Prodigy Math Review for Parents (2026): What’s Free, What’s Paid, and the FTC Complaint

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Is Prodigy Math Free?

Yes. Prodigy’s math and English content is free, and the company says memberships only add science content and game enhancements (Prodigy, Memberships page). Your child can answer every one of the 45,000+ curriculum-aligned math questions without paying a cent. Teachers pay nothing either. What you pay for is a faster, shinier game around that math: pets, gear, bonus currency, and the science curriculum.

That’s the short answer. The longer answer is why this article exists.

Prodigy Membership Cost 2026: Core vs Plus vs Ultra

We pulled these prices directly from Prodigy’s membership page on September 11, 2026. Prodigy bills in US dollars.

Source: Prodigy Memberships. Prodigy also offers 25% off when you buy memberships for multiple children, and subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel.

Refunds: Prodigy’s policy allows a refund within the first 30 days of an annual term (Prodigy support). Set a calendar reminder the day you buy.

Why other sites quote different prices

Search “Prodigy membership cost” and you’ll find four different numbers. None of them is a lie. They’re just from different years or different tiers.

• Common Sense Education lists subscriptions from $9.95 a month or $74.95 a year. That $74.95 figure matches an older annual price, not the current $58.95 Core or $88.95 Plus.
• Fairplay for Kids cites memberships at up to $120 per child per year, plus an “Ultimate” tier introduced in September 2021 at over $180 a year. Prodigy has since renamed and repriced its tiers. Today’s top tier is Ultra at $118.95.
• Modulo quotes a range of $6.26 to $99.95 a year, which looks like a mix of a discounted monthly rate and an older annual price.
• Brighterly matches the current Ultra price of $19.95 a month or $118.95 a year.

The lesson: always check the official membership page before you buy. Prices have changed at least twice since 2021.

What You Actually Get Free vs Paid

This is the part most reviews skip. Here’s the split, taken from Prodigy’s own comparison table.

Sources: Prodigy Memberships comparison; Prodigy Math overview.

Read that table from the top. Everything educational sits in the free column. Everything paid sits in the game column, with one exception: science content. If your child needs science practice, Plus is the minimum tier. Otherwise, a membership buys pets and coins.

OpenEd’s curriculum team reached the same conclusion: the paid tier unlocks cosmetic upgrades, pets and zones, but not more math (OpenEd).

We Played Prodigy: The First Nine Minutes

We created a free account with no class code and played the opening session on September 11, 2026. Here’s what the timeline looked like.

One math question in nine minutes. The rest was character setup, story, battle mechanics and rewards.

Two things stood out.

First, the line on the question screen: “You’re out of Magic. Do some questions to refill it.” That’s the whole design in one sentence. Math is the fuel you burn to keep playing. It’s not the reward. It’s the toll.

Second, the “Your Goals” panel lists Play after School as a goal with a prize attached. The game rewards the child for coming back at home, outside class time. Keep that in mind when you read the next section.

To be fair to Prodigy: this was the tutorial. Prodigy runs a placement test when a student first plays to set a grade-level baseline (School Data Leadership), and the adaptive algorithm adjusts difficulty as your child answers more questions. Question density should rise once the tutorial ends.

Minutes 10–30: number of questions answered, when the first membership prompt appeared (screenshot + timestamp), whether difficulty changed, and what the free parent report card showed.

The FTC Complaint and the “Free” Problem

In February 2021, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (now Fairplay) and 21 partner organizations filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission against Prodigy (Fairplay for Kids).

Their core argument: Prodigy markets itself as “free forever” to schools, but children who play the free classroom version get pushed to play a different free version at home. That home version, the complaint says, bombards kids with advertisements and pressures them to ask parents for premium memberships.

Fairplay also argued that the game’s design keeps children playing for long stretches for commercial reasons rather than educational ones.

We couldn’t find a public FTC enforcement action against Prodigy as of September 2026, and Prodigy continues to operate with the same freemium model. Prodigy’s position is that optional parent memberships are what keep the platform free for all teachers (Prodigy Math).

