Reading and math that load before your kid loses interest.
Ladderbug teaches phonics and number sense the way the research says to — explicitly, in order, with real mastery checks. Every lesson is one rung on a ladder. It opens when the rung below is solid, it takes about twelve minutes, and then it ends.
Ages 4–11 · Kindergarten to grade 5 · Free tier needs no account and no card
Three things every other K–5 site gets wrong
Video is a tax on attention
Animated songs and movie-style lessons are megabytes that have to arrive before anything happens, and a five-year-old's patience is measured in seconds. Ladderbug ships no video and no audio files at all — speech comes from the device, and sound effects are generated in the browser. The whole app is about 30 KB over the wire.
Clicking is not reading
A lot of "phonics" software lets a child pass by guessing from the first letter or the picture — the exact habit that structured literacy exists to prevent. Every Ladderbug item has distractors one sound away from the answer, so the only way through is to actually decode.
No finish line, no habit
Endless content and breakable streaks are engagement mechanics borrowed from adult apps. We count up, never down; a missed day pauses, it never resets; there are no leagues, no leaderboards, no mystery chests, and the session genuinely stops.
Built for the iPad it will actually live on
Tap Share → Add to Home Screen and Ladderbug becomes an app: full screen, its own icon, and no browser chrome for a five-year-old to get lost in.
Then turn the wifi off. It keeps working. The whole site — every lesson, every skill page, every book — is stored on the device after the first visit, so it runs in the car, on a plane, in a co-op basement, or on rural broadband that comes and goes. Nothing has to load mid-lesson, because nothing loads mid-lesson.
Progress lives on the device too. No account, no upload, nothing to sync and nothing to lose to someone else's outage.
- Every tap target is at least 44 points, checked automatically at every iPad size.
- Landscape puts the picture beside the answers so nothing a child needs is below the fold.
- No hover states that stick after a tap, no double-tap zoom, no rubber-band scroll.
A voice, not a robot
Every question can be read aloud, in a warm, unhurried woman's voice — because a five-year-old cannot read the question that is asking them to learn to read. It is on by default for younger children.
We rank the voices your device offers and pick the clearest one rather than taking whatever the browser hands over first, which on an iPad is often robotic. If you would rather have a different one, there is a picker, and every option speaks when you tap it.
The voice is synthesised on the device. That is why there is not one audio file in the entire product, and why a lesson never waits for a download.
Pictures where they teach, and nowhere else
Every letter-sound has a picture: m is a man, igh is a light, oi is a coin. The sound wall fills with them as your child masters each spelling. Word problems show the thing being counted. Subitizing flashes real apples and stars, not dots.
And then they stop. There is never a picture beside a word your child is being asked to read, because a picture lets a child answer without decoding — and guessing from the picture is the single most expensive habit in early reading. Most products put a picture next to every word. That is the difference between a child who looks like they are reading and a child who is.
Every picture is drawn as vector artwork built into the page, so the whole set adds about six kilobytes and stays sharp on a Retina iPad.
Sixty-nine of the seventy spellings we teach have a picture. Tap one and it says the sound.
How the ladder works
Skills are a graph, not a list. "Magic e" cannot open until short vowels and blends are solid, because reading tape requires already reading tap. That ordering is the whole product.
A rung counts as climbed only when three things are true at once: the child is right at least nine times out of ten, they are quick — we record how long every answer takes and never show a timer — and they hold it on two different days. Accuracy alone is how programs convince parents a child has learned something they have actually just memorised for ten minutes.
Underneath, review is scheduled on spaced intervals of 1, 3, 7, 16 and 35 days. A correct-and-fast answer moves a skill up a box; any error sends it back to the front. Roughly a third of each session is new material, a third is recent material shuffled together, and a third is old material coming back around.
What is inside
49 reading rungs and 33 math rungs, kindergarten through grade five.
Every rung is tagged to a Common Core standard and is playable on its own free page.
