“Free” in quiz-app marketing usually means something between “free trial” and “free for the first ten questions a day.” Most app-store listings tagged free silently cap their best features behind a subscription that costs the same as a streaming service. This guide is for the people who genuinely cannot or will not pay — students stretching a loan, parents looking for something their kids can use without surprise charges, anyone trying out the category before committing money. We tested eleven apps that claim “free” against one strict question: can you complete a full revision unit, a full general-knowledge session, or a full language lesson without ever hitting a paywall or a video ad you can’t dismiss?

Six pass. Five don’t, in ways worth knowing about. Here’s the breakdown.

Disclosure. MojQuiz publishes this guide and our own platform appears in the comparison. Our editorial standards page documents how we test and what counts as “free” for the purposes of this article.

What “free” actually means in 2026

App stores classify any app with an optional in-app-purchase as “free,” which is technically accurate and practically useless. We use three tighter definitions in the rankings below:

  • Truly free. No subscription tier exists, or the free tier is genuinely usable for the app’s primary purpose. Ads may exist but don’t block core function.
  • Free with limits. A subscription tier exists; the free tier is real but caps daily usage, locks key features, or both. You can use it without paying, but you’re constantly aware of the limit.
  • Free-as-trial. “Free tier” is a euphemism for a 7-day trial or a feature-stripped demo. Not genuinely free.

The six apps below are truly free. Three more are usable in the “free with limits” category. The remainder of the well-marketed “free quiz apps” fall into trial-only and aren’t worth the install.

The six genuinely free quiz apps worth using

1. Anki (Android, web, desktop) — Free and unrestricted

The standard answer for spaced-repetition flashcards. The Android app is free and unrestricted. The desktop apps (Windows, macOS, Linux) are free. The web sync via AnkiWeb is free. The iOS app costs around US$25 as a one-time purchase that funds development across all platforms — by the choice of users who can pay, not as a paywall.

What “free” gets you on Anki:

  • Unlimited cards and decks.
  • The full SM-2 spaced-repetition algorithm (genuinely the same one paying users get).
  • Access to AnkiWeb sync between devices.
  • The 600,000+ shared decks library.
  • Add-on ecosystem on desktop.

No ads. No subscriptions. The trade-off is a 2009-era interface and a friction-heavy first week. For long-term retention of factual material, nothing else on the free-tier list comes close.

2. Khan Academy — Fully free, no tier at all

Khan Academy is a non-profit. There is no paid tier. The maths, sciences, US history, economics, and computer-science content is exceptionally well-maintained — short video explanations paired with mastery-based question sets that adapt to your level.

What it’s genuinely best at:

  • Working through unfamiliar material for the first time.
  • Closing knowledge gaps in foundational topics (algebra, calculus, statistics, mechanics, organic chemistry basics).
  • SAT and AP prep — Khan partners directly with the College Board.

What it’s not built for:

  • Drilling material you already know cold. The pace is built for learning, not pure recall practice.
  • Niche subjects beyond Khan’s coverage list.

No ads. No subscription option to remove anything because there’s nothing to remove.

3. MojQuiz (web) — Free, no signup, no ads on web

Our own platform. Honest description: 13 quiz categories with 100 questions per difficulty level, three difficulty levels, 10-question rounds, no signup required, no daily caps. The web version (mojquiz.com) is free with no ads — supported editorially while we build the mobile app, which is launching in 2026 free with optional ad removal as an in-app purchase.

What it’s best at:

  • A low-friction five-minute habit. Open browser, pick a category, play a round, close tab.
  • General-knowledge breadth for the general-awareness sections of competitive exams.
  • Study breaks that don’t tip into wasted time.

What it’s not:

  • A spaced-repetition tool. Use Anki for that.
  • A syllabus-focused exam tool. The questions are general; for exam-specific prep, look at subject-specific apps below.

4. Sporcle (web) — Free, ad-supported, deep

Sporcle has been free since 2007 and remains the canonical type-the-answer general-knowledge platform. The free tier is the whole site — millions of user-made quizzes across maps, history, music, sports, literature, and the long tail of niche pub-quiz fodder. The desktop site is the cleanest experience; mobile has more ad load.

What it’s best at:

  • General knowledge broadly defined, especially geography (map quizzes are Sporcle’s signature) and music.
  • Active recall via type-the-answer format, which is harder and consequently more effective than multiple choice.

The Sporcle Group / Party tiers exist for subscription-funded extras (no ads, custom features). The free site stands on its own.

5. Duolingo (free tier) — Free if you can tolerate hearts

Duolingo’s free tier is genuinely usable for language vocabulary — counted in two ways. You get the full lesson content. The friction is a “hearts” system that limits how many wrong answers you can make in a day before the lesson locks. For a relaxed learner, you’ll rarely hit the cap. For a sprint, you will, and you’ll see a “wait an hour or pay to refill” prompt.

