Best Spelling Apps for Teachers and Classrooms in 2026, Compared

The best spelling app for a classroom takes your weekly list, reads it aloud and shows you who practiced. As of November 2026, Spelling Test Buddy does that most cheaply, at $49.99 a year for up to 150 students. Spelling Stars fits schools on Google Classroom. Spelling Shed is the strongest choice if you want a whole phonics-based curriculum, and SpellingJoy is free.

• Best low-cost class tool: Spelling Test Buddy ($49.99 a year, up to 150 students, web).
• Best with Google Classroom: Spelling Stars ($68.99 to $94.99 a year for 21 to 40 students, web).
• Best full curriculum with live class games: Spelling Shed (UK £43.74 a year for 36 pupils; US by quote; web, iPhone, iPad).
• Best free option: SpellingJoy (spelling practice free for teachers; web, iPhone, iPad, Android).
• Best structured course for older or dyslexic students: Spellzone ($239 a year for 30 students, web).
• Best for daily dictation that keeps old words in review: our Classroom plan ($195 a year for up to 35, web).

We make Spelling.School, one of the tools below. Every price and feature here was checked on each product's own website or official app store page on 1 November 2026.

How we compared

We judged each tool on what teachers ask before they buy: what one class costs and how many students that covers, whether you can set your own weekly list and hear it read aloud, and whether a report shows who practiced. We also checked whether a seven-year-old can sign in without an email address, what the privacy terms say, and whether it works with Google Classroom or Clever. On 1 November 2026 we read each product's own pricing page, help center, privacy policy and app store listing, and we quote them where a detail matters. We did not run classroom trials of any product, and no company paid to be included.

The short version in one table

Products are in alphabetical order. Class sizes differ, so read the price and the size together.

What teachers need, product by product

This is the table that decides it for most classes. "Not stated" means we could not find it on the product's own pages, not that it is missing.

Spelling Shed: the most complete, if you want a curriculum

Spelling Shed, from the UK company EdShed, is less an app than a spelling program with a game attached. Its US lists run from kindergarten to fifth grade, moving from sound-to-letter patterns in the early grades to word parts and meaning by grades 3 to 5. It also ships Dolch and Fry lists and lists matched to published reading series, and you can import your own. Teachers can set a year of assignments in a few clicks and watch progress through the week. Live Hive Games let a whole class play the same list at once, which EdShed offers as an alternative to the weekly spelling test. Its Mastery Zone, listed in every plan on the UK price page, picks focus words for each pupil after a short diagnostic and says mastered words "reappear in gameplay far less frequently than non-mastered words", which it calls spaced repetition.

The game has four levels. At the easiest, a child sees the word and gets only its letters; at the hardest, the word is hidden and the keyboard is nearly full. That design is thoughtful, but the easier levels are closer to assembling a word than recalling it, so push children toward the harder ones as the week goes on.

On price, the UK pricing page shows £2.10 per pupil a year plus VAT for 36 to 199 pupils, or a single teacher license for 36 pupils at £43.74 a year. The US pricing page shows only "Get a quote". EdShed's privacy page says it is "fully compliant with GDPR, COPPA and FERPA" and does not sell data, and Clever's app gallery lists Clever Instant Login. Its US teachers page mentions Google Classroom only in one teacher's comment, and we found no description of an integration. If you are weighing it against the rest for home or homeschool too, our Spelling Shed alternatives guide splits the options by who is asking.

Spelling Stars and Spelling Test Buddy: the weekly-list tools

These two do the job SpellingCity used to do: your list, practice, an auto-marked quiz, a report.

Spelling Test Buddy costs $49.99 a year for one teacher and up to 150 students, after a 14-day trial; a school plan is $499 a year. You can build a list by hand or upload a PDF, Word file, spreadsheet or photo, or pick from more than 850 ready-made lists. Tests read the word and a sentence aloud. Students need no account at all, which suits young pupils and shared devices. Its price page also lists "Adaptive Learning Programs" under the heading "Spaced Repetition Learning". Google Classroom sync and single sign-on are listed as "Coming soon". Its privacy policy says it collects no personally identifiable information from students.

Spelling Stars is the one to pick if your school runs on Google Classroom: every plan lists Google Classroom roster and assignment sync. A class of 21 to 40 costs $68.99 (three games), $78.99 (six games) or $94.99 (19 games, plus recording your own voice) for a year, after a seven-day trial with no card. Each student has an assigned username and password, and its data policy lists a student email address as "not required", needed only with Google Classroom. Pronunciation can be set to American, British or Australian English. Reports show missed words and can generate a review list from them.

