The Top 7 Similar Alternatives to Kahoot in 2022 (Mostly Free!)

Let’s not mince words here: Kahoot is a giant of the edtech world. It’s used by 50% of U.S teachers and in over 200 countries across the globe, with a big community and acclaim in many different spheres.

And yet, it’s rife with problems. Whatever it was that irked you about Kahoot, be it the limitations of the free plan, the complicated nature of the software, or the stability of the service, we endeavour to provide you with options out of the Kahoot quagmire.

Here are 7 of the similar alternatives to Kahoot! Or, check out the best Free Alternative to Kahoot, or Best Free Alternative to Slido

Exclusive tool from AhaSlides, check out our Spinner Wheel

Your Guide to Choose Similar Alternatives to Kahoot!

• The Problems with Kahoot
• AhaSlides
• Gimkit Live
• Quizizz
• Canvas
• Slido
• Classmarker
• Poll Everywhere
• Final Verdict

The Problems with Kahoot

As one of the top alternatives to Kahoot, we at AhaSlides have been helping ex-Kahoot users move over to the simpler, cheaper and safer side. Here’s some of what we hear those users complaining about the most….

You’ll of course have your own gripes with Kahoot. Whatever it is, we hope you’ll find something better in the list of 7 alternatives to Kahoot below!

The Top 7 Similar Alternatives to Kahoot!

1. AhaSlides

For presentations, education, training, team meetings and quizzes.

AhaSlides is the all-in-one presentation, education and training tool. It’s a simple, easy-to-use and very much free alternative to Kahoot, with a no-pay plan that gives you all the freedom you need to host incredible interactive presentations.

It’s all slide-based and is super easy to get to grips with. Simply build a presentation from the 17 available slide types, send the unique room code to your audience, then proceed through your slides as your participants interact live with each one.

More than a gaming tool, AhaSlides lets you gather opinions through polls, share ideas through brainstorms, make word clouds, hold Q&As, run live quizzes, and yes, play games (like the spinner wheel) as well. Therefore, AhaSlides offer the best alternatives to Kahoot Games for Adults

All of this sits at a very reasonable price and a plan system that won’t make your head spin!

Key Pros of AhaSlides ✅

1. The free plan is actually usable – While Kahoot’s free plan gives you very little to work with, AhaSlides’ lets you use pretty much all of its features straight off the bat. The main limitation of its free plan relates to the size of your audience, so if you have more than 7 participants, you’ll have to upgrade. Still, that’s not much of a problem because…
2. It’s cheap! – AhaSlides’s Pricing is starting from $7.95 monthly (annual plan), as well as its plans for teachers, starting at $2.95 a month (annual plan) for a standard-sized class.
3. Flexibility is king – AhaSlides never locks you into an annual subscription. Monthly plans reign supreme, and can be cancelled at any time. Though of course, annual plans are available for long-termers looking to save.
4. Multi-channel customer support – Support is available through documentation, live chat, email and via messaging on social media channels. You always speak to a real human, no matter the query.

Key Cons of AhaSlides ❌

1. Layout options – Though it’s possible to change background, font and text colour, the options for placing your text and images exactly where you want on a slide is a bit limited.
2. There’s no mode to test a presentation – Before running a presentation, you’ll want to test it. While Kahoot has a specific test mode for this, on AhaSlides you’ll just have to join your own presentation on multiple other devices.
3. No reports – Reports on presentations are incoming, but not there yet!

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Bring engagement and laughter to lessons, meetings, training sessions and quizzes! Get started for free with AhaSlides.

2. GimKit Live

For gamification of teaching.

Compared to the goliath that is Kahoot, GimKit’s 4-person team very much takes on the role of David. Despite the fact that GimKit has clearly borrowed from the Kahoot model, or maybe because of it, it sits very high on our list of alternatives to Kahoot.

The bones of it is that GimKit is a very charming and fun way to get students engaged in lessons. The question offerings it provides are simple (just multiple choice and type answer), but it offers many inventive game modes and a virtual money-based scoring system to keep students coming back time and again.

Quite crucially for ex-Kahoot users, it’s an absolute breeze to use. The navigation is simple and you can go from creation to presentation without needing a single onboarding message.

If GimKit Live wasn’t enough, your $4.99 a month will also get you access to GimKit Ink, a tool to help your students share and discuss their work.

Key Pros of GimKit Live ✅

1. Great pricing and plan – Not many teachers could sniff at a maximum of $4.99 per month. Considering Kahoot’s labyrinthine pricing structure; GimKit Live is a breath of fresh air with its one all-encompassing plan.
2. It’s super varied – The premise of GimKit Live is very simple, but the amount of game mode variations makes it difficult for students to get bored. It also lets students create their own questions for a ‘kit’ and it keeps competition levels high over long periods of time with its awesome ‘seasons’ mode.
3. The power of money – In-game money is super fun to acquire and can be spent at the shop on personal power-ups. This is great for student motivation.