Common Sense Education, which rates the platform positively overall, flags the same tension. Its review notes that premium accounts can create inequities between students and that a paid account removes the “potentially distracting ads that push kids to purchase premium” (Common Sense Education).

So the “free” in Prodigy is real. The pressure to stop being free is also real, and it lands on your child, not you.

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Is Prodigy Math Worth It? By Use Case

In the classroom (Grades 1–8)

Yes, and it costs nothing. Teachers get free assignments, assessments, reports and a placement test. Common Sense recommends using it as a review tool rather than to introduce new topics, since the game focuses on practicing skills, not teaching them. If your child’s teacher assigns it, use the free account and skip the membership.

At home, as a supplement

Maybe. It works if your child already likes the game and you cap screen time. It fails if you expect it to teach math from scratch. Prodigy doesn’t explain concepts in sequence; it serves practice questions matched to grade level. OpenEd’s curriculum team put it plainly: Prodigy is not a primary curriculum (OpenEd).

For a 5–7 year old who hasn’t learned counting yet

No. Prodigy starts at Grade 1. A child who can’t yet count to 20 or recognize number words will hit questions like “write 10 in word form” with no instruction behind them. For this age, a teaching app comes first; Prodigy can come later as practice.

For an Indian CBSE family

See the next section. The short version: it works, the math aligns, but you’re paying in dollars for game extras your child doesn’t need.

Prodigy for Indian Parents

Prodigy Education is a Canadian company, founded in 2011 by Rohan Mahimker and Alex Peters, and it entered India in 2018 (YourStory). Its Indian teacher page states the platform is aligned with all major Indian curricula, and the Indian parent page says progress reports track competency against the Indian curriculum (Prodigy India, teachers; Prodigy India, parents).

What that means in practice:

• Grade 1–8 math topics map broadly to CBSE Classes 1–8: number sense, operations, fractions, geometry, data handling. The game adapts by grade, so a Class 4 student gets Class 4-level practice.
• The free tier covers all of it. Nothing in the paid tiers adds Indian-curriculum content.
• Pricing is in US dollars. Prodigy doesn’t publish rupee pricing on its main membership page. Your bank will convert at its own rate and may add a foreign-transaction fee. [Confirm the exact INR figure on the checkout page from an Indian IP before publishing.]
• The Homeschool Companion feature is available to US customers only (Prodigy Memberships).

Our take for Indian families: Use the free account. At the current annual prices, Core works out to roughly ₹5,000 and Ultra to roughly ₹10,000 a year [replace with verified INR], and neither adds a single math question. That money goes further on a tutor, a workbook, or one of the alternatives below.

Alternatives to Prodigy Math

If the goal is practice with a game wrapper, Prodigy’s free tier is fine. If the goal is learning math, start with Khan Academy Kids.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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Sources

1. Prodigy Education, Math Memberships page, accessed September 11, 2026: https://www.prodigygame.com/Memberships/math/
2. Prodigy Education, Prodigy Math overview: https://www.prodigygame.com/main-en/prodigy-math
3. Prodigy Education, Membership Renewal & Refund Policies: https://prodigygame.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202310846-Membership-Renewal-Refund-Policies
4. Fairplay for Kids, “7 reasons to say no to Prodigy”: https://fairplayforkids.org/pf/prodigy/
5. Common Sense Education, Prodigy Math review: https://www.commonsense.org/education/reviews/prodigy-math
6. OpenEd, “We Tried Prodigy Math”: https://opened.co/tools/prodigy-math
7. School Data Leadership, Prodigy platform summary: https://schooldataleadership.org/systems/instruction-curriculum/prodigy.html
8. YourStory, Prodigy India company profile: https://yourstory.com/companies/prodigy-india
9. Prodigy India, teacher and parent pages: https://www.prodigygame.com/main-en/teacher, https://www.prodigygame.com/main-en/parent/
10. Brighterly, “Prodigy Membership Cost 2026”: https://brighterly.com/blog/prodigy-membership-cost/
11. Modulo, Prodigy review: https://www.modulo.app/all-resources/prodigymathgame