Which AI Is Best for Math? A Parent Tries 4 Popular Tools For Middle School Homework
Last month, I found myself staring at a crumpled 7th grade algebra homework sheet at the kitchen table, a half-eaten Cheerio still stuck to the corner, while my son Jax slouched in the chair next to me, hoodie slipping off one shoulder. I’d just walked him through solving 2(3x – 5) + 4 = 10 and gotten x = 3, which didn’t match the answer in the back of his book. Jax sighed, pulled out his phone, and said “Everyone in my class uses this for homework. Why don’t we just try it?”
I’d been hearing parents and teachers debate AI for math for months, with some saying it’s just a cheating tool and others saying it’s a game changer for homework stress. Instead of banning it or letting Jax use whatever random app his friend recommended, I decided to test the four most talked-about options over a week of homework to see which actually works for a kid who struggles sometimes with new concepts. We did it after dinner every night, me with a cold mug of tea, Jax with a orange soda, our beagle begging for scraps off the table. Here’s what I found.
First up was Photomath, the app everyone’s kid seems to have downloaded. Jax pulled it up, snapped a photo of the problem I’d messed up, and it popped up step-by-step work in two seconds, pointing out I’d forgotten to distribute the 2 to the negative 5 and landed on the correct x = 2. Jax was instantly sold. But the next problem was a word problem about a hiker climbing a mountain at 2 miles an hour, coming down at 3, and calculating total trip time for a 10-mile trail. Photomath couldn’t parse the whole paragraph, kept cutting off part of the question, and gave a wrong answer because it misread the total distance. It’s great for quick checking of straightforward numerical problems, but useless for the word problems that trip most kids up anyway.
Next we tried Microsoft Math Solver, which is free and built right into Edge, no app download needed. I typed out the full hiker problem, it pulled the right numbers, got the correct answer, and laid out the steps. But the steps were just “Step 1: Divide distance by speed for each leg of the trip. Step 2: Add the two times.” No explanation why we don’t just average the two speeds, which is what Jax had tried first. When Jax said “Okay, but why is my way wrong?” it couldn’t break it down in simple terms. It’s fine if you just need to confirm your answer is right, but it doesn’t help if you actually don’t understand the concept.
Third we tested free ChatGPT. I pasted the whole hiker problem and added one line: “Explain this to a 7th grader who is confused why you can’t just average the two speeds.” ChatGPT walked through it slowly, used a smaller example with 2 miles up and 2 miles down to show how averaging gives the wrong result, and connected it back to the definition of average speed Jax had written down in his notebook. It was clearer than my explanation had been for a lot of concepts. The catch? It makes silly mistakes. On a factoring problem a couple nights later, it messed up a negative sign and gave a wrong answer, even though the steps looked totally logical at first glance. I started having Jax compare the final answer to the back of his book before he trusts whatever ChatGPT spits out, which is a small but important check. If you’re willing to do that, it’s a great free option, especially if you remember to prompt it to not just give the answer, but give hints one at a time.
Last we tried Khanmigo, Khan Academy’s AI tutor, which costs $12 a month. I signed up for the free trial to test it, and the difference was immediate. It wouldn’t just give Jax the answer or even the full steps right away. When Jax said he was stuck on the hiker problem, it said “Okay, let’s start with what you know. What two things do we need to calculate to find total trip time?” Jax answered “Time up and time down.” Then it said “Great. How do we calculate time if we know distance and speed?” Jax got that right, then worked through the rest of the problem on his own. If he got a step wrong, it pointed it out and asked him to try again, instead of just correcting him. When Jax said he still felt fuzzy on rate problems, it linked to a 5-minute practice lesson right on Khan Academy that let him try two more simple problems before going back to homework.
After a week, I don’t think there’s one universal best AI for math. If your kid only needs to check answers after they finish their work, Photomath or Microsoft Math Solver are totally fine, and they’re free. If your kid gets stuck sometimes and needs a quick explanation, free ChatGPT works great as long as you add that one simple prompt: “Don’t solve this for me, give me one hint at a time and explain concepts in simple terms.” If your kid struggles with math regularly, gets anxious during homework, and you can swing $12 a month, Khanmigo is the best I’ve found because it’s built to teach, not just get answers fast.
I set one non-negotiable rule: Jax has to work through every problem on his own first, write down whatever he has even if it’s wrong, before he pulls up any AI. Once a week on Sunday, we do three problems from that week’s homework together to make sure he can solve them on his own without help. It’s not a perfect system. I still catch him cutting corners when he’s tired after soccer practice and just wants to get homework done. We tweak the rules when that happens, and I check in more often for a week. It’s working for us right now, though. Homework time is way less stressful, I don’t have to stay up late re-learning algebra I haven’t used in 20 years, and Jax is actually starting to feel less stuck when he hits a hard problem. I don’t know what new tool we’ll be testing next year, but this is what works for us right now.
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