Kahoot vs Pear Deck: competitive game or interactive slides?

• Competition vs reflection

  Kahoot turns questions into a race: points for speed, music, a leaderboard after every question and a podium at the end. Pear Deck has no scoring game; instead, the teacher projects students' responses anonymously so the class can discuss them.

• Your deck vs a new quiz

  Pear Deck, part of GoGuardian's Pear Deck Learning suite, is an add-on for Google Slides and PowerPoint Online: you add question slides to the deck you already teach from, and teachers need a Google or Microsoft account. Kahoot quizzes are built in Kahoot's own editor, and importing slides needs Silver ($84/year) or higher.

• Open responses

  Pear Deck collects text, number, poll, drawing and draggable responses (drawing and draggable on Premium), which suits asking students to explain their thinking. Kahoot's 13+ question types lean toward right-or-wrong answers — quiz, true/false, type answer, puzzle, slider — with polls, word clouds and open-ended questions on higher tiers.

• Graded multiple choice

  Since November 2024, Pear Deck's multiple-choice question is an ungraded Poll for individual teachers; correct answers, points and auto-scoring require a School & District plan. Kahoot marks answers right or wrong on every plan, including the free one.

• Free plans

  Pear Deck's free plan has unlimited participants, Student-Paced mode and 40+ free Pear Start AI tools. Kahoot! Go caps games at 40 players for K-12 teacher accounts (10 for others) and includes no AI, though it does let you assign self-paced kahoots.

As of October 2026, Pear Deck's Teacher plan is free with unlimited participants, and Teacher Premium costs $149 a year with the educator discount, billed yearly; School & District plans, which add graded multiple choice, are priced by quote. Kahoot's annual teacher plans cost $36 (Bronze), $84 (Silver), $144 (Gold) or $228 (Kahoot! One) for 50, 100, 200 or 800 players. A teacher who wants scored quizzes pays less on Kahoot — even Gold is cheaper than Pear Deck Premium — while a teacher who only needs ungraded questions in their own slides may never need to pay for Pear Deck at all.

• you want a competitive game with points, music and a leaderboard
• you need graded multiple-choice questions without a district license
• you'd rather build quizzes in a dedicated editor than inside Slides or PowerPoint
• you also host games outside school, for work or family
• you want scored quizzes for less than $149 a year

• you teach from Google Slides or PowerPoint Online and want to keep your own decks
• you want students to draw, drag or write answers you can discuss anonymously
• you need a free plan with no participant limit
• you want free AI tools that draft lessons, slide decks and practice sets
• your district already licenses Pear Deck Learning

• you run live, game-show style quizzes and want one simple price: $9/month, billed monthly
• your groups are big — up to 500 players per game
• players should be able to read every question on their own phone (large rooms, hybrid and video calls)
• you don't need homework, self-paced or presentation features

Pear Deck is the better fit for reflective, discussion-based lessons built on your existing slides, and its free plan is unusually generous: no participant cap and free AI tools. Kahoot is the better fit for competition and graded answers — even its free plan scores quiz questions, something Pear Deck reserves for School & District plans. The two can complement each other: Pear Deck to teach, Kahoot to review. If the review game is all you need and your groups are large, Quizzo runs live multiple-choice games for up to 500 players at $9/month.