The closest games like Gimkit are Blooket, Kahoot! and Wayground (formerly Quizizz): a teacher hosts a live game, students join with a code, and a set of questions drives the play. If you are a student hoping to play Gimkit solo, the honest answer is that its solo options are limited and depend on someone else's kit, so a tool that builds games from your own notes, like ZykoStudy, or a flashcard scheduler like Anki, fits that job better. Here are nine Gimkit alternatives, for teachers and for students.
What is the closest game to Gimkit?
Blooket. Both put a question set behind a host-run live game that students join with a code, both run that one set through many different modes, both let teachers send play home as homework, and both have a collectible layer: Blooks from packs on Blooket, Gims from packs on Gimkit. The difference is feel. Many Gimkit modes run on an in-game economy where correct answers earn cash for upgrades and power-ups, which rewards planning; Blooket leans on variety and a bit of chaos, like taking gold from other players in Gold Quest. Kahoot! is the next closest: simpler, and faster to run cold.
All 9 at a glance
| Tool | Who starts it | Where the questions come from | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blooket | A host shares a Game ID; homework mode for solo play | Sets the teacher writes or finds | The same live energy, with different modes |
| Kahoot! | A host shares a game PIN, or assigns a self-paced challenge | Kahoots the host builds or finds | The fastest whole-class review to run |
| Wayground (Quizizz) | A teacher runs it live or as homework | Quizzes the teacher builds or finds | Homework with per-question reporting |
| Quizlet Live | A teacher starts it from the website | An existing Quizlet set | Team play on vocabulary |
| Baamboozle | A teacher projects one screen | Games the teacher makes or finds | Rooms with few or no student devices |
| Quizalize | A teacher runs it; students join with a class code | Teacher quizzes tagged to skills | Classes that want mastery data |
| Wordwall | A teacher shares an activity or assignment link | Content typed into a template | Quick activities, including printables |
| ZykoStudy | The student, solo; a teacher assigns sets; anyone signed in can host a live race | AI-generated from your own notes, slides, PDFs, or a YouTube link | Practice on your own material between lessons |
| Anki | The student | Decks you build or import | Long-term memorisation over a semester |
Can you play Gimkit solo or by yourself?
Partly. Gimkit is built around live games: a host starts a game from a kit, and players join at gimkit.com/join with a code. There are two official ways to play it by yourself, and both start from a kit someone else made.
- The practice link. Every kit has one, and anyone it is shared with can answer the kit's questions any time. Gimkit's own help center is clear about the limit: practice mode has no due dates, game modes or game mechanics, just questions and right or wrong answers.
- Assignments. A teacher on Gimkit Pro, the paid plan, can turn a kit into an assignment that students play individually, for homework or independent study, in 2D modes that do not need a team. Gimkit's Smart Repetition brings back questions a student missed more often, in assignments as well as live games.
Gimkit Creative, its no-code map builder, is free for students and teachers too, but building a game is a project of its own, not a way to review for tomorrow. So if your teacher assigns Gimkit, you can play it solo. If you want to study your own notes tonight with no kit and no teacher, neither route helps, and that is what the student picks below are for.
Gimkit alternatives for teachers
If you run Gimkit in class and want a change of format, these seven keep the live, whole-class shape, and each one is better than Gimkit at something specific. One thing Gimkit does that is worth keeping wherever you land: KitCollab, where students submit questions to a kit for you to approve. Writing questions is good practice in its own right.
Blooket — the most like Gimkit
Blooket is the closest swap. A host picks a set, chooses a mode such as Gold Quest, Tower Defense, Cafe, Battle Royale, Fishing Frenzy, Racing or Classic, and shares a Game ID; players do not need an account to join a live game. Homework mode lets students play the solo modes on their own time, so it covers the same live-plus-assignment ground as Gimkit. Students who like Gims will recognise Blooks and packs. More in games like Blooket or ZykoStudy vs Blooket.
Kahoot! — the fastest to run
Kahoot! trades Gimkit's strategy for speed: one question on the shared screen, everyone answers against a timer, and a leaderboard between rounds. Students join with a game PIN, and a teacher can also assign a kahoot as a self-paced challenge with a deadline. It is the quickest of these to run cold, because nearly every student already knows how it works. What you lose is the reason to keep playing past the last question, which is what Gimkit's economy provides. Compare Blooket vs Kahoot too.
Wayground (formerly Quizizz) — for homework with reports
Wayground, called Quizizz until its June 2025 rename, is the pick if Gimkit assignments are what you mostly use. A teacher starts any quiz as a live game or as homework with a deadline, students join with a code at wayground.com/join, and each student works through the questions on their own screen at their own pace. The reporting afterwards is the main reason teachers choose it. It is quieter than Gimkit, more quiz than game. See ZykoStudy vs Quizizz.
