A browser revision platform for KS3, GCSE, A-level, IB and AP students, pairing video lessons and notes with quizzes, flashcards and AI-marked exam questions tied to your own exam board.
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Cognito is an exam-revision platform for school students, built around a course catalogue that is mapped to a specific qualification and exam board rather than to a general subject. It is operated from the United Kingdom by Cognito Education Limited, and names its audience as students working through KS3, GCSE, A-level, IB and AP in over 100 countries.
The catalogue runs to more than 300 courses across 15 subjects, mapped to what the home page counts as ten UK and international exam boards; the board chips on that page name OCR B, OCR A, CIE International, CIE Ireland, IGCSE International, SQA Scotland, AQA UK, Edexcel UK, WJEC Wales, CCEA UK, IB International and AP International. That mapping is the organising idea. A student does not browse "GCSE Biology" as one body of material; they pick board and tier, and the topic tree narrows to the specification they will be examined on.
The company's origin is a YouTube channel, and the homepage cites 184 million-plus views there as the base the web platform was built on. That history shapes the product: short animated explanations do the teaching, and the surrounding site adds the recall and exam-practice layers a video library cannot provide on its own.
Two commercial paths exist. Individuals start free and can upgrade to Pro. Schools buy quoted licences covering a whole cohort, with a teacher dashboard attached. The paths differ in more than price.
Four study modes sit inside every course, and they are designed to be used in sequence rather than picked at random.
Selecting a qualification and exam board is what makes the rest of the catalogue usable: the course view breaks each subject into sections and subtopics tied to the specification, which also makes remaining coverage visible at a glance. Students unsure of their board are told to ask a teacher, check the school website, or look at the front page of a past paper.
Recall is scheduled rather than left to the student: a self-built quiz is not simply the topics you picked, but a set weighted toward what the platform judges to be weakening. Progress tracking across quizzes and topics is what makes that scheduling work, and it is also why account sharing is discouraged.
Answers to exam questions are typed rather than selected, and the marking route is a choice the student makes each time. Self-marking is slower but forces engagement with the scheme's wording; AI marking returns a mark plus short written feedback immediately. The AI route has an escape hatch: a student who thinks a mark is wrong can request re-marking, or email for human review — which matters, because extended written answers are where automated marking varies most.
The pattern this suits is topic repair: a student realises late in the evening that one idea never landed, watches a short explanation, tests it, and moves on. The notes-plus-cheat-sheet combination gives a fast route back into a topic without rereading a chapter. What it suits least is full-paper simulation, since the question layer is topic-scoped by design.
For GCSE revision the strongest fit is a student whose subject and board are both in the catalogue, particularly in sciences and maths where video coverage is deepest. A-level revision works the same way, on the same board-level narrowing. The fit weakens for essay subjects: coverage there is newer and thinner, and performance depends more on structure and argument than on the recall this platform is built around.
Buying Pro requires being at least 18 with the legal capacity to enter a contract, which for most of the target year groups makes a parent or guardian the actual purchaser. The student can create and use a free account themselves, but the upgrade has to be transacted by an adult.
Individual teacher accounts currently behave exactly like student accounts, with no teacher-specific functionality attached to them. A teacher expecting a class view will not find one on a personal account; the company describes teacher tooling as in development.
School-wide licences are quoted rather than listed, and are provisioned by returning a completed student spreadsheet instead of paying at a checkout. That path does include a teacher dashboard and progress tracking, so the gap between individual and institutional access is substantial.
Cognito runs entirely in the browser, so the practical requirement is a device that can play video and accept typed answers.
Everything runs in a browser on phone, tablet or laptop, with no native app to install and no download step before revising. The company states the site is built to work well on mobile, which matters because many short revision sessions happen on a phone.
Cheat sheets download as one-page summaries — the main offline artefact the platform produces. Everything else assumes a live connection.
Two vendor pages describe the free tier differently, and the gap matters if you plan to lean on Cognito during an exam term.
