Games like Kahoot: free quiz games for the classroom

What makes a good classroom quiz game

Before comparing tools, it helps to be clear about what you want the game to do. Most teachers we talk to care about the same handful of things.

• Getting in quickly. If pupils need accounts, passwords or an app, you lose five minutes of the lesson. A join code on the board is the gold standard.
• Everyone thinking, not just the fastest. Speed bonuses are exciting, but they reward the same pupils every time. Games where everyone has the full time to answer get more of the class retrieving.
• Little or no prep. Building a 20 question quiz from scratch takes time you may not have. Ready-made question banks or open prompts help.
• Something to talk about afterwards. The best rounds lead to discussion: why was that wrong, who else knew this, what was the trick.
• Safe by default. No open chat, no adverts, and the teacher can remove anyone who joins with a silly name.

No single tool wins on all five, which is why many teachers keep two or three in rotation.

The best free Kahoot alternatives

Blooket

Blooket takes a set of multiple choice questions and wraps it in a game mode: tower defence, a café to run, a gold hunt where you can steal from classmates and more. Pupils join with a game ID. Younger secondary classes love it because the game layer changes each time even when the questions do not. The flip side is that the game can take over, and a pupil can do well through luck in the mode rather than knowing the content. There is a free plan and a paid Plus plan with extra features.

Gimkit

Gimkit was built by a student, and it shows. Pupils answer questions to earn in-game money, then spend it on upgrades and power-ups, so a quiz turns into a small strategy game. Modes like Trust No One add a social deduction twist. It is great for repeated practice of the same set, since pupils see each question several times. The free plan is more limited than the paid one, so check which modes you get.

Wayground (formerly Quizizz)

Quizizz renamed itself Wayground in 2025, and old links still redirect. Its big difference from Kahoot is that it is self-paced: each pupil moves through the questions on their own screen, so nobody waits for the slowest and nobody is rushed by the fastest. It also works as homework, and its reports are detailed. It feels less like a live event, which is either a strength or a weakness depending on what you want.

Quizlet Live

If your class already uses Quizlet flashcards, Quizlet Live turns any set into a team game. Pupils are put into random teams and the answers are spread across their screens, so they have to talk to each other to find the right one. A wrong answer sends the team back to the start, which makes accuracy matter more than speed. It is very good for vocabulary and key terms.

Plickers

Plickers needs no pupil devices at all. Each pupil has a printed card with a shape on it, and they turn it to show A, B, C or D. You scan the room with your phone and the answers appear on the board. Ideal for schools with strict phone rules or patchy Wi-Fi, though it only does multiple choice.

Mentimeter

Mentimeter is a presentation tool first. Its live polls, word clouds and quiz slides work well inside a normal lesson, and pupils join with a code at menti.com. Word clouds in particular make a nice opener: ask the class for one word about last lesson and see what comes up most.

Socrative

Socrative is the quiet workhorse: quick quizzes, exit tickets and a team race called Space Race. It is less flashy than the others, but it is fast to set up and the results are easy to read.

Wordwall

Wordwall is less a quiz game and more a box of templates: match up, anagrams, word searches, a spinning wheel, a quiz show. Many work best on the board with the whole class, and most can be printed too.

Nichenaut: when you want more than one right answer

All of the games above are built on questions with one correct answer. That is perfect for checking a specific fact. It is less good at showing how much a class knows about a topic as a whole. Nichenaut, which we make, works the other way round.

Instead of a question, the board shows an open prompt. Every pupil types one answer on their own device, and every correct answer counts. The twist is that rarer right answers score more. If half the class writes “oxygen” for name a chemical element, that is fine, but the pupil who writes “molybdenum” flies far further.

• Name a chemical element
• Name a country in Africa
• Name an ancient civilisation
• Name a word with a silent B
• Name a famous scientist
• Name a maths word or topic

A few things make it work well in class:

• Nobody needs an account. Pupils go to nichenaut.app, type the room code and a name, and they are in. There is a QR code on the board as well.
• Speed does not matter. Everyone gets the full time, 25 seconds by default, and the score only depends on how rare your right answer was. Pupils who think slowly but know a lot do well.
• No prep. There are over 1,800 prompts across topics like science, geography, history, words and language and school life, each with a long list of accepted answers.
• The reveal teaches. After each prompt the board shows what the class said, from the most common answer to the rarest. It is a natural moment to ask “who knew that one?”

Class mode is built for this. The teacher's screen becomes the big screen, the teacher does not play, and rooms take up to 25 pupils. Class rooms are private, have no chat (only preset reactions), never use the 18+ prompts, and show no paid offers. You can remove a player or skip a prompt at any time. Our page for teachers has the details.

Where it is weaker: Nichenaut does not let you write your own question set for a specific unit in class mode, and it is not built to test one exact fact. Think of it as a retrieval and vocabulary game for breadth, used next to the tools above rather than instead of all of them.

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Which one should you pick?

A rough guide, based on what you want from the lesson:

Whatever you choose, keep the stakes low. The research on retrieval practice is clear that the act of pulling something from memory is what helps, not the score. A game is just a way to make pupils want to do it.