AI Tools for Teachers: 8 Tools That Cut Planning and Marking Time — With Real Prices

It is 7 p.m., tomorrow's lessons are half-planned, and a stack of essays still waits for feedback. That is the real teacher workload problem: not the teaching, but the hours of preparation and marking around it. The eight tools below attack those hours — planning, feedback, differentiation, writing practice, grading and materials — with prices checked on 30 October 2026. Start with the free tiers, and confirm every figure on the vendor's page before you pay.

Safety first, before any tool below: never paste identifying student data — names, grades, IEP details or discipline records — into any AI tool unless your school has approved that tool and its data agreement. And every AI output needs teacher review before it reaches students or parents.

1. MagicSchool — the all-in-one planning dashboard

MagicSchool is the broadest teacher toolkit here: more than 80 teacher tools for lesson plans, worksheets, quizzes, rubrics, IEP drafting and presentations, plus a Raina chatbot and student tools behind the same login. Best for: one dashboard instead of eight apps. Price, verified on the vendor's pricing page today: Forever Free $0 for individual teachers, with standard generation limits; Plus $12.99 a month, or $8.33 a month billed annually ($99.96 a year), adding unlimited generations, output history and editing, and 50+ student tools; Enterprise for schools and districts is a custom quote. Limit: the free tier keeps only limited history, so save anything worth keeping at once, and check every activity against your syllabus — AI plans are generic until you edit them.

2. Brisk Teaching — AI inside the documents you already use

Brisk is a Chrome and Edge extension that works inside Google Docs, Slides, YouTube and your LMS, so you generate lessons, level texts, build quizzes and leave feedback without switching tabs. Its feedback tools — Glow & Grow, rubric-criteria and next-steps comments, plus batch feedback across a class set — are the draw. Best for: feedback and differentiation inside Google Classroom. Price, verified on the vendor's plans page today: Free $0 for teachers, with 20+ tools; Premium and Intelligence plans for schools and districts are custom-priced, and new sign-ups get 14 days of premium access before dropping to the free plan. Caution: third-party sites quote $99.99 a year for individual Pro, but that figure is absent from Brisk's plans page today. Limit: it is a desktop browser extension, and free-tier caps will bite on a whole week's materials.




Credit: Teacher working on a laptop in a classroom, via EGroup

3. Khanmigo — the nonprofit tutor and planning assistant

Khanmigo, from the nonprofit Khan Academy, is two tools in one: a tutor that guides students with questions instead of handing over answers, and a teacher assistant for standards-aligned lesson plans, rubrics, exit tickets and summaries of recent student work. Best for: teachers already using Khan Academy's free library. Price: teacher tools are free for eligible educators, and learner and family plans are widely reported at $4 a month or $44 a year — but Khan Academy's own homepage lists no prices, so confirm both on its signup page first. Limit: an individual teacher cannot grant students tutor access — that comes only through a school or district partnership.

4. Diffit — one text, every reading level

Diffit does the most repetitive differentiation job: take one article or topic and turn it into leveled reading versions, vocabulary lists and comprehension questions, with scaffolds for English learners and intervention tiers. Best for: mixed-ability classes, where one lesson must reach struggling and advanced readers at once. Price, from recent third-party checks (the vendor homepage lists no prices): Basic free, with PDF download but only 90 days of history; Individual $14.99 a month or $149.99 a year, adding Google and Microsoft exports, standards alignment and full history; Schools pay a yearly flat rate by enrollment. Limit: it is text-focused — no images or multimedia — and the exports most teachers want sit behind the paid plan.

5. Curipod — writing practice with instant feedback

Curipod has narrowed its focus to writing practice: weekly live sessions where students write, get instant Glow & Grow feedback, discuss and revise, with no student accounts needed and no student or teacher data used to train models. Best for: ELA, social studies and science writing, without student chatbots. Price, verified on the vendor's pricing page today: Free $0 for every teacher, with weekly sessions that renew automatically and unlimited student writers; School & District and ELA Curriculum Alignment plans are custom-priced. Note: older $7.50–$9 individual premium listings no longer appear on the vendor's pricing page. Limit: free sessions are capped weekly, and student responses at 1,000 characters on the free plan.