Quizlet Live — teamwork over a flashcard set
Quizlet Live turns a Quizlet set into a team race. A teacher starts it from the Quizlet website with a set of at least six terms, at least four people play, and in teams mode each student holds only some of the answer options, so the team has to talk to win. That makes it the best of these for vocabulary and collaboration, and the weakest for anything that is not a term and a definition. More in Quizlet Live alternatives.
Baamboozle — when students do not all have devices
Baamboozle is the alternative for a room where not every student has a device. The game runs on the teacher's projector, teams take turns picking tiles that reveal questions, and students answer out loud. Nobody needs an account or a phone, which also makes it quick for a last-ten-minutes review. The trade is Gimkit's per-student play: on one shared screen there is nothing individual to track, and there is no take-home version of the same game.
Quizalize — game energy with mastery data
Quizalize is for teachers who want a class game with assessment data underneath. Students join with a class code and answer on their own devices while a team game plays out on the big screen, and questions can be tagged to skills so a mastery dashboard shows what each student has and has not mastered. That makes grouping students for follow-up work straightforward. The games are simpler than Gimkit's, but the report is the point.
Wordwall — activities you can also print
Wordwall is the quickest way to turn a list into an activity: type the content once, then switch between templates such as quiz, match up, crossword or wordsearch. Most templates print, which no live game can do, and an activity can be set as an assignment with results by student and by question. It is not a live game show the way Gimkit is, so think of it as the station activity rather than the end-of-unit event. Compared in ZykoStudy vs Wordwall.
Gimkit alternatives for studying alone
Plenty of people searching for games like Gimkit are students who want the game feel without a teacher hosting. For that job, look for three things: a tool that makes you produce answers rather than recognise them, which is active recall; one that builds questions from your own notes instead of waiting for a kit; and one that brings missed questions back later, the way spaced repetition works.
ZykoStudy — built for one student and a stack of notes
Ours, so weigh it accordingly. ZykoStudy is built for the case Gimkit is not: one student, one evening, notes nobody has turned into a kit. Upload notes, slides, a PDF, a Word file or a photo of your notes, or paste a YouTube link, and AI writes the questions. You play them solo in arcade games such as Quiz Rush, Kickoff Study, Sky Captain or Gridlock, with XP, levels, daily streaks and a leaderboard, and no host, kit or code. The free plan needs no card. Side by side: ZykoStudy vs Gimkit.
Play Gimkit-style review on your own notes
Paste a few lines from any class. ZykoStudy writes the questions and you pick a game to play them in. No account, no kit, no host.
Anki — the deepest solo scheduler
Anki is free, open source and built for one person reviewing alone: you rate how well you remembered each card, and its scheduler decides when to show it again. Across a semester, nothing here schedules review better. The trade is everything Gimkit does well: there is no game, no economy and no class, and you build or import every deck yourself. If that sounds like a chore, see Anki alternatives or ZykoStudy vs Anki.
Quizlet's solo games deserve a mention here too: Match is a race against the clock, and Blast is an asteroid game where you hit the right answer, both played over a flashcard set. If you already have decks, see the Quizlet alternatives roundup.
Using ZykoStudy with a class
ZykoStudy is not a replacement for Gimkit's live end-of-unit game; for that, Gimkit, Blooket or Kahoot! is the better pick. It covers the other half: the practice students do between lessons. A teacher creates a class, students join with a class code, and the teacher uploads slides, a PDF or a worksheet, edits the questions the AI writes, and assigns the set with a due date. The class view shows who has finished and which topics are weakest, and questions can be tracked against standards.
When you do want everyone playing at once, any signed-in user can host a free live race on a set: students join with a 6-character code, up to 40 racers, and right answers are what make their car faster. That makes it a workable in-class option, though Gimkit still has far more live modes.
How do you choose a Gimkit alternative?
- Same live energy, different modes: Blooket.
- Fastest setup for a whole class: Kahoot!.
- Homework with reporting: Wayground, or Quizalize if you want skill-level data.
- Few student devices: Baamboozle.
- Vocabulary and teamwork: Quizlet Live.
- Studying your own notes alone: ZykoStudy; for memorising a large deck over months, Anki.
Every tool here has a side-by-side page or roundup, and the full list, grouped by what kind of tool it is, sits on the compare hub.
Why do game-based review sessions work?
Classroom games and solo study games work for the same reason: they make you retrieve the answer. Research on retrieval practice, often called the testing effect, finds that pulling an answer out of memory strengthens it more than rereading the same material, and the game supplies the reason to do it one more time. The format only stops helping when the mechanics get loud enough that players chase points instead of answers. More on the evidence in do study games work?, and on the solo version in the best way to study with games.