Hopscotch

What Hopscotch is

Hopscotch is a block-based coding app and website where children make games, animations, art and stories, then publish them to a community of other young makers. The company calls it "an award winning kid-friendly programming environment" and "The LEGO of the digital age," and its About page puts the pitch in one line: "Make games, animations, art, and stories. No coding needed." It serves two audiences: kids coding at home, and teachers who want a ready-made introduction to programming for a class.

Samantha John and Jocelyn Leavitt created Hopscotch in 2013 as a way "to teach their younger selves how to program". The company says it was "founded with the mission to expose girls and boys, equally, to the powerful ideas of computing." It describes itself as "Once a VC-funded company, we're now fully independent," and adds a line many parents will look for: "We don't sell your data, we don't display ads." The site footer says it is made in NYC and Mexico. The About page also notes an appearance on ABC's Shark Tank, quoting investor Mark Cuban: "Doing these games with them was thrilling to me."

On age, the FAQ is direct: "Hopscotch is designed for people ages 10+, but anyone who wants to learn to code and make their own games can use it." The parent reviews on the About page come from families of children aged 7 to 11. On devices, the FAQ says you can code "on iPads, iPhones, and on the web (ie. any web browser like Safari or Chrome) with any desktop computer, laptop (including Chromebooks), or tablet," and the site also offers a download for Mac.

How kids code in Hopscotch

A child builds a project by arranging code blocks rather than typing text, so there is no syntax to get wrong. The help topics for the editor show how the work is done: renaming objects, moving, copying and pasting, deleting and collapsing blocks, a "See All Code" view, debugging, playing a project, publishing and unpublishing it, and duplicating drafts. The block reference is grouped into math operators, variables and "Whens". Every account gets the basic Hopscotch characters and the essential coding blocks; paying members add exclusive characters, additional blocks, drawing tools and the ability to upload their own art.

The community is the other half of the product. Published projects appear in community channels with Featured, Search and Following views, and kids can open a project with "See code" and remix it into their own version. The FAQ also covers levels, reporting inappropriate content and moderation. Seeds are the app's virtual currency, handed out monthly on the paid plans. Beyond the app, Hopscotch has a Discord and a forum, where kids can get help with a project, and posts on TikTok and YouTube. The company also lists a second app, Daisy the Dinosaur, in its product menu.

Hopscotch in the classroom

Teachers sign up for an Educator account, separate from a Home User account. The educator help topics cover creating student accounts, managing students' work, finding logins, moderation and "What I can teach with Hopscotch?". The educators section promises "No previous coding experience required," which matters for a teacher who has never programmed.

The core teaching material is the free set of Introductory Lesson Plans, downloadable as PDFs in two versions, one for the iOS app (iPhones and iPads) and one for Hopscotch on the web (Chromebooks and PCs). After an overview of the curriculum, each lesson rebuilds a well-known game and names its key concepts:

• Lesson 1, Crossy Road: Event, Sequence, Loop, Random, Range
• Lesson 2, Geometry Dash: Bug, Debugging, Concurrency, Random, Range
• Lesson 3, Emoji Quiz: Planning, Execution, Values, Variables, Conditionals
• Lesson 4, Flappy Bird: Physics Engine, Reverse Engineering, X Y Coordinates, Scores
• Lesson 5, Subway Surfers: Collaboration, Pair Programming, Repeat, Conditional, Random, Score
• Lesson 6, Escape the Room: Logic (True/False), Iteration, Values, Conditionals, Events, Repeat

Lessons 7 and 8 add extensions, a glossary and a rubric, so a teacher has a way to assess the work. Lessons 4 to 6 are offered as iPad PDFs only, so a Chromebook classroom gets web versions for the first three lessons. The same page links Subject-Based Lesson Plans and a Scratch Jr to Hopscotch Transition Guide, and the education menu has an Hour of Code page for schools running a one-hour session.

Plans and prices

The subscribe page lists three tiers and a one-time option.

• Free Account, $0. Play community games, create your own games, the basic characters and the essential coding blocks.
• Play Pass, $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year ("Save 16%", marked Most Popular). Adds an uninterrupted play experience, prioritized support and 30 seeds a month.
• Unlimited, $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year ("Save 33%", marked Best Value). Adds 30 seeds a month plus 10 bonus seeds, earning seeds in your own project, a personalized profile, custom art upload, drawing tools, exclusive characters, additional coding blocks, and unlimited drafts and unlimited published projects.
• Lifetime Access, $98.40. Shown on the Unlimited card as "Multi-kid family friendly", with "Up to 5 profiles" and the promise "Never pay again!" The menu calls it the Lifetime Family Pass.

The pricing page notes that "All plans include our standard support and community features." The FAQ's premium section covers recovering a purchase, canceling a free trial, canceling a subscription and getting a refund, so a trial of the premium features exists, though the pages do not give its length. For a family with two or more children, the lifetime option is the one to compare against a few years of the annual Unlimited plan.

Support and help

Help comes through help docs at help.gethopscotch.com, which the FAQ points to "for tutorials, lessons, and more," through email, and through the forum for project questions. The troubleshooting topics deal with the practical problems of an app used by children: the community not loading, the app crashing, an SSL error, and a subscriber who has no login details.

What parents say

The parent quotes on the About page are short and specific. A father of an 11-year-old writes, "Hopscotch is the only activity I can think of where she uses both her left and right brain." A mother of an 8-year-old says, "I had ZERO background or programming experience," and that "Hopscotch was the most intuitive and interactive" of the options she checked. A father of a 7-year-old reports that his daughter "captured the essence of programming after an hour with Hopscotch."

Who it suits

Hopscotch suits a child of about 10 who likes games and wants to make them, and a parent who wants screen time that ends in something the child built. The free account is enough to start, and Play Pass costs $1.99 a month. It suits a teacher with no coding background who needs a sequence of lessons with named concepts and a rubric, and schools with iPads or Chromebooks, since both are supported. The independent, no-ads, no-data-selling stance will matter to some families.

It is less suited to a teenager ready to type real code, since everything here is blocks, and the richer creative tools (drawing, custom art, unlimited drafts) sit behind the Unlimited plan, so a child who gets hooked will soon want it.