The comparison page states that videos and notes are free while flashcards and exam questions carry a weekly cap, and lists individual pricing at £9.99 per month. The FAQ instead says notes, videos, quizzes and flashcards are all available without paying, and frames Pro as removing usage limits rather than unlocking separate material. Both are the company's own pages and are not reconciled publicly, so treat the weekly cap as the version to plan against and confirm current limits in-product.
| Access route | What it covers | How it is bought |
|---|---|---|
| Free account | Video lessons and notes; flashcard and exam-question caps described inconsistently across vendor pages | Self-service signup, no card |
| Pro, individual | £9.99 per month on the vendor comparison page; removes usage limits across all subjects | Recurring monthly, three-monthly or annual |
| School licence | Cohort access plus teacher dashboard, progress tracking and free teacher accounts | Quoted per school, invoiced |
Pro is one plan covering every subject. There is no per-subject pricing and no multi-subscription or family discount, so a household with two students pays twice at list price.
A full refund is available by email within 14 days of payment, and after that window refunds become prorated and case by case. UK and EEA consumers additionally hold a statutory 14-day cancellation right the policy states it does not override; where access started immediately, the refund may be reduced for the period already used.
Cancelling is self-service, and access continues to the end of the paid period. Two constraints sit around that. Moving between monthly and annual billing is not supported from the subscription screen; the documented route is to cancel and then resubscribe on the plan you want. There is also no pause feature, so a family wanting to stop paying between exam seasons has to cancel outright, though progress and data are retained while unsubscribed.
Seneca is the closer substitute for anyone who wants a fully free, gamified daily habit across a wider subject range. Cognito publishes head-to-head comparisons against it and against Save My Exams and Physics & Maths Tutor; those are useful for feature mapping but are vendor-written. For a student whose priority is timed full-paper practice rather than topic reteaching, a dedicated exam-practice site is the better primary tool, with Cognito repairing the gaps that practice exposes.
The constraint that catches most households is the age rule attached to buying, not the price itself. Because the purchase requires an adult while the product targets school-age students, the person choosing the tool and the person paying for it are usually different people.
On a public review platform the company holds a 4.7 score across 526 reviews, with 88 percent at five stars and 3 percent at one star. The sample is large enough to be directional, but it signals satisfaction with the company rather than verifying any capability claim above.
Written and essay answers go to an external marking provider, Cerebras, which processes them in the United States without receiving the student's name, email address or account ID. Accounts, answers and results are stored in the UK on Amazon Web Services in the London region, while analytics, error reporting, payment and AI-marking providers process data outside the UK under stated safeguards.
Two boundaries are worth knowing before typing full answers. Student work is not used to train AI models, the company's own or anyone else's; the answer goes out, the mark comes back, and the policy states that is the end of it. And those marks are framed as practice feedback with no standing beyond the platform: not formal assessment, and never passed to exam boards.
Under a school licence the results stop being private to the student, because teachers can see progress and homework outcomes. Anyone on a school-provisioned account should treat practice attempts as visible work, not private drafting.
For younger users the platform asks for year group rather than date of birth, and requires a parent, guardian or school to make the analytics-consent choice under 13. Deleting an account removes personal data immediately with backups clearing within 30 days, though payment records are held six years for tax and accounting purposes.
It is a real free tier, not a time-limited trial, and no card is required. What is unsettled is where the ceiling sits: one vendor page describes a weekly cap on flashcards and exam questions, another describes those modes as fully available. Video lessons and notes are free on both accounts.
KS3, GCSE, A-level, IB and AP, across 15 subjects and more than 300 courses mapped to ten UK and international boards, with chips naming OCR A and OCR B, AQA, Edexcel, WJEC, CCEA, SQA, CIE, IGCSE, IB and AP. Coverage is deepest in sciences and maths, so check the course menu for your combination first.
The platform positions it as immediate practice feedback rather than assessment, and offers a re-mark request plus human review precisely because automated marking of extended answers varies. Where mark scheme wording is itself what you are learning, self-marking is more instructive.
Not on an individual account, which behaves identically to a student account. Class-level tooling comes with a school licence, quoted per school and set up from a supplied student list rather than bought at checkout.
Not directly from the subscription screen. The documented route is to cancel and resubscribe on the plan you want, so time it to avoid losing access mid-term or paying for an overlap.
Progress and data are retained while you are unsubscribed, and Pro access continues to the end of the period already paid for. There is no pause option, so seasonal use means cancelling and resubscribing.
No. The privacy policy states that student work and answers are not used to train AI models, the company's own or anyone else's. The answer is sent to the marking provider, the result returns, and no further use is made of it.
On an individual account, only you. On a school account, teachers can see progress and homework results — the point of the institutional dashboard, but it does mean practice attempts are not private on that path.
