Khanmigo
Khan Academy's AI tutor, free for teachers
About Khanmigo
Khanmigo is Khan Academy's AI tutor, and the organisation behind it is the reason to consider it separately from the rest of this category. Khan Academy is a non-profit with two decades of instructional material and a pedagogical position, which is a different starting point from a startup that added education prompts to a language model.
That shows most clearly in the tutoring behaviour. The design intent is Socratic: the tutor is meant to ask rather than answer, guiding a student toward the result instead of handing it over. Whether that survives a determined teenager is the honest question, and it is the question to test on your own student before committing, because a tutor that can be talked into doing the homework is a homework machine regardless of intent.
The teacher side is a separate product within the same subscription, covering lesson planning and the administrative work, and it is free.
A teacher signs up at no cost and gets the teaching assistant tools alongside a class view. There is no trial to expire, which removes the usual reason a school pilot dies.
A learner or family subscribes for 4 dollars a month and gets the tutor, which works through Khan Academy's existing exercises and videos rather than in isolation. That integration is the practical advantage: the tutor knows the curriculum the student is actually working through.
Conversations are retained so a student can return to earlier explanations, and parents can add children from a parent account.
- •Socratic tutoring - designed to guide rather than answer, which is the whole pedagogical claim.
- •Free for teachers - not a trial, not a limited tier, which is rare here.
- •Built on Khan Academy's curriculum - the tutor sits inside existing exercises and videos rather than beside them.
- •Teacher tools included - lesson planning and administrative help on the same free account.
- •Family accounts - children added from a parent account at the same 4 dollar rate.
- •Chat history - earlier explanations remain available to return to.
Teachers, unambiguously, since it costs them nothing and needs no budget conversation. That alone makes it the first thing to try in this category.
Families already using Khan Academy, where the tutor has the most context to work with and 4 dollars a month is a small addition to something already in use.
It is a weaker fit if your school does not use Khan Academy's curriculum, because the integration is most of the value. And as with every AI tutor, test whether it holds the Socratic line with your particular student before assuming it will.
