month	From $9.95 per month
Standout feature	Personalized tutoring with plenty of free materials	Practical tasks across multiple subjects	Interactive game with virtual worlds, quests, and battles
Custom	✅	✅	✅
Corresponding Common Core standards	✅	✅	✅
Instruction vs practice	Live instructions and interactive exercises	Mainly practice with explanations	Game-based learning with short instructions
Trustpilot score	4.5	1.7	4.0

 

What’s the main difference between IXL and Prodigy and Brighterly?

The main difference between Prodigy vs IXL vs Brighterly is their ability to meet the learning style of kids who need extra time and tutoring guidance for learning math and reading. 

To understand what to choose — IXL or Prodigy or Brighterly — pay attention to what your kid needs and likes. Prodigy is extremely effective in engaging kids who love games and quests. IXL has a huge library of highly practical and effective exercises. And Brighterly takes the best of these two worlds, offering a personalized service that addresses the needs of everyone.

What is Brighterly?

Brighterly is an online learning platform that provides K–9 grade learners with individualized, one-on-one reading and math guidance. The lessons are taught by qualified tutors who rely on Common Core standards yet adapt the curriculum to the learning styles and preferences of the kids they work with.

What US parents say about Brighterly tutors

Brighterly Trustpilot reviews mostly acknowledge the quality of their tutoring service. Parents especially praise individual tutors for inspiring their kids to study and showing them how to enjoy math and reading.

Many parents on Trustpilot also admit the fact that tutors develop personalized programs to make them interesting and comfortable for kids with different learning styles and levels of patience. 

Overall, many parents enjoy Brighterly and find it helpful, user-friendly, and customizable. Even if there is some criticism in some reviews, most parents find Brighterly tutoring effective and fun enough for their kids to love math and reading.

What is Brighterly best at?

• Top-notch math and reading tutors for everyone
• In-depth process tracking and feedback
• Plenty of free sources of high value

Top-notch math and reading tutors for everyone

Tutors on Brighterly reading and math program are highly professional, attentive, and approachable. Most of them have over several years of tutoring experience and get along well with kids of any knowledge level. Also, they are certified to work with kids with special needs and learning styles.

The platform provides a huge tutor base, letting parents choose the best option for their children — whether they’re in primary, middle, or high school.

In-depth process tracking and feedback

The math and reading program at Brighterly lets parents keep track of the progress their kids have made so far. Right after taking a diagnostic test, they will receive immediate feedback from a Brighterly tutor on the kid’s current fluency in reading or math and a detailed plan on how to improve it.

The Brighterly teaching method relies on the Common Core concepts, yet is adaptive to real-world examples and kids’ interests. Whenever there is a problem your child struggles with, they offer a gamified format, boosting their engagement, focus, and productivity — and parents see their progress immediately.

Plenty of free sources of high value

Brighterly offers several sets of materials for free, including math and reading worksheets and math and reading diagnostic tests.

Brighterly offers a wide range of math worksheets and reading worksheets available to download for free. They contain various activities like matching, gap filling, or multiple choice, which make learning more engaging. With bright visuals, these worksheets help kids understand even the most complicated concepts.

Combined with free diagnostic tests, worksheets create a basis for effective homeschooling that parents can use for free and any time. With these materials, kids get enough time and practice to train the topics they struggle with most and see how their progress correlates with math and reading test requirements they’ll face at school. 

How much is Brighterly math and reading?

• Learning Membership 1-month plan: From $20.7 per lesson. 
• Learning Membership 3-month plan: From $20.2 per lesson. 
• Learning Membership 6-month plan: From $19.4 per lesson.
• Learning Membership 12-month plan: From $17.3 per lesson.

Please note that all prices apply to packages with 3 lessons per week.

What is IXL and what makes it different from other learning platforms

IXL is a personalized learning platform that helps with improving skills in math, language, science, and social studies. Their structure is aligned with the K-12 curriculum taught in regular schools with immersive features like real-time diagnostic and analytics, which make learning very convenient for students and parents.

Programs like IXL provide personalized learning that’s paced according to the kids’ abilities and fluency. The service boasts a wide range of classes and subjects, along with its personalized approach to learning, progress assessment, and the development of study plans.

However, the parents and students tend to complain that the scoring system on IXL is messed up, making the IXL levels upon progress assessment inaccurate. It frequently causes situations when one wrong answer diminishes the cumulative positive effect of several right answers in a row. This makes IXL learning exhausting and demoralizing for many kids in reality.   

