Is a Free Reading App Still Enough?

Free reading apps are a great start. The trouble begins when one skill stops moving. When it does, a focused reading app, alongside or in place of the free app, can help keep progress steady. Duolingo ABC and Khan Academy Kids are both free, both teach early reading, and they stop in different places. Duolingo ABC stops early: its own Common Core alignment document marks its last level unfinished, so a child can run out of app before the end of second grade, still needing vowel teams, r-controlled vowels, and longer words. Khan Academy Kids keeps reading in the mix, but as one subject among several: its Learning Path decides when a skill comes back, and in between it rotates through math, science, and more, so it is hard to aim practice at one stuck skill. And a child who already reads simple text has outgrown phonics apps altogether: the next step is books.

What the next step should be depends on where the free app stopped:

If your child used	Where it stops	What usually comes next
Duolingo ABC	Its own Common Core alignment document marks the last level “Coming soon!”	More phonics: vowel teams, r-controlled vowels, longer words
Khan Academy Kids	It runs to about age 8, with reading as one subject among several	A focused reading app alongside it to build specific skills
Either, and your child reads simple text	Your child has outgrown phonics apps in general	Books, read aloud every day

How we compared them: We make a reading app ourselves, so we know what to look for. We checked each app’s price and features on the company’s own site, help center, or app-store listing, and we have used every app here ourselves.

What comes after Duolingo ABC?

Duolingo ABC is a free phonics app that can run out before the end of second grade. It has no ads and no in-app purchases, and it teaches letter sounds, syllable types, spelling patterns, and tricky words such as “one” and “was” in more than 700 short lessons, across 10 levels mapped to kindergarten through second grade. Its own Common Core alignment document, dated March 2023, marks Level 10, the last one, “Coming soon!”, and its two store listings disagree on how far it goes: from preschool to second grade on the App Store, and from preschool to first grade on Google Play.

The next step after Duolingo ABC is more phonics, further on. A child who has run out of it usually still needs the later patterns: vowel teams such as ai, ee, and oa, r-controlled vowels such as ar and or, and words of more than one syllable. Wonster Words has lessons of their own for the first two: vowel teams from first grade, and r-controlled vowels at first and second grade. Our guide to the order phonics skills come in shows where each of those sits.

Is Khan Academy Kids enough to learn to read?

Khan Academy Kids is a free early-learning app for ages 2–8 that teaches reading as one subject among several, and it can be enough until one reading skill stops moving. It has no ads and no subscription, and its Learning Path chooses each next activity, rotating through reading, math, science, social-emotional skills, and more. Its reading sequence is published in its help center: preschool and kindergarten cover letter recognition, letter sounds, beginning, middle, and ending sounds, short and long vowels, CVC words, and sight words. First grade adds digraphs, blends, and vowel combinations, and its second-grade page adds vowel teams.

Khan Academy Kids also has research behind it. In a randomized trial by University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers (Arnold and colleagues, 2021), 4- and 5-year-olds from low-income families who used it at home, about 13 minutes a day for 10 weeks, gained more in early literacy skills than children given apps that did not target those skills.

In our use, its reading activities sit among numbers and videos rather than running as one reading sequence a child moves along skill by skill, and for a 3- or 4-year-old that is often enough for a while. Khan Academy Kids stops being enough when you can name a reading skill that is not moving. If your child knows letter sounds but cannot blend them, or keeps mixing up the same vowel sounds, the Learning Path decides when that skill comes back, and in between it rotates through other subjects. A focused reading app lets you open that skill yourself and practice it today, in a planned order. That planned order is what systematic phonics means, and the National Reading Panel found it significantly more effective than instruction that teaches little or no phonics. Keep Khan Academy Kids for everything else it does, and add the focused app alongside it.

Which reading apps come next?

Whether your child has run out of Duolingo ABC or needs focused reading work beside Khan Academy Kids, these are the apps that pick up the later phonics patterns.