Free options: SpellingJoy and SpellingTraining.com

SpellingJoy says on its home page that "Spelling practice is free for teachers, students and families". That includes your own lists, more than 134 ready-made lists, games, quizzes, class-level progress and text-to-speech. Pupils join with a class code: "No new accounts, no passwords for kids." An optional school license, $299 a school for the school year, adds a shared school library, an admin view and a monthly report by grade. Teachers can post a class link in Google Classroom, and SpellingJoy is a teacher-installed app in Clever, but its schools page says roster sync with Google Classroom "is not available today". Its privacy policy describes it as a FERPA "School Official" with a signed 16-state student data privacy agreement. It covers kindergarten to sixth grade. Its privacy policy also notes that some public guides for adults may show one labelled sponsored card; it says children's areas show no ads.

SpellingTraining.com is the simplest tool here. Type up to 30 words and children hear each one, type it, or play games with it. It is free with ads, aimed at grades 1 to 4, and has no accounts. You share a list by pasting its link into Google Classroom or a class website. There is no teacher report, and lists are saved only in your own browser.

Courses and broad platforms: Spellzone, SpellQuiz, IXL, Quizlet

Spellzone is a full spelling course rather than a list player. Each student starts with an assessment and gets a pathway of rules, exceptions and activities, with text-to-speech, worksheets, reports and your own lists, in British or American spelling. It says it was written by a qualified teacher and dyslexia specialist. It costs $239 a year for 30 students, with unlimited teachers on one campus. It suits older students and intervention groups well.

SpellQuiz is listen-and-type practice from grade 1 through adult, with diagnostics and personal word lists. A teacher plan with 25 licenses is $300 a year, after a 14-day trial with no card.

IXL sells a classroom license from $349 a year for 25 students, covering up to five subjects. Its language arts includes spelling-pattern skills, but it is built around its own skill sequence, not your weekly list.

Quizlet has a Spell mode that "helps you practice spelling terms by prompting you to type what you hear". It now sits inside Learn, for paying subscribers, with a few free rounds per set, and it works only on the website. Class Progress, which shows which terms students miss, needs Quizlet Plus for teachers. Quizlet's own price page blocked us on 1 November; its US App Store listing shows a "Quizlet Teacher" purchase at $35.99 without saying for how long.

In the UK, Squeebles Spelling Connect sells a single-class account for up to 40 pupils at £250 a year, with British recordings and the option to record your own voice. DoodleSpell, from DoodleLearning, adapts to each child, takes your own lists and has an online teacher dashboard, at £6 per pupil a year for schools, sold with DoodleEnglish. Vocabulary A-Z, which replaced SpellingCity, is a K to 5 vocabulary program from Learning A-Z; its pages blocked automated reading on 1 November, so we could not check its price. Our SpellingCity guide covers the move.

Our Classroom plan, and its limits

Our Classroom plan is $195 a year for up to 35 people, teacher included. You add students by first name; each gets a PIN, and you print sign-in cards with the class code. You set one list for the week, a level, a topic or words you type, and every student practices it. A table shows each student's level, when they last practiced, minutes this week, how many words they know and their weak spots. Every word is read aloud in a generated American voice, including new words you type. The app then brings each word back on a spaced-repetition schedule, so September's words are still in practice in November.

The limits are real. There is no Google Classroom or Clever connection, no game, no live whole-class mode and no phonics curriculum. It runs in the browser; iPhone and Android apps are coming. The voice is American, though British spellings are accepted. Our privacy page says the teacher adds students having confirmed that the school or the parents allow it. A student's data is their practice record only, with no ads and no data sales, and the teacher can delete any student or the whole class. Outside a class, a parent makes the account for a child under 13. The page does not name COPPA or FERPA or mention a signed district data agreement, so if your district requires one, ask before you buy. It suits pupils who type comfortably, from about the middle elementary grades up.

Do these apps raise scores?

Be careful with any claim that one app raises scores. We know of no independent controlled trial of any spelling tool on this page. Some publish testimonials and case studies from schools, which are useful but not the same thing.