Discover what is IXL Learning through the features of the IXL platform

• Immersive learning experience
• Real-time diagnostic
• Multiple study programs

Immersive learning experience

IXL helps learners improve their skills with real-time explanations, learning recommendations, and the ability to create personalized study plans. There’s also an Assessment Suite where parents can pinpoint their kids’ strengths and areas for improvement to develop the next steps in learning.

Real-time diagnostic

IXL has its own analytics tool (like Trouble Spots reports) that helps instantly assess kids’ current knowledge level, set dedicated milestones, and compare their performance to national norms. Also, the platform helps develop custom learning plans and motivates students to take action and improve their skills.

Multiple study programs

On IXL, you can study math and English along with science, social studies, and Spanish. This makes it more convenient for parents to have everything on one platform and easily keep track of their kids’ progress on several subjects at once.

 

How much is IXL membership?

IXL membership comes in two packages — monthly and yearly — with the price starting from $9.95 per month.

IXL monthly package prices

• Core subjects: $19.95 a month
• Combo package: $15.95 a month
• Single subject: $9.95 a month

IXL yearly subscription prices

• Core subjects: $159 a year
• Combo package: $129 a year
• Single subject: $79 a year

You can also add Spanish to your packages for an extra $5 per month or $40 per year to your IXL сost.

What is Prodigy Math best at?

• Gamified approach to learning
• Personalized learning plans with progress tracking
• Tools for parent control

Gamified approach to learning

Prodigy is built as a Pokémon-like game, which is the most fun way to engage kids in learning. On the app, they get to explore an ever-expanding world with daily and seasonal quests by simultaneously applying their school knowledge of math, English language, and science. They don’t feel like learning but rather relying on their academic skills to rescue and add pets to their teams. 

Personalized learning plans with progress tracking

The in-game algorithm uses data from your kid’s progress to adjust the game so it’s not overwhelming for them. This way, they apply analytics to personalize the study plan for every learner. Also, Prodigy uses the Placement Test to determine the current level of your kid and creates progress reports to see the results of their application in the game.

Tools for parental control

The platform has several levels of parental control available. On the basic level, Prodigy lets parents make a free account to check their kid’s progress in the dashboard center. But upon buying a Premium membership, you can get access to a wider range of extra features, like a parent portal, monthly report cards, and printable practice sheets.

How does Prodigy Math work?

Prodigy Math works as a game where a kid gets a character to progress through quest adventures that solidify their math skills and knowledge. This way, the platform provides children with an engaging, game-based math learning experience. 

With paid membership, learners get the chance to unlock more bonuses, get more interesting quests, and generally progress faster in the game than those using a free version of the app. This fact is generally at the center of platform critics, along with rather aggressive selling tactics aimed at kids.

Is Prodigy Math free?

The basic functionality of the Prodigy Math apps is free. However, buying a Prodigy membership that starts from $9.95/month unlocks several bonuses and features that make the game more interactive and effective for kids. 

Prodigy monthly package prices

• Prodigy Math Core: $9.95 a month
• Prodigy English Level Up: $9.95 a month
• Prodigy Math Plus: $14.95 a month
• Ultra Prodigy: $19.95 a month
• Prodigy Ultimate: $14.95 a month

Prodigy yearly subscription prices

• Prodigy Math Core: $58.95 a year
• Prodigy English Level Up: $74.95 a year
• Prodigy Math Plus: $88.95 a year
• Ultra Prodigy: $118.95 a year
• Prodigy Ultimate: $99.95 a year

Overall, the exact Prodigy Membership Cost depends on the number of subjects and the set of in-game bonuses desired.

IXL vs Prodigy vs Brighterly Reddit & Trustpilot reviews

• Brighterly reviews
• IXL reviews
• Prodigy reviews

Brighterly reviews: Great option for 1:1 online tutoring

Trustpilot gives a high score to the quality of Brighterly online 1:1 math and reading tutoring. Overall, it’s considered a great option for distant learning and improving knowledge. The 5-star reviews mostly mention its wide variety of tutors, learning materials, and smooth enrollment process.

Individual tutors on Brighterly regularly get appraisals from parents as knowledgeable and experienced, which is a sign of the quality of their personalized approach. Many parents admit that their kids’ teachers are very approachable and can get along with any kid with any learning style and behavior.

