Kahoot!

Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform: a teacher, trainer or host builds a quiz (a "kahoot"), shows it on a shared screen, and players answer from their own devices in a live game with points and a podium. It is used in classrooms, lecture halls, workplaces and living rooms, and this entry covers the school and higher education side first. The company's About page says Kahoot! was founded in 2012 by Morten Versvik, Johan Brand and Jamie Brooker in a joint project with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and Professor Alf Inge Wang, launched to the public in 2013, and has its head office in Oslo, Norway, with 600+ staff. It was delisted from the Oslo Stock Exchange in 2024 after its acquisition by its current owners, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, General Atlantic, KIRKBI and the Kahoot! team.

How a game works

The host shares a game PIN, and players join from the Kahoot! app or a browser; the app page stresses that players need no account and only the host needs one. Questions appear on the main screen, players answer on their devices, and scores build to a podium. Beyond the classic live game, the plans page lists several other formats: an accuracy experience that gives everyone the same time and "rewarding accuracy, not quick clicks", a confidence experience where players gain or lose extra points depending on how sure they were, team play on shared or personal devices, a lecture experience for presentations, and unplugged experiences in which the class discusses each question and the host enters the consensus answer. Kahootopia! adds collective rewards, with the class growing an island together, plus leagues and assignments.

Kahoots can also be played outside a live session. Teachers can assign kahoots for students to finish in their own time, with or without a deadline and with automatic email reminders, and the Kahoot! app offers solo games, a Learn study mode without timer or points, a Test mode with points and timers, flashcards and offline play.

Building kahoots

Teachers write their own questions or start from the library; the app page speaks of "millions of ready-made kahoots across every subject", and the question bank lets creators draw on "half a billion questions created by our community". The question types run from Quiz and True/false through Poll, Puzzle (placing answers in the correct order), Image reveal, Word cloud, Drop pin, Scale, Type answer, Pin answer, Slider, Brainstorm and Open-ended. Higher plans add more of them. The plans FAQ notes that, to comply with GDPR, COPPA, FERPA and other privacy regulations, students under 16 cannot use the free-form types (word cloud, open-ended, brainstorm) unless the school is on Kahoot! EDU.

AI creation tools sit across the plans: turning a PDF, URL, Wikipedia article or typed topic into a kahoot, extracting questions from existing files, scanning handwritten notes in the app, and importing and syncing slides from PowerPoint, Keynote and PDF. AI formats include micro-lessons, vocabulary reviews, practice tests and a step-by-step solver. Kahoots can be grouped into courses, and the US curriculum standards search, listed as available in Kahoot! EDU, helps teachers find content for core subjects.

Reports and assessment

Reports show every participant and question, including the difficult ones. Higher plans add full report data, downloadable summaries, combining several reports to track progress over time, a player identifier that follows participation across kahoots through email verification, and course reporting on who is engaging and where they drop off. The school site files Kahoot! under formative assessment as well as classroom engagement, and the Gold plan card promises "Advanced reports to track student learning over time".

Plans and prices

The school and higher education plans pages list the same prices in US dollars, including VAT, per teacher, and the FAQ says all educational plans are billed upfront for the year, with no monthly billing:

• Kahoot! Go: free for teachers, with the basic tools for creating lessons, motivating students and tracking progress. The plans page gives it "Up to 10 participants per game".
• Kahoot!+ Bronze: $3 a month, $36 billed annually, player limit 50, with AI creation from 3-page files and reports to assess student learning.
• Kahoot!+ Silver: $7 a month, $84 billed annually, player limit 100, adding drop pin and scale questions and the lecture experience.
• Kahoot!+ Gold: $12 a month, $144 billed annually, player limit 200, with unlimited AI creation from files and slides, advanced reports and AccessPass premium content.
• Kahoot! One: $19 a month, $228 billed annually, player limit 800, with all question types, all experiences, and full access to the Drops language app.

Kahoot! One Ultra is a separate offer for communities that run large, branded events and want the Kahoot! Assistant. For whole schools and districts, Kahoot! EDU is sold as a site license at a discounted price on a personalized quote. Kahoot! also offers vouchers so someone else can pay for a teacher's plan, student passes that share premium features with a class, a signed W-8-BEN-E tax form, and sole source letters on request.

The wider Kahoot! group

The About page lists the Kahoot! Group's other products: Clever, "the global identity platform for K-12", the learning apps DragonBox, Poio and Drops, and the workplace tools Actimo and Motimate. Kahoot! Kids bundles 10 learning apps for math, reading, social-emotional skills and chess, among them Kahoot! Multiplication, Algebra and Geometry by DragonBox and Kahoot! Learn to read by Poio.

Community, scale and support

Teachers can apply to become verified creators, sell content on the Kahoot! Marketplace (which requires an individual paid plan) and run channels with paying subscribers. Kahoot! Certified for Schools is a free program in which teachers learn the basics and "earn PD credits", and teacher ambassadors speak at events. The company counts 14 billion cumulative participants since 2013, 10 million teachers hosting a kahoot in the past 12 months, play in 195 countries, and use at "95%+ Of Fortune 500 companies and top universities". The interface runs in English and a long list of other languages, from Spanish and Japanese to Arabic and Vietnamese, and the site has a help center, a safety center and a trust center.

Who it suits and who it does not

Kahoot! suits a teacher who wants a fast, lively review or check for understanding: a primary class practicing times tables, a secondary class revising before a test, a lecturer breaking up a long session, or a trainer running onboarding quizzes. The free plan is enough to try it, and the Bronze and Silver plans cost little for a single teacher.

It is less suited to deep, long-form assessment or to a school that needs a full LMS with gradebooks and enrollment. The accuracy and confidence experiences are there for teachers who want to reward careful thinking over quick clicks. Schools with students under 16 who want open-ended and brainstorm questions need Kahoot! EDU rather than individual plans.