Free Math Assessments for Kids, Compared

A parent who types "free math assessment for kids" into Google usually wants one specific thing, and it is a small thing. They want a test their child can sit at the kitchen table, today, without paying, that comes back and says something like "your child is working at a third grade level". Not a worksheet. Not a login for a school. A result.

We read six of the tools that come up for that search, on their own sites, on the same day, and the finding is a negative one: almost none of them is that. They are free practice, or a teacher tool that a parent cannot assign, or a paid diagnostic with a trial that belongs to someone else. One of the six does what the search intends, and what it measures is narrower than its landing page suggests.

That is not a complaint about these companies. Every one of them is straightforward about what it sells on the page where it sells it. The confusion is manufactured downstream, by listicles that mark eleven entries "free" without asking free to whom, for what, and up to which screen.

The one a parent can actually finish at home

Learning Heroes' Readiness Check is the exception. It runs in a browser, it asked us for no account and no card, and it is short: the page says your child answers 5 fun, game-like questions to check key math skills needed for this year. We walked it end to end for a third grader, answering every question, and it produced a written verdict, per-question right and wrong, and links to practice each skill it had asked about.

So on the narrow question this page exists to answer, Learning Heroes is the answer. If you want a free math check your child can do at home in the next ten minutes, that is the one to open.

Now the part that is invisible from the landing page, and that we would not have known without running it. The form that starts the check tells you to start with the grade your child has already completed. You supply the grade. So the verdict is phrased against your answer, not against a level the tool went looking for. Ours came back: your child needs more support with 3rd grade math skills.

Read that sentence carefully, because the distinction it hides is the whole reason this page is a hub and not a list. "Needs more support with 3rd grade math" is an answer to "how ready is my child for the grade I named". It is not an answer to "what grade is my child working at". Those feel like the same question to a worried parent at 9pm and they are not, and the difference matters most in exactly the case that sends people searching: a child who is somewhere other than where the year says.

If your child is a year behind, a readiness check against the grade they just finished will tell you they need support, which you suspected. It will not tell you where they actually are, which is the thing that decides what you do on Saturday morning. Our guide to whether your child is on track in math goes through what that distinction looks like grade by grade.

Free, excellent, and not an assessment: Khan Academy

Khan Academy is the most common answer people give when a parent asks this question, and it is a good answer to a different question. Khan is free, it is enormous, and the instruction is genuinely strong. It does have things it calls assessments, and the section below takes them seriously. What it does not have is something a parent can open at home that goes looking for a child's level, and Khan does not claim otherwise.

Look at what its help centre says a teacher can assign: article, video, exercise, quiz, unit test, or course challenge. The one closest to a test is the course challenge, and Khan describes it as 30 questions long, covering all the skills across the entire course, helpful to gauge students' level of understanding at a broader level.

Every word of that is true and it still does not answer a parent's question, because of the word "course". A course challenge tests the course you opened. If you open fourth grade math and your child struggles, you have learned they struggle with fourth grade math. You have not learned whether they are working at a third grade level or a second grade one, because the instrument never looked there. It is the same shape as the Learning Heroes issue, arrived at from a different direction: the grade came from you.

Khan does have something called a Readiness Check, and it is worth being precise about it, because the name sounds exactly like what a parent wants. Two things from Khan's own documentation. First, teachers assign the Readiness Check once, which makes it a classroom feature rather than something a parent can start. Second, and this is Khan stating a limit in its own word "only": the Readiness Check only includes content below a student's current grade level.

That second sentence is doing a lot of work. An instrument that only contains below-grade content can find a gap and cannot find a ceiling. It is built to tell a teacher what to shore up, which is a real job. It structurally cannot come back and tell you your child is working a year ahead, because nothing a year ahead was on the test. If what sent you searching was a suspicion that your child is struggling, that shape may be fine. If you are trying to find out where they are in either direction, it is the wrong tool and Khan says so in writing.

Free, but built for a classroom: Zearn and easyCBM

Two of the six are free in a way that is real but is not aimed at you.