Key Cons of GimKit Live ❌

1. Fairly one-dimensional – GimKit Live’s got great motivating power, but usually in short bursts. At the heart of it, there’s not much more to it than asking students questions and dishing out money for answers. It’s best used sparingly in the classroom.
2. Question types are limited – If you just want a simple quiz with multiple choice and open-ended questions, then GimKit Live will do. However, if you’re after ordering questions, ‘closest answer wins’ questions or mix and match questions, you’re best looking for another Kahoot alternative.

3. Quizizz

For multimedia quizzes.

If you’re thinking of leaving Kahoot, but are worried about leaving that enormous library of amazing user-created quizzes behind, then you better check out Quizizz.

Quizizz boasts over 1 million pre-made quizzes in every field you can imagine. Within a few clicks you can download one, edit it, host it live for friends or assign it asynchronously for a class at school. It’s very easy to use and the friction is minimal.

For teachers without a lot of time on their hands, or really anyone wanting accessibility to monthly plans, Quizizz can be a top Kahoot alternative.

Key Pros of Quizizz ✅

1. Fantastic shortcuts – You can use another users’ quiz as your own, and can even ‘teleport’ specific questions from others’ quizzes into yours. These shortcuts can help you create a quiz in a matter of minutes.
2. Great reports – The reports system is detailed and allows you to create flashcards out of questions on which participants didn’t answer so well.
3. Lovely design – Navigation is slick and the illustrations and colour of the whole dashboard are very professional.

Key Cons of Quizizz ❌

1. Fewer question types than expected – For a piece of kit devoted almost entirely to quizzing, you might expect a few more question types beyond the multiple choice, multiple answer and type answer questions available.
2. No live support – Unfortunately, those fed up with Kahoot’s lack of live chat might feel likewise with Quizizz. Support is limited to email, Twitter and support tickets.

4. Canvas

For designing full courses and monitoring individual students.

The only Learning Management System (LMS) on the list of Kahoot alternatives is Canvas. Canvas is one of the best all-in-one education systems out there, and is trusted by millions of teachers to plan and deliver interactive lessons, then measure the impact of that delivery.

Canvas helps teachers to structure entire modules by breaking them down into units, then into individual lessons. Between the structuring and analysing phases, a pretty staggering amount of tools including scheduling, quizzing, speed grading and live chat give teachers what they need. There’s even an in-built studio for creating videos!

If there’s any tool that seems to be lacking, users can usually find it in one of the app integrations.

Being an LMS of this stature naturally comes with a pretty hefty price tag, though there is a free plan available with limited features.

Key Pros of Canvas ✅

1. Reliability – For those with trust issues, you need not worry. Canvas is very vocal about their 99.99% uptime and prides itself on the fact that only the slightest of ultra-slight chances will cause the software to fail on you.
2. Packed full of features – It’s truly hard to keep tabs on the amount of features that Canvas offers its users. Even the free plan lets you create entire courses, though options for in-class teaching are limited.
3. Community communication – Canvas have built a strong and active community of teachers, adminstrators and students. Many members are brand evangelists and will post religiously on the forum to help out fellow teachers.

Key Cons of Canvas ❌

1. Feeling overwhelmed? – It’s easy to buckle under the weight of everything Canvas has to offer. Tech-savvy educators may love it, but teachers looking for something simple to incorporate into their classes should look at one of the other alternatives to Kahoot on this list.
2. Hidden pricing – There’s no way to know for sure how much Canvas is going to cost you. You have to contact them for a quote, which soon leads to you being at the mercy of the sales department.
3. Design – From a look at the Canvas dashboard, you wouldn’t guess that Canvas is one of the biggest LMS in the world. Navigation is okay, but the design is rather simplistic.

💡 Are simplicity and ease of use big deals for you? Try AhaSlides for free and create a lesson in minutes! (Check out the template library to create it even quicker.)

5. Slido

For text-based presentations.

Like AhaSlides, Slido is an audience-interaction tool, meaning that it has a place both inside and outside of a classroom. It also works pretty much the same way – you create a presentation, your audience joins it and you proceed through live polls, Q&As and quizzes together.

The difference is that Slido focuses more on team meetings and training than education, games or quizzes. The love of images and colour that a lot of alternatives to Kahoot (including Kahoot) has is replaced in Slido by ergonomic functionality.

The editor reflects this. You’ll not see a single image while creating on the Slido editor, but you’ll see a good selection of slide types and some neat analytics for after-event summarising.