What it’s good for:

  • Building a small daily vocabulary habit across the 30+ languages Duolingo supports.
  • The streak system genuinely creates retention pressure for beginners.

What it’s not:

  • A serious language tool past the early intermediate stage — Duolingo’s depth tapers around B1.

6. Quizizz (free tier) — Free for classroom-style group play

Quizizz is built for teachers running classroom quiz sessions, but the free tier is open to anyone — including students forming a study circle of 3–5 friends. The group-live mode is the strong use case. Solo mode is fine but doesn’t differentiate from the bigger apps above.

Free tier covers the basics. Quizizz Pro adds analytics and longer game formats that matter for teachers, not most students.

Three apps that are “free with real limits”

Quizlet (free) — Limited but real

Quizlet’s free tier gives you full Learn and Test modes with ads. The “Learn” path nudges you toward active recall, which is the right pattern. Quizlet Plus (around US$36/year) unlocks advanced study modes and removes ads. We rate the free tier as usable for vocabulary and definition recall but not the strongest free option on this list.

Brainscape (free) — Limited number of active decks

Brainscape’s free tier caps the number of “active” decks you can study at once. For a student with one or two subjects, this works fine. For a multi-subject revision sprint, the cap will push you toward the Pro tier (US$10/month).

Memrise (free) — Course access restricted

Memrise’s free tier gives you onboarding-level vocabulary across many languages, then asks you to subscribe for the rest. Good way to evaluate whether you’ll stick with the app; not load-bearing past the first few weeks.

What to avoid (the “free” that isn’t)

A handful of well-marketed quiz apps appear in app stores tagged free but are functionally seven-day trials with the entire product behind a subscription wall after that:

  • Most “exam prep” apps from large publishers fall in this category. The free tier shows you the question categories, then asks for US$15–30/month before letting you take a real practice set. If you’re sitting that specific exam, the subscription may still be worth it — but don’t expect to use the app meaningfully on the free tier.
  • Several Indian competitive-exam apps (Adda247, Testbook, BYJU’s, Unacademy) offer a daily free quiz that’s actually free, plus mock-test series that are paid. The free daily quiz is real value; the implied “free app” branding overstates how much is unlocked without paying.
  • Pop-quiz apps in the puzzle-game category (Trivia Crack and its descendants) are free but ad-saturated and gamified to push in-app purchases. They’re entertainment, not a study tool.

A reasonable free-only revision stack

If you don’t intend to pay for any tool, the stack that works for most students:

  1. Anki for everything that must be retained long-term. Counts for 50% of your quiz-app time.
  2. Khan Academy for any topic you don’t yet understand well enough to drill. Use it first, Anki second.
  3. MojQuiz or Sporcle for general-knowledge habit-building in five-minute slots, as study breaks.
  4. Duolingo if you’re learning a language alongside other study.
  5. Quizizz if you have study friends willing to play together.

Total cost: zero. The largest investment is the first week of Anki’s learning curve.

Frequently asked questions

Are free quiz apps actually as good as paid ones? For most use cases, yes. Anki (free on every platform that matters) is arguably the strongest spaced-repetition tool in any tier. Khan Academy’s free content competes with paid tutoring services. The paid features in Quizlet, Brainscape, and Memrise are useful but rarely load-bearing — they remove friction rather than unlock fundamentally different capability.

Which free quiz app has the most content? Sporcle (millions of user-made quizzes), Anki (600,000+ shared decks via AnkiWeb), and Khan Academy (thousands of topic-specific practice sets) are the three deepest free repositories. The right one depends on what you’re studying.

Is there a free quiz app with no ads at all? Anki and Khan Academy, both completely ad-free. Both are non-commercial — Anki funded by one-time iOS purchases, Khan Academy by donations and grants. The other “ad-free” claims you’ll see usually mean “no ads after subscribing.”

Can I use a free quiz app for serious exam preparation? Yes, with a caveat. For the static material — formulas, named studies, dates, definitions — Anki is widely used by medical, law, and competitive-exam students at every level. For exam-specific question banks (mock tests for SAT / GRE / GMAT / UPSC), the subject-specific apps’ paid tiers do offer value the free tier doesn’t replicate. A reasonable hybrid is to do all retention practice on free tools and spend money only on official mock-test series for the specific exam you’re sitting.

Do free quiz apps share my data? Most do, to varying degrees. Khan Academy and Anki collect minimal data (Anki’s open-source nature means you can audit this). Quizlet, Duolingo, and the Indian-market apps collect typical app-analytics data. If privacy matters, prefer the non-profit and open-source options.

For the broader, non-free-tier-focused comparison, our best quiz apps of 2026 ranks fifteen apps including paid options. For student-specific guidance, best quiz apps for students covers the exam-prep angle in detail. And our how to study effectively piece explains the cognitive-psychology research these app rankings rest on.