Wonster Words: best for targeting specific skills

Wonster Words lets you choose the skill your child works on rather than placing them on one fixed path. Its sections are labeled by name so you can find them, and the lessons inside each skill run in teaching order. After a free app, that means opening exactly the pattern your child needs next: vowel teams such as ai, ee, and oa, with their own lessons from first grade, or r-controlled vowels, with a lesson for each of ar, er, ir, ur, and or at first and second grade. A single digraph works the same way, with th taught as two lessons: the th in thin and the th in this. One subscription covers up to four children, at $10.99 a month or $59.99 a year after a 7-day free trial.

Hooked on Phonics: best for a set path

Hooked on Phonics covers reading, spelling, and math from Pre-K to second grade, at $14.99 a month or $129.99 a year, with a 7-day trial. It suits a parent who would rather follow one set order than choose each skill: in our use its path progression is strong, though the starting level is set at the beginning and is not easy to change later.

Reading Eggs: best for going past second grade

Reading Eggs is the plan to choose if you want one subscription that carries on past second grade, with phonics lessons, sight words, an e-book library, and a parent progress dashboard. It looks like one program for ages 2–13, but it is a bundle of separate ones, at $13.99 a month or $99.99 a year for up to four children with a 30-day trial. Reading Eggs itself stops at second grade, Reading Eggspress picks up after it, and math is a program of its own that the plan includes, so you pay for it either way. Fast Phonics, a second phonics program, introduces the sounds in a different order, and Reading Eggs itself advises against using them at the same time. For picks sorted by age, see our reading apps by age.

Has your child outgrown the app, or are they stuck?

Three different situations look like outgrowing a reading app, and each one has a different next step.

• The app has run out. Your child finishes lessons easily, replays ones they have mastered, or has reached the last level. Move on to an app that keeps going.
• Your child is stuck. They repeat the same level, guess at words, or avoid the app. Find the skill that is not moving first: our reading check-in helps you find it. Then a focused reading app lets you practice that one skill directly, and our guide to daily practice that is not working covers what else to change.
• Your child already reads simple text. They have outgrown phonics apps, not just this one, and the next step is reading real books every day.

A child who already reads simple text needs volume and someone listening. The Institute of Education Sciences practice guide for schools on foundational reading skills recommends that children read connected text every day to build accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. The National Reading Panel found that repeated reading aloud with guidance from teachers, peers, or parents improved word recognition, fluency, and comprehension. So have your child read aloud to you, and help with the words they miss. Epic, with more than 40,000 books, audiobooks, and videos for children 12 and under, is a library rather than a teaching program, which suits this child and not one still learning to sound out words. Wonster Words fits alongside the books as practice: type in the list your school sends home and the app builds its games from those words, and its book shelves are leveled A–G.

What should you look for in the next reading app?

Coming off a free app, three questions matter more than a feature list:

• Can you see the app’s sequence and choose where your child starts?
• Does it go past the point where the free app stopped?
• Does your child read real words and text in it, not only letters?

A review of educational app studies by Kim, Gilbert, Yu, and Gale (2021) found larger effects for preschoolers than for K–3 children, and for constrained skills such as letter sounds than for broader ones. That is why a free early app can do the letter-sound stage well, and why the next app has to carry a child into the later patterns and real text. Our guide to choosing a reading app works through the full set of questions, and our comparison of phonics apps sets the apps against each other.

Is it worth paying after a free app?

If your child has aged out of Khan Academy Kids, the main Khan Academy app, also free, is the company’s own next step for third grade and up. Paying makes sense when you can name what the free app is not giving your child, such as practice aimed at one stuck skill or at your school’s own word lists. Wonster Words costs $10.99 a month or $59.99 a year, and its 7-day free trial is a free way to see whether focused practice helps with the skill you are worried about. Our guide to free and no-subscription ways to teach phonics goes through when paying is worth it.

How the next-step apps compare on price, ages, and trial

These are the four apps this page recommends after a free one.

Whichever app comes next, judge it away from the screen. Can your child read a word they have not practiced, spell a pattern they learned in a new word, or get through a short book with less help than last month? That is the sign the next app is doing its job.