To be completely fair, some neutral and negative reviews  are  also  there.  They  mostly point at customer service delays and some lack of trust in the company (while the quality of tutors is not a question, even in the most negative reviews).

Overall, Brighterly has the highest Trustpilot score among IXL vs Prodigy vs Brighterly, with parents highly satisfied with the tutoring approach, yet having minor complaints regarding customer service performance and delayed responses from their side.

IXL reviews: Contradictory feedback

Many parents find IXL disappointing and not worth trying. What are the negatives of IXL? It has a 1.7 Trustpilot rating only due to uninteresting tasks, a rigid point system, and impossible tasks.

“My daughter has used and hated every second. The goal is to hit 100 percent, but it’s practically impossible. The correct answers are worth two points, but the wrong answers are worth seven negative points.” — Amanous, Trustpilot.

Reddit users have also pointed to the way tasks get tough and feel stressful for learners.

Even though the platform has prizes to facilitate getting 100% of correct answers, students argue that they don’t make any sense.

As for some positive feedback, some users claim that the difficulties with getting a maximum score exist because the last 10 points between 90 and 100 are especially hard to get.

Overall, IXL reviews are mainly negative. Neither the kids nor their parents like the structure of learning. They rarely describe it as effective and engaging. 

Prodigy reviews: Decent educational game 

There are not so many Trustpilot reviews on Prodigy compared to IXL and Brighterly, but they are mostly positive. 

What is better than IXL is that many satisfied Prodigy users find the game really useful. It helps children get more confident about studying math, and the gamified experience is quite enjoyable and easier to comprehend. 

What are the negatives of Prodigy? Some parents claim the lack of transparency from support, especially when it comes to cancelling membership and related money issues.

However, some parents don’t understand why is Prodigy so bad. They state that the customer support here is quite friendly and responsive, and that the platform is a great choice for both students and teachers, as they can easily get the required assistance.

So overall, Prodigy Math reviews show that users are mostly satisfied with the service and the quality of game-based lessons provided by Prodigy.

IXL vs Prodigy vs Brighterly: Which learning program is better for homeschool students?

For over 3.7 million children in the US, Brighterly seems the best choice compared to the Prodigy vs IXL review since homeschooled kids need a personalized learning approach with a highly relevant class structure, a safe space for critical thinking and problem-solving skills development, and an interactive strength-focused plan. In this regard, 1:1 online tutoring is the best fit.

While Prodigy educational game can serve as the best entertainment during learning breaks, and IXL contains tasks in social studies, science, and Spanish, focused Brighterly tutoring can serve as a profound math and reading practice for homeschooled kids.

Which is better: IXL vs Prodigy vs Brighterly?

So, what to choose: Prodigy or IXL or Brighterly? The answer lies in your needs and the needs of your kid. Some want a decent educational game like Prodigy; others prefer one dashboard for learning several subjects that IXL offers. The stronger feature of Brighterly is 1:1 online personalized tutoring that adjusts the learning plan to help your kid overcome their specific struggles.

Here is a detailed set of criteria on how to choose between Prodigy and IXL and Brighterly: 

• Choose IXL if: you’re in search of a set of effective exercises to train at home some subjects and concepts learned in class (but don’t expect a fair scoring system there)
• Choose Prodigy if: you need a supplementary learning game for your kid that entertains yet teaches them something valuable about math, English, and science (but don’t expect it can replace traditional school or tutoring)
• Choose Brighterly if: you need full tutoring support for any knowledge level and style or want to access exercises with gamified drills for free.

All these platforms will ask for money for their service, but you can play the basic Prodigy game, get a 30-day IXL free trial, or book free lesson  from a Brighterly tutor. 

It’s always better to try by yourself to make a final verdict, and I encourage you to try Brighterly tutoring first. It will save you money and effort searching for a decent service for your kid.

Other platforms comparison

If you’re looking for alternative platforms to improve your kid’s skills and want to know if they are worth their money and of decent quality, check out these review articles on our website:

• Mathnasium vs Sylvan vs Brighterly: Pros, Cons & Best Pick
• IXL vs Miacademy vs Brighterly: How to Choose
• Learner Tutoring Reviews: Pros, Cons, and User Ratings
• Reading Eggs vs ABC mouse: What You Need to Know Before Choosing
• Time4Learning vs Power Homeschool: Which One Is Better?