A Kahoot alternative for the quizzes that aren't a game show.
People usually go looking for a Kahoot alternative for one of three reasons: they don't actually need a live session — they need a quiz students can take for homework or a check trainees can do before the workshop; writing every question by hand in the editor takes longer than the quiz is worth; or the paid tiers stopped making sense for how little of the product they use. If any of those is you, keep reading. If your class genuinely lights up when the lobby music starts, we'll say so plainly below — keep Kahoot for that.
TL;DR
Kahoot is a live, synchronous game show: a host opens a lobby, players join with a PIN, and everyone answers the same question at the same moment with music and a leaderboard. QuizGen has no live mode at all: you describe the quiz to the AI assistant you already use — Claude or ChatGPT — and get a hosted link people take on their own time, auto-scored, with every attempt collected in a dashboard. Pick based on the room: everyone together in one, or a link people open whenever.
The actual difference
Kahoot's core idea is that a quiz is an event. The host starts a session, the game PIN goes up on the projector, players race the timer, and the leaderboard between questions is the whole point. For energizing a classroom, warming up a training day, or running a pub-quiz-style team event, that format is genuinely good — the competition and the noise are features, and a decade of polish has gone into them.
QuizGen starts from the opposite end: a quiz is a link, not an event. You say what you want — to Claude or ChatGPT via the MCP server, or directly with a POST /api/v1/quizzes call (docs at /llms.txt) — and the definition becomes a live quiz at quizgen.dev/q/<slug>. “Ten questions on chapter 4 of the textbook, four options each, pass at 7” is a finished, shareable quiz in under a minute. Scoring lives in the definition as outcomes — points per answer plus buckets like pass/fail or beginner/intermediate/advanced — and close_at / max_responses handle deadlines and caps. Respondents never need an account, and their answers autosave.
The delivery difference decides everything else. Because Kahoot is synchronous, it needs the lobby, the PIN, the timer, and a room where everyone shows up at once. Because QuizGen is asynchronous, it needs none of that — but it also can't give you the shared moment. A homework quiz, a pre-course knowledge check, a certification practice test, a lead-qualifying scored quiz on your site — those don't want a shared moment. A Friday review game does.
At a glance
| Kahoot | QuizGen | |
|---|---|---|
| Creation flow | Manual editor: type each question, add answers, pick time limits and media | One sentence to your AI assistant, or a JSON definition |
| Delivery | Live session: host opens a lobby, players join with a PIN, everyone answers together | Async link: each person takes it on their own device, on their own time |
| Pacing | Host-controlled, timed per question, projector at the front | Self-paced, with an optional close date on the whole quiz |
| Scoring | Points for speed and streaks, live leaderboard between questions | Points per answer, outcome buckets, a scored result per person |
| Results | Session report after the game ends | Dashboard table of every attempt, exportable, plus per-quiz webhooks |
| Homework / assessment | Assignments mode exists, but the product is built around the live game | The default mode — this is what the product is for |
| API / automation | No public API for creating kahoots | MCP server and REST API are the primary interface |
| Price to start | Free tier with player and feature limits; school and work plans are paid per host | $0 for 3 live quizzes, 100 answers each/mo; sandbox with no account |
Stay with Kahoot if
- The live session is the point. A room full of students racing the timer with the leaderboard on the projector is something QuizGen simply does not do — there is no live mode, no PIN, no lobby.
- Speed-and-streak competition is what keeps your group engaged. QuizGen scores correctness, not reaction time, and nobody sees anyone else's score.
- You lean on Kahoot's classroom ecosystem — the public library of ready-made kahoots, school-wide licenses, or the integrations your district already runs.
- Your learners are young enough that the game framing is what gets them to answer at all. A plain self-paced quiz asks more of their attention span.
Switch to QuizGen if
- Most of your “kahoots” are really assessments — homework checks, pre-tests, compliance quizzes — squeezed into a game format because that's the tool you had. Async, self-paced, and scored is the honest shape of that work.
- Writing questions by hand is your bottleneck. Describing the quiz to Claude or ChatGPT — or pasting in the reading and asking for ten questions on it — replaces the editor entirely.
- You want results as data, not a session report: a dashboard table of every attempt, CSV export, and a webhook per quiz that can post results into your LMS, gradebook sheet, or Slack.
- People can't all show up at once — shift-based trainees, async cohorts, a quiz embedded in an email or onboarding doc. A link that works whenever beats a session someone must host.
- You want to automate quiz creation — generating a fresh weekly quiz from course material, or building quizzes from your own scripts against a real API.
Migrating from Kahoot
There's no importer, and for once that's fine. Paste an existing kahoot's questions into your AI assistant — or skip the paste and just name the topic: “ten questions on the water cycle for 7th grade, four options each, pass at 7” — and the live link comes back in the same conversation. Rebuilding is minutes per quiz, not an afternoon. Kahoot's session reports stay in Kahoot; download the ones you want to keep before you let a paid plan lapse.
Pricing, honestly
Kahoot's free tier is real but limited — player caps and question types push classrooms and teams toward the paid school and work plans, which are priced per host per month; check kahoot.com for current numbers, since they change. QuizGen's numbers are below, exactly.
- Free — $0. 3 live quizzes, 100 answers each per month. No card.
- Pro — $15/mo. Unlimited quizzes, 5,000 answers each per month, full theming and your logo, no QuizGen branding, webhooks everywhere, hidden fields.
- Business — $49/mo. 25,000 answers each per month and 5,000 emails per month.
- Sandbox — no account. Any quiz you create without signing in stays live for 72 hours with up to 10 responses.
Common questions
Is QuizGen a live game like Kahoot?
No, and it doesn't try to be. There's no lobby, no game PINs, no countdown music, no leaderboard on a projector. Each person opens the link on their own device, works through the quiz at their own pace, and their scored result lands in your dashboard. If the live game-show energy is the point of your session, Kahoot is the right tool and you should keep it.
Is QuizGen really free for teachers?
The free plan is free for everyone: 3 live quizzes with 100 answers each per month, no card. There's also a sandbox that needs no account at all — create a quiz without signing in and it stays live for 72 hours with up to 10 responses, claimable later if you want to keep it.
How do students take a QuizGen quiz?
You share a link — post it in Google Classroom, an LMS, an email, or a group chat. Students open it in any browser, no app and no account. Answers autosave as they go, and each completed attempt is scored automatically and appears as a row in your dashboard.
Can I set a deadline or limit attempts?
Yes. close_at closes the quiz at a date and time you set — say, Friday at 5pm — and max_responses caps the total number of submissions. Both are plain fields on the quiz, not features gated behind a plan tier.
Do I have to use an AI assistant to build quizzes?
No. The quiz definition is plain JSON, so you can write it yourself, POST it to the REST API, or manage everything from the dashboard. Describing the quiz to Claude or ChatGPT is just the fastest path — a week's reading-check quiz is one sentence.
Can I import my existing Kahoots?
There's no importer. In practice you don't need one: paste your questions into your AI assistant — or just describe the topic and let it draft fresh ones — and the QuizGen version comes back as a live link in the same conversation. Kahoot's own reports stay in Kahoot; download what you want to keep before closing an account.
Judge it on a real quiz
See how quizzes get built from the AI assistant you already use, or start free and turn next week's review kahoot into a self-paced link in the next five minutes.