What the research does support is the kind of practice. Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke showed in 2006 that trying to recall material builds memory far better than restudying it. Roediger, Pooja Agarwal and colleagues found in 2011 that short, low-stakes quizzes in middle school classes improved scores on later chapter and end-of-semester exams. Nicholas Cepeda and colleagues' 2006 review showed that spreading practice over days beats cramming. And Steve Graham and Tanya Santangelo's 2014 meta-analysis found that formally teaching spelling improves spelling, that the gains carry over to spelling in students' own writing, and that reading improves too.

So choose a tool that makes students produce words from memory, gives fast feedback, and brings old words back. Then keep teaching why words are spelled as they are; our guides to how spelling should be taught and to teaching spelling through word parts cover that side.

A five-minute retrieval routine for any class

Whichever tool you choose, this routine costs nothing and works on paper too. It is the short version of our five-minute spaced retrieval routine.

1. Say six words: four from this week and two from earlier weeks. Say each word, a short sentence, then the word again.
2. Students write each word from memory, with nothing on display.
3. Show all six correct spellings at once.
4. Students check letter by letter and circle the exact part that went wrong.
5. For each miss, write it correctly once, cover it, and write it again.
6. Any missed word comes back tomorrow, and again next week.

The two earlier words are what make it spaced. A spelling app can then carry the same idea at home, with the week's list plus the words each child keeps missing.

What to do next

Decide what you cannot do without first. If it is Google Classroom, start with Spelling Stars. If it is cost, start with Spelling Test Buddy or SpellingJoy. If it is a full curriculum, ask EdShed for a quote. If you want to see how our daily dictation feels before deciding anything, you can try five words on our home page with no sign-up, or start a class free: every student gets 14 days of everything.

Questions people ask

What is the best spelling app for a classroom?

The best classroom spelling app takes your own weekly list, reads it aloud and reports who practiced, and Spelling Test Buddy does that for the lowest price. As of November 2026 it costs $49.99 a year for up to 150 students. Spelling Stars suits Google Classroom schools, and Spelling Shed is the strongest choice for a full phonics-based curriculum with live class games.

Is there a free spelling website for teachers?

Yes: SpellingJoy and SpellingTraining.com are both free for teachers. SpellingJoy's spelling practice is free for teachers, students and families, with your own lists, text-to-speech, class codes and class progress; an optional school license is $299 a school year. SpellingTraining.com is free with ads, needs no accounts and suits grades 1 to 4, but it has no teacher report.

Which spelling apps work with Google Classroom?

Spelling Stars is the clearest choice, because every plan includes Google Classroom roster and assignment sync. SpellingJoy and SpellingTraining.com let you post a class or list link in Google Classroom, and Spelling Test Buddy lists Google Classroom sync as coming soon, as of November 2026. Spelling Shed lists Clever Instant Login, and we found no Google Classroom integration described on its US teachers page. Our own Classroom plan has no Google Classroom or Clever connection.

Can I set my own weekly spelling list for my class?

Yes, every classroom tool in our table except IXL lets you set your own list. Spelling Test Buddy even builds one from a PDF, Word file or photo. The difference is in how the words are read aloud: text-to-speech, recorded voices, or your own voice on Spelling Stars Gold and Squeebles.

Do spelling apps actually improve test scores?

We know of no independent trial showing that any one spelling app raises scores, but there is strong research on the practice they can deliver. Studies show that recalling words from memory, short low-stakes quizzes and practice spread over days all improve long-term retention. Teaching spelling directly improves spelling, carries over to spelling in students' own writing and helps reading, so an app works best alongside teaching, not instead of it.

How much does a classroom spelling app cost?

A classroom spelling app costs from nothing to about $350 a year per class, as of November 2026. SpellingJoy and SpellingTraining.com are free, Spelling Test Buddy is $49.99, a Spelling Shed teacher license in the UK is £43.74 for 36 pupils, Spelling Stars is $68.99 to $94.99 for up to 40 students, and our Classroom plan is $195 for up to 35. Spellzone is $239 for 30 students, and IXL starts at $349 for 25.

Can young students sign in without an email address?

Yes, most classroom spelling tools let young students sign in without email. Spelling Test Buddy needs no student account, SpellingJoy uses a class code, Spelling Stars gives teacher-made usernames, and Spelling Shed supports QR code sign-in. Our Classroom plan uses a printed card with a class code and a PIN.

Fix the words you actually get wrong

A few minutes a day, spaced repetition, built only for spelling. Try five words without signing up.