Browse all free skill gamesSide by side
We have tried to be fair here, including where other products are the better answer. If your child is three and you want gentle, beautiful early phonics with no data collected at all, Starfall is genuinely excellent and cheaper than us.
| Ladderbug | Starfall | ABCmouse | IXL | Reading Eggs | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price for a family | Free tier, then $60/yr or $180 once | $35/yr (home) | $45/yr promo, $14.99/mo | $79–$159/yr | $99.99/yr |
| Children included | 6 | 1 household | 3 | 1 (+$40/yr each) | 4 |
| Works with no account | Yes — the whole free tier | Partly | No | No | No |
| Video or big downloads | None | Animated songs and movies | Heavy app | No | App-first |
| Adapts to the child | Yes — mastery gates + spaced review | No | Partly | Yes (SmartScore) | Yes |
| Progress tracking for grown-ups | Yes | No | Basic | Strong | Yes |
| Named misconception diagnosis | Yes — 11 tracked bugs | No | No | No | No |
| Ads shown to children | Never | Never | Never | Never | Never |
| Upsells shown to children | Never | Membership prompts | Yes | No | Yes |
| Sessions designed to end | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Grades 4–5 depth | Full ladder | Thin (15 math items) | Separate product | Full | Limited |
Prices checked September 2026 from each company's own store or support pages. They change — check before you buy.
$60 a year. Six children. Or $180 once, forever.
One flat household price, because charging a homeschooling family per child per subject is a tax on having more than one kid. Cancel in one click. Full refund for thirty days. If the price is a barrier, write to us and we will turn it on free for a year — no forms, no proof.
Questions people actually ask
Is Ladderbug really free?
The free tier is free forever, with no account, no ads and no card. It covers the whole kindergarten and first-grade ladder — every phonics rung through three-letter blends, number sense through place value to 100, the sound wall, the parent field notes, and the first three decodable books. Paid membership unlocks grades 2 to 5, the full book shelf, offline mode, printables and syncing across devices.
How is this different from Starfall?
Starfall is genuinely good at early phonics and it has been ad-free since 2002, which we respect. The differences that matter: Starfall does not track progress or adapt (Common Sense Education notes there is "no progress-tracking"), its content thins out sharply after about second grade — the entire grade 4–5 math section is fifteen activities — and it leans on animation and video. Ladderbug is adaptive, has no video at all, keeps a mastery record for every skill, and runs through fifth grade. Full comparison.
What ages is it for?
Roughly 4 to 11 — pre-K letter sounds through fifth-grade fractions and multi-digit multiplication. The ladder places itself: a rung only opens when the rungs underneath it are solid, so a seven-year-old who needs vowel teams and a seven-year-old who needs multiplication both land in the right place without a test.
Why does it stop me after twelve minutes?
Because that is the design. Short, regular practice beats long, occasional practice at this age, and a product with no ending is an infinite scroll wearing a school uniform. There is a real completion screen, an away-from-the-screen suggestion, and no "one more".
Do you collect anything about my child?
No. Progress lives in your browser’s local storage on your device. There is no account required, no analytics on the child-facing app, no third-party scripts, and nothing to sell. You can export or erase everything from the Field Notes page. Read the details.
Does it work on an iPad without internet?
Yes. Open it once, then tap Share → Add to Home Screen. It installs as an app with its own icon, opens full screen, and keeps working with the wifi off — every lesson, every skill page, every book. There is a "save the whole site for offline" button in settings if you want to be certain before a trip. Progress is stored on the device and does not need a connection either.
Is the voice a real person?
It is your device's own speech synthesiser, and we rank the available voices and pick the warmest, clearest one rather than the default — which on an iPad is often robotic. You can choose a different voice in settings and hear each one before you pick. Recorded human phoneme audio is on the roadmap; synthesised speech is what lets the whole app weigh about 45 kilobytes.
Twelve minutes. Then go outside.
No card, no account, no download.