Zearn is a nonprofit with more than 1,000 research-backed K to 8 digital lessons, and its front page says free for teachers, always. Further down the same page it says it again: it's also free, for individual teachers and classrooms, always. We looked for a families section on that page and did not find one. That is a statement about how Zearn presents itself, not a claim that a parent is turned away. But it tells you what the product is shaped around, and it is not a report on your individual child. We have written separately about what Zearn is good at, which is quite a lot.

easyCBM is the clearest example of a pattern worth naming, because once you can see it you will see it everywhere. Its Deluxe subscription is for teachers in Grades K-8, to identify students at risk and monitor student progress, at $69.99. There is a trial, and easyCBM is upfront that it needs no credit card and can be upgraded at any time. Then: after the trial, continue with easyCBM Lite for free.

So there genuinely is a free easyCBM. What is free is the ongoing monitoring tier; the subscription is what the full product costs. A page that lists easyCBM under "free math assessments" is not lying, it is just answering a different question than the one you asked. The useful question is never "is there a free tier". It is "is the thing I want on the free side of the line".

The paid ones, and the trial that is not for you

IXL and Let's Go Learn both sell what a parent is actually looking for, and both charge for it.

IXL's Diagnostic is the closest thing in this entire comparison to the product a searching parent has in mind. IXL says it pinpoints your child's knowledge levels in math and English language arts in just 45 minutes per subject. That is a serious instrument, it is longer than anything else here, and its per-skill detail will be finer than a short check can manage. IXL's family pricing page says memberships start at only $9.95/month.

Read that starting price carefully, because the plan it names is a single subject. The same page lists the wider plan, math, language arts, science and social studies together, at $19.95/mo. For a parent who came for math and only math, $9.95 is the honest figure. For a household thinking about a second subject later, the number to plan against is the higher one, and it is better known before the first bill than after.

Here is the thing to be careful about, and it is the single most likely way to get this wrong. Across the two IXL pages we read, the family pricing page and the Diagnostic page, the word "free" appears zero times and the word "trial" appears zero times. Those two pages offer a parent no free route in at all.

We are not telling you that no IXL trial exists anywhere, because we did not go looking beyond those pages and a company can offer a trial we did not read. We are telling you what IXL's own family pages say, which is a price. If you come across an IXL free trial somewhere else, check who it is addressed to before you plan around it, because a trial offered to teachers is not an offer to you.

Let's Go Learn is priced differently and more honestly for an occasional user. Its retail option is described as being for families, tutors or specialists who require a small number of tests or online instructional courses, and it is pay as you go, with no annual licensing fee. Its retail option is described as fixed-test packs based on use, and the page prints a purchase range of $25 to $1200. That range is the useful number: the bottom of it is roughly what one test costs, and there is no subscription to remember to cancel. If you want one thorough diagnostic and then to be left alone, that structure fits better than a monthly membership.

Readiness and placement are different questions

Every distinction on this page comes back to one idea, so it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving it implied.

A readiness check starts from a grade and asks how ready this child is for it. It is the natural design when the grade is already settled: a teacher knows which class the child is in, a curriculum knows which unit comes next. Almost every free tool is built this way, because almost every free tool came out of a classroom, where the grade was never in question.

A placement starts from the child and asks what level they are working at. Nobody supplies the answer in advance. The test has to move: ask something, use the response to decide what to ask next, and keep going until the answers stop agreeing with each other. That is more work to build and it is the only shape that can surprise you, in either direction.

Parents almost always want the second and search for the first, because "free math assessment" is the phrase that exists. The gap matters most in exactly the situation that drives the search. If you already knew your child was comfortably on grade level you would not be reading this. You are here because something looked off, which means the grade is the unknown, which is the one thing a readiness check takes as given.

This is not a criticism of Learning Heroes or of Khan. Both are clear about what they do, and a readiness check against a known grade answers a real question well. It is a criticism of the pages that collect them and call all of it a free math assessment, because that phrase promises the second thing and links to the first.

What each one does once it has an answer

A result you cannot act on is a number rather than help, and this is where the free tools and the paid ones separate most clearly.

