Sites like Khan Academy, with prices.
The products below all teach maths to people working on their own, but they are not interchangeable. Read the “who it is for” column before the price column. Some are built around short guided courses you dip into; others place you with a test and then decide what you study next for months. If you already know which topics you are weak on, the first kind may be all you need. If you do not, look for the second kind.
| Option | Price | Who it is for | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Khan Academy | Freekhanacademy.org, read 21 September 2026 | Anyone, school-age upward | Early maths to multivariable calculus, plus other subjects |
| Consiliae (ours) | $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year, after a 7-day free trial; the Knowledge Scan needs no accountconsiliae.com, read 21 September 2026 | Self-learners aged 16 and over | Arithmetic to linear algebra and multivariable calculus |
| Math Academy | $49 a month per studentmathacademy.com, read 26 October 2026 | Gifted learners, homeschool families, adults upskilling | Arithmetic to multivariable calculus and differential equations |
| Brilliant | $30 a month; yearly billing is advertised as saving 33%brilliant.org, read 27 October 2026 | Students from elementary school to college, and curious adults | Maths, computer science, science and data analysis, as interactive courses |
Consiliae is ours, and it is marked so you can weigh the rest accordingly. Each price names the site it was read on, and the most recent check was on 27 October 2026; check before you buy, because prices move.
The prices are not quoted on the same basis. One product lists a monthly price per student, one a monthly price with a percentage off for paying yearly, one a monthly and a yearly figure, one costs nothing, and one publishes no price at all. Work out what a year would cost you on each before comparing them, since rebuilding a long stretch of maths is measured in months rather than weeks. Each rival row names the site its price was read on, and prices change without notice.
Is Khan Academy enough on its own?
It depends on who is doing the planning. Khan Academy organises maths into courses by school grade and by subject, running from early maths to multivariable calculus. Inside a course you get videos, articles and practice sets with instant feedback. What you do not get is anