Early Learning Academy reviews
What users love and hate · 500 reviews analyzed · ★ 3.3
A subscription learning platform for preschoolers (letters, counting, reading) whose strong educational core is buried under aggressive monetization and a subscription that's nearly impossible to cancel.
What users love
For its fans it's an educational foundation that works for years
Many parents, grandparents and teachers praise it as best-in-class: kids ask to use it daily, pick up reading, math and letters, and end up ahead of grade level — families stay with it for 8-9 years across several children.
Our family has been using ABCmouse since 2012 and it has been one of the best things we ever did for our children's education.
my son loves ABC Mouse he looks forward to it every day, its so much fun to help him learn more and more
My grandson has used ABC MOUSE since he was 2. He is now almost 9 and is above level in the 3rd grade. My granddaughter now uses it and she is 3. It is the best investment I have found that engages them in learning.
Age-based personalization and a 'go at your child's pace' design are what fans love
A real strength is tailoring to each child's age and level plus broad subject coverage: reading, math, geography. Multiple profiles on one subscription let several kids in a family learn at their own pace.
All 3 of my children(7, 6, 3) love playing. Each child's play is customized to their age and/or grade.
My toddler has learned a lot from this app! I like that it lets you pick the pace you want for your child
He advances and learns at a good pace. From cartoons to puzzles and games, it has helped him to learn a lot about geography (his favorite), reading and math.
What users hate
Cancellation is a maze, and they keep charging even after you cancel
Parents spend months unable to cancel: the cancel button doesn't take, the account 'can't be found', and charges keep coming even after contacting the bank, changing the card, or closing the account. The single most common and most painful theme across reviews.
no way to cancel subscription and your AI "help" is useless
it constantly takes my money and won't cancel my subscription I dont understand
I've canceled numerous times and this company continues to charge my card 1499 every month!!! Scam
'Free' in the ads turns into a mandatory paywall before the first screen
The app is marketed as free, but you can't try it: payment is demanded up front, before the child sees anything. Parents feel duped by false advertising.
the add said it was free. turns out it's not. just a big fat lie.
why advertise it as free if it's not really free?
Instant subscription-based paywall. Worthless.
The 'free trial' charges you immediately, with no refund
The '30-day free trial' actually charges the full amount within minutes, or after a trial you thought you'd cancelled, and refunds are refused under a no-refund policy — even when the child never used it.
Signed for a free trial, not even five minutes into the free trial, they charged me. How are you gonna call it a free trial if I still have to pay?
the app NEVER WORKED after the trial period.
They say it has a free trial , but they charge your card right away and will not refund your money.
Constant freezing and crashes break the lesson mid-game
The app routinely freezes, crashes and forces restarts — across multiple devices. Kids can't finish a game, get frustrated and quit, while parents pay for a product that doesn't work.
lately it's been freezing making you close the app and open it again so you can continue using it
it's a good app but it freezes all the time. you have to close out the app and restart it. it is frustrating and irritates the kids to no end.
Very glitchy and freezes and crashes more then it works!
You can't log in: the flow loops and asks you to 'download the app' from inside the app
After paying, users hit login errors, broken password resets and an endless 'download the app' prompt while literally inside the app. They never get access to the content they paid for.
The app doesn't work. Every time I login it prompts me to download the app. The very same app that I am using and tried to login with.
when i login on the app it tells me to download the app
trash app can't reset password due to glitches, can't cancel app 40 dollars waited, AGAIN
An onboarding survey and pop-ups trap you behind an un-skippable bug
After entering payment, the app gets stuck on an 'optional' survey or a price-choice screen that can't be passed due to an error — leaving users trapped before they can even create a child's profile.
After entering payment information, it asked me to answer a survey on where I heard about the app. it says the survey is optional. I can't skip the survey, but I get an error whenever I try to select any option. The app won't go past the survey.
I signed up for the 30day trial and my payment method was authorized and everything. After I downloaded the app and was trying to set it up I'm stucked on the parent survey page and it's not moving forward or back from that page.
Can't get past the price choice page so needs major updating
Reward tickets and virtual pets pull kids away from lessons toward grinding
The in-app economy of tickets, pets and room decoration grabs attention more than the lessons themselves: kids pick the easy games to farm rewards, and the learning becomes a distracting backdrop.
most kids are only interested in the pets, character, and room design section, which are not educational at all and has been a huge problem for us. They have to earn tickets to buy things for their pets/character/room, which becomes all they're interested in. So they pick the same easy games instead of going through any lessons
the ticket currency seems good but they can get them too easily through videos and other means that's not as educational. It's more of an expensive distraction with a sprinkle of learning.
now it has a lot of distractions around the learning that kids just can't focus and end up just losing time and not learning.
Hidden add-on charges lurk behind the annual fee, with upsells at every step
The advertised single annual price quietly grows with '$40 here, $30 there' add-ons and parallel charges for both the subscription and extras at once. The price is quoted as $45, then $80, then near $200 — a confusing structure that feels like a scam.
the pricing structure is misleading. While a single yearly fee is advertised, there are multiple additional charges required to use the program effectively—$40 here, $30 there
it's a scam paying extra for every thing. I want to cancel and they dont not make it easy.
Don't trust their cancel button, I forgot to cancel and got charged the first year, my mistake, went into my account and cancelled my account so I would not be charged for the next year. Surprise! apparently I didn't cancel all the add ons and got charged for everything again!
Support is a chatbot going in circles; you can't reach a human
Instead of help there's an AI chat that repeats the no-refund policy and can't find the account, the phone line hangs up, and human agents are described as rude and useless.
Their phone support hangs up after saying all reps are busy—even the callback option does the same. The text support is automated and just goes in circles.
you only get AI which repeats its no refund policy and then it can't find your account with the email you gave it. It's a scam.
Talking to customer service is no help as they are rude and condescending.
Under the 'learning' label it's mostly games and videos, with little real progress
Some parents see no learning effect: the content boils down to videos and a couple of repetitive games, rewards wrong answers, and doesn't help with, say, a first-grader's reading.
Doesn't actually teach anything. Just games disguised as learning material.
purchased a year upfront thinking I was getting a 30 day trial. one day in in regretting it. It rewards wrong responses.
This app seems really useless. I don't see how it teaches anything.
The very idea of paying for kids' learning offends many on principle
A distinct strand of anger isn't about bugs or charges but the model itself: parents find it unfair to pay for a child's education and expect free access like ordinary kids' games.
why should we pay for our kids to learn on this app? it's useless it's just using parents for money!
Sad that you have to pay for your kids to learn
You have to pay for a kids game absolutely redickulas I hope your ABC mouse 2 is good 1 star