Is there an AI for helping my kid with homework?

The best AI for homework asks your kid questions first

It asks what your kid has tried, gives one hint at a time and leaves the last step to them. In a trial published in PNAS in 2025, nearly 1,000 high school math students in Turkey practiced with either an ordinary chatbot or a tutor version that gave hints instead of answers. The ordinary chatbot raised practice grades by 48%, and once it was taken away those students scored 17% worse on the exam than students who never had it. The tutor version raised practice grades by 127%, and the exam damage largely disappeared.

Both chatbots above have a mode that works this way, and the kids' tutor is built to work no other way. Expect a nudge, not a miracle: a two-year trial in 18 Tennessee middle schools, published by NBER in August 2026, found the kids' tutor raised math scores by 1.3 national percentile ranks per term, about what the same practice did without AI. Students asked it for help in only 17% of the sessions where they got something wrong.

Is there a free AI homework helper worth using?

Yes, and for most homework the free versions are enough. The tutor modes of both chatbots above are on their free plans, and the photo solver shows the step-by-step working at no charge; its $9.99 a month tier adds animated tutorials and textbook solutions. The tutor built for kids is the one that costs money: $4 a month or $44 a year for up to 10 children, paid by a parent who is 18 or older with a US billing address.

What that money buys is a view of the conversation. On the kids' tutor you can read the history of every chat and get an alert when one is flagged. On one of the free chatbots, linking your teen's account to yours changes settings but, its maker says, gives you no access to the conversations themselves.

What an AI homework helper does with a picture of the problem

It reads the problem, printed, handwritten or on a screen, solves it and lays out every step, word problems included. The photo solver above covers elementary math through calculus. The chatbots take a photo of any worksheet in any subject, including in their tutor modes, where they use it to ask questions instead of answering.

Check what it read before you check what it solved. The solver's maker says mistakes happen sometimes, and when a result looks wrong its first advice is to compare the problem it recognized with the one on the page. Crop your kid's name and school out of the photo. On one chatbot, a parent with a linked teen account decides whether those chats can be used to train its models, and it is on until you turn it off.

Apps that help with homework, sorted by your kid's age

Age rules out more apps than features do. Both chatbots above start at 13 in the US (one asks for a parent's permission until 18), and at least one other big chatbot requires users to be 18. Under 13, two picks above work: the kids' tutor, where a parent signs up and adds children under 18, and one chatbot that a parent can switch on for an under-13 through a parent-managed account, with an email when the child first uses it. That second route is closed in the EEA, Switzerland and the UK.

From 13 to 17 your teen uses their own account. Linking it to yours on one chatbot lets you make new chats start in its tutor mode, schedule study hours, and set quiet hours when it cannot be used at all, but you still cannot read the chats. The two sets of parent controls side by side shows what each one lets you see.

Using AI to help with homework when you are the one who is stuck

Use it on yourself first. When the worksheet uses a method you never learned, ask a chatbot to explain the problem to you, then ask it to explain again using the method named on the worksheet, and teach that. Your kid hears it from you, in the words their teacher uses, and nobody hands over an answer. For math that needs more than one evening, see what an AI math tutor can and cannot do.

Then ask how your kid already uses one. In a Pew Research Center survey of 1,458 US teens and their parents in fall 2025, 64% of teens said they use chatbots, while 51% of parents said their teen does, and roughly four in ten parents had never talked with their teen about chatbots. Among the teens, 54% had used one to get help with schoolwork.

helping my kid with homework: quick answers

Is using AI for homework cheating?

It is when the AI's work is handed in as your kid's own. Past that, the line belongs to the school and the teacher: three-quarters of 9 to 17 year olds in Common Sense Media's 2026 census said their school had discussed what they can and cannot use AI for. Ask to see that rule, because 59% of US teens told Pew that using AI to cheat is a regular occurrence at their school.

Can AI check my kid's homework?

Yes, and it is the safest job to give it. Let your kid finish the page, photograph it, and ask a chatbot to say which answers are wrong without fixing them, so the correcting stays with your kid. Treat its marks as a second opinion: the makers of both a chatbot tutor mode and the photo solver above say their tools can make mistakes.

Is there an AI that does homework for you?

Yes. The chatbots above do it outside their tutor modes, and the photo solver does it by design, with the working shown, ready to copy. One in ten US teens told Pew they do all or most of their schoolwork with a chatbot's help. In the PNAS trial described above, the cost showed up on the exam.

Can a teacher tell if homework was done with AI?

Not reliably with software. AI detectors score the style of a piece of writing, so they can flag a kid who wrote their own essay and miss one who lightly reworded a chatbot's, and a page of math answers gives them no writing to score. Our page on whether AI detectors are accurate has the studies. At home, the better test is asking your kid to explain one answer out loud.