Khan Academy does the most automatic thing of anyone here, and it is genuinely impressive. Its documentation says that when students complete the Readiness Check, Khan Academy automatically creates personalized practice to help them strengthen those skills alongside their current coursework, and that it identifies skills from earlier grades the student may benefit from practicing. That is the whole loop, closed, at no cost. The catch is the one already stated: a teacher assigns it, and it looks only below the current grade.

IXL does the paid equivalent. It says it automatically creates a personalized learning plan of the exact skills your child is ready for, which is what you are buying alongside the 45 minutes of testing. Whether that is worth $9.95 or $19.95 a month depends less on the test than on whether anyone in your house will open the plan on a Tuesday.

Learning Heroes, the free one, names the topic each question covered and puts a Practice This Skill link beside it: this problem covers an important topic, the concept of multiplication, practice this skill. It is a smaller loop than either of the above and it is immediate, which for a lot of families is the more useful property.

easyCBM deserves a paragraph here, because its free tier is more substantial than a throwaway. The company says it holds over 1150 benchmark and progress monitoring measures in reading, math, and early Spanish reading, and it advertises a no obligation free trial. What remains free afterwards is the progress monitoring. For a homeschooling parent who wants to track the same skill every few weeks and does not need a national comparison, that free tier is a real tool, and almost nobody writing about free math assessments mentions it.

Zearn sits at the other end and says why: it is a nonprofit, so it is not driven by dollars. That is not cover for a paywall further down. It is why more than 1,000 lessons are free to anyone who signs up, and it is also why nothing in the product is shaped like a report to a parent.

Five ways a free math assessment turns out not to be one

The six tools above are honest about themselves. The confusion comes from the aggregation layer, and it repeats in a small number of shapes. Once you can name them, you can sort a page of search results in about a minute.

One: the practice is free, the verdict is not. easyCBM is the clean example here, and it is a common structure. There is a real free tier and the thing you wanted sits on the other side of it. Ask which side your question is on.

Two: it is free, but you are not the user. Zearn is free for teachers and classrooms. Khan's Readiness Check is assigned by teachers. Neither page is written to the parent: Khan describes teachers assigning the Readiness Check, and Zearn addresses teachers and classrooms. A trial addressed to teachers, like IXL's, belongs in this category too, and it is the one most likely to be mistaken for a family offer.

Three: you already supplied the answer. This is the subtle one, and both of the genuinely free options on this page have it. Learning Heroes asks you to start with the grade your child has already completed. A Khan course challenge tests the course you opened. Any site with the grade in its own web address is doing the same thing. A test that begins by asking which grade to test can tell you how your child did against that grade, and cannot tell you which grade they are working at.

Four: free until the result. A tool that asks the questions and then asks for your email before it will show you how your child did has not given you a free assessment. It has priced it in contact details. This is common enough that it is worth watching for the moment a form appears between the last question and the answer.

Five: it is not a test at all. Question banks with no scoring, released state items with no conversion table, and questionnaires the parent fills in about their child's behaviour all rank for this search. A pile of questions is a resource, and a good one. It is not an assessment until something turns the answers into a statement about the child.

None of these five makes a product bad. Every one of them makes a product a poor answer to "free math assessment for kids", and the listicles that rank for that phrase almost never draw the distinction, which is why we wrote this page.

Four questions to ask any free math assessment

You can sort a page of search results with these, and they are the four we used on the six tools above.

Who picked the grade? If the tool asked you, the result is a readiness judgement about the grade you named. That is useful, and it is not a placement. If you cannot see where the grade was chosen, look again, because it was chosen somewhere.

Who is the page written for? Read the company's front door rather than the review site. Zearn says free for teachers, always. easyCBM says for teachers in Grades K-8. Khan describes teachers assigning the Readiness Check. None of that is hidden, and all of it goes missing in the listicles.

Where exactly does the free part stop? Not whether a free tier exists, but whether the thing you came for sits inside it. easyCBM's free tier is the monitoring. A trial needing no credit card, which easyCBM offers, is a different promise from a permanently free tool, and both differ again from a trial addressed to teachers.

What is on the last screen? A verdict, a list of skills, a percentage, or a form asking for your email. If you cannot find out without handing over an address, that is the price, and you are entitled to decide it is too high for five questions.

What we would actually do

If you have ten minutes tonight and want something free: open Learning Heroes' Readiness Check. Choose the grade your child has finished, and read the result as what it is, a readiness judgement against that grade rather than a placement.

If you suspect your child is more than a year from where the school year says, in either direction, a readiness check against their nominal grade will not resolve it. That is the case where a paid diagnostic earns its money, and IXL's 45 minutes per subject or a single Let's Go Learn test from $25 are the two on this list that are built for it.

If you homeschool, or if you are going to look at this again in a month rather than once, the calculus changes. A single free check answers a question tonight. Something you can repeat on the same basis is what shows you whether the last month of work did anything, and that is worth paying a small amount for in a way that one test is not.

If what you want is for your child to get better at math rather than to be measured, stop reading comparison pages and open Khan Academy or Zearn. Both are free, both are good, and neither will send you a bill. Measurement is only worth anything if you are going to do something different afterwards.

If the one you are looking at is not on this list

Six is not all of them, and the six here were chosen because each one fails to be a free at-home math assessment in a different way, not because they are the six largest. Plenty of tools we did not read are worth a parent's time.

So the four questions above matter more than this particular list. Run them on whatever you are looking at, in this order, because the cheapest one to answer comes first. Who is the front page addressed to, teachers or parents? Did the tool ask you which grade to test? Where does the free part stop? And what is actually on the final screen?

Two of those you can answer before your child sits down, which is the point. The most common way this goes wrong is not paying for something disappointing, it is spending twenty minutes of a tired eight-year-old on a test that was never going to answer the question, and then having to ask them to do another one. Spend the first two minutes on the tool rather than the test.

If you try one that does answer the placement question for free, at home, with no email gate, we would genuinely like to know. It would be the second one we have found.

Where Test My Kid fits, and where it does not

We publish this page, so here is the disclosure in plain words. Test My Kid sells a measurement. We do not teach: there is no curriculum, no lessons and no videos, so Khan Academy and Zearn are not competitors of ours, they are the thing we would send you to afterwards.

On the specific question this page asks, here is our honest position. The first math check is free, with no account and no card, so you can see what the report looks like before deciding anything. Reading needs a free account. After that it is a thirty-day trial and then $99 a year for the whole family. So we belong in the "free to start" column and we are telling you the ceiling in the same breath, because the whole complaint of this page is with pages that do not.

What the report does is name a grade. Every result says whether your child is approaching, meeting or exceeding it, so you get a position rather than a percentage, and you see every question with your child's answer. Our levels are calibrated to NWEA MAP and iReady benchmarks, and nobody outside the company has audited that calibration, which is why it sits in the register below this article rather than in a headline.

The difference from the two free options above is the one this whole page turns on: we do not ask you which grade to test. The check starts from the last measured level and moves, so the grade in the result is an output rather than something you typed in at the start.

And the honest limit: ten questions in about eight minutes is a short sitting. A 45-minute diagnostic like IXL's sees more of what your child can do, and its per-skill detail is finer than ours. If you want the deepest possible picture and you are willing to pay for it, that is a real trade and it does not go our way.

How we checked this, and what we left out

Ten pages across six companies, read in a real browser on 30 September 2026, and every quotation on this page is checked against that capture mechanically before the page can publish. The Learning Heroes Readiness Check was not merely loaded: it was walked from the grade picker to the results screen, because the verdict does not exist on the landing page and a page written from the landing page alone would have described the wrong product.

Two things we believed going in turned out to be wrong against the live pages, and both are corrected above. We had recorded Let's Go Learn as $25 per assessment; the page prints a purchase range of $25 to $1200, which is a different claim. And we expected to find an IXL family trial to write about. There is none on the family pages we read.

Screenwise appears on our own internal list for this page and is not here, because it measures reading rather than math. Several other patterns in the taxonomy above, the email-gated results and the parent questionnaires, are described without naming a company, because naming one requires reading its pages first and we only read these six.

Prices and free tiers are the most perishable things on this page. Every figure above is quoted with the page it came from and the date we read it. If what a company tells you differs from what is quoted here, trust the company and tell us.