Credit: Empty classroom in morning light, via StockCake

6. Gradescope — grading a whole exam stack at once

Gradescope, owned by Turnitin, is built for the marking mountain: it groups similar answers so you grade a whole batch with one rubric decision, and handles paper exams, online assignments and code, with regrade requests and statistics included. Best for: large classes, exam-heavy subjects and team grading. Price, from consistent third-party reporting (Turnitin publishes no price list): Basic free for individual instructors, covering PDF assignments, rubrics, regrade requests and export; an Institutional license, quoted case by case, adds AI-assisted answer grouping, code autograding, bubble sheets, LMS integration and single sign-on, with a one-term Institutional trial available. Older $1–$3 per student figures are historical third-party estimates, not a current vendor price. Limit: the AI features that make it fast sit behind the Institutional license.

7. Canva for Education — slides, posters and handouts that look designed

Every lesson needs materials, and Canva for Education turns that job into templates: presentations, worksheets, posters, videos and class spaces, with LMS integration, and student accounts invited by the teacher. Best for: materials students actually want to look at. Price, verified on Canva's own teachers page today: 100% free for primary and secondary educators, their students and qualified schools, with all premium Canva Pro features included — no paywall, no trial period. Verification runs through your school email or an uploaded teaching document, usually within 24 hours. Limit: eligibility is the catch — currently teaching, certified K–12 educators at accredited schools only, not higher education, and use must be non-commercial.




Credit: Teacher comparing student papers at her desk, via EssayGrader.ai

8. ChatGPT for Teachers — the general assistant, in a safer workspace

For everything the specialist tools do not cover — drafting parent emails, rewriting a stiff worksheet, summarising a long policy document — OpenAI's teacher workspace is the general assistant, with protections a personal account does not offer. Best for: US K–12 teachers who want ChatGPT with a data agreement behind it. Price, from OpenAI's own Help Center: free for verified educators at accredited US K–12 schools and districts. End-date warning: the Help Center says free through June 2028, but OpenAI's pricing FAQ has said June 2027 — the pages disagree, so plan around the earlier date. Limit: US K–12 only, not for students, so UK teachers and university staff cannot use it at all.

What to watch: accuracy, bias, over-reliance and privacy

Four honest risks run through every tool above. Accuracy: AI invents facts and levels that sound right — read every output against your scheme of work first. Bias: generated examples and feedback tones can carry stereotypes; vary and check them. Over-reliance: students who always get AI feedback stop judging their own work — keep one unassisted draft per unit. Privacy: school data rules decide, not the marketing page. On AI detection, be careful twice over: detectors misfire on genuine work, so use drafts, process notes and oral checks, never a detector score as proof. And tell parents plainly when AI helped write the feedback or worksheet their child brings home.

Key Takeaways

  • Start free: MagicSchool ($0), Brisk ($0), Canva for Education (100% free for verified K–12 educators) and Khanmigo teacher tools (free) cover planning, feedback and materials for nothing.
  • Vendor-verified prices (30 October 2026): MagicSchool Plus $12.99/month or $8.33/month billed annually; Brisk and Curipod Free $0, paid tiers custom district pricing; Canva for Education 100% free for eligible primary/secondary educators.
  • Not vendor-priced today — confirm before paying: Diffit Individual $14.99/month or $149.99/year, Gradescope Institutional by quote (Basic free), Khanmigo family plans $4/month or $44/year, and Brisk's third-party $99.99/year figure, absent from Brisk's own plans page.
  • ChatGPT for Teachers is free for verified US K–12 educators, but OpenAI's pages disagree on the end date (June 2028 vs June 2027) — plan around the earlier date.
  • Safety line: never paste identifying student data into any AI tool your school has not approved, and review every AI output before it reaches students or parents.
  • Detectors are not proof: use drafts, process notes and oral checks, never a detector score as evidence.

The teachers who gain most from AI will not have the most tools, but the tightest routine: one planner, one feedback tool, one differentiation tool — and a human who checks everything before a student sees it. Pick the tool that fixes your worst hour of the week, try it on one real lesson, and only then buy the next one.

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