Key Pros of Slido ✅

1. Integrates directly with Google Slides and PowerPoint – This means you can embed a bit of Slido-brand audience participation directly into your presentation.
2. Simple plan system – Slido’s 8 plans is a refreshingly simple alternative to Kahoot’s 22. You can figure out your ideal plan fairly quickly and all on one page.

Key Cons of Slido ❌

1. Uniform greyness – By far the biggest con of Slido is that there’s very little room for creativity or vibrancy. Kahoot certainly doesn’t do much in terms of personalising colour or text, but it at least has more options than Slido.
2. Annual plans only – Like with Kahoot, Slido doesn’t really offer monthly plans; it’s yearly or nothing!
3. Expensive one-timers – Also like Kahoot, one-time plans may just break the bank. $69 is the cheapest, while $649 is the most expensive.

6. ClassMarker

For no-frills, personalised quizzes.

When you boil Kahoot down to the bones, it’s mainly used as a way to test students rather than impart new knowledge on them. If that’s the way you use it, and you aren’t too concerned with the extra frills, then ClassMarker might be your perfect, free alternative to Kahoot!

ClassMarker isn’t concerned with flashy colours or popping animation; it knows its purpose is to help teachers test students and analyse their performance. Its more streamlined focus means that it actually has more question types than Kahoot and provides a lot more opportunities for personalising those questions.

While the basics are all available for free, there’s still a lot hiding behind the paywall. Analytics, certificates, the ability to upload images… it’s all stuff the modern educator might want, but it’s only available for a minimum of $19.95 a month.

Key Pros of ClassMarker ✅

1. Simple and focused – ClassMarker is perfect for those overwhelmed by the noise of Kahoot. It’s easy to use, easy to navigate and easy to test.
2. Incredible variety – There’s the standard multiple choice, true or false and open-ended questions, but also matching pairs, grammar spotting and essay questions. There are even different types within those question types, as well as the chance to change the scoring system, add fake answers to throw students off the scent, and more.
3. More ways to personalise – Break the uniformity with different formatting. You can ask questions with tables and mathematical equations, and also link in images, video, audio and other documents, though these require the paid version.

Key Cons of ClassMarker ❌

1. Younger students might find it less ‘woke’ – ClassMarker is essentially Kahoot on valium, but that might not sit well with students who prefer the glitz of the latter compared to the pragmatism of the former.
2. Students need accounts – On the ClassMarker free version, you need to assign quizzes to ‘groups’, and the only way to make a group is to have all students within that group sign up to ClassMarker.
3. Limited assistance – Though there are some videos and documentation, and the chance to email someone, you’re pretty much on your own when using the software.

7. Poll Everywhere

For live polls and Q&A sessions.

Again, if it’s simplicity and student opinions you’re after, then Poll Everywhere might just be your best alternative to Kahoot.

This software gives you decent variety when it comes to asking questions. Opinion polls, surveys, clickable images and even some (very) basic quiz facilities mean you can have lessons with the student at the centre, though it’s clear from the setup that Poll Everywhere is far more suited to the work environment than to schools.

Unlike Kahoot, Poll Everywhere isn’t about games. There are no flashy visuals and a limited colour palette to say the least, with virtually zero in the way of personalisation options.

Key Pros of Poll Everywhere ✅

1. Lenient free plan – As a free software like Kahoot, Poll Everywhere is rather generous with the freebies. Unlimited questions of all types and a maximum audience number of 25.
2. Good variety – Multiple choice, word cloud, Q&A, clickable image, open-ended, survey and ‘competition’ are the 7 question types you have, though many of these are quite basic.

Key Cons of Poll Everywhere ❌

1. Still quite limited – Despite the leniency and the variety, there’s a lot that you can’t do on Poll Everywhere without splashing the cash. Customisation, reports and the ability to create teams are all hidden behind a paywall, though these are basic offerings on other Kahoot alternatives.
2. No new updates – It seems like the developers of Poll Everywhere have more-or-less given up on updating the service. Don’t expect any new developments if you sign up.
3. All alone – Don’t expect much of a conversation with support staff either. There are a few guides to help you on your way, but communication is exclusively through email only.
4. One access code – With Poll Everywhere, you don’t create a separate presentation with a separate join code for each lesson. You only get one join code (your username), so you have to constantly ‘active’ and ‘deactivate’ questions that you do or don’t want to appear.

Our Verdict: The Best Alternative to Kahoot!

Call us biased, but we genuinely believe that AhaSlides is one of the best alternatives to Kahoot out there. It’s simpler, cheaper, more lenient, more customisable and it offers more assistance to presenters.

Just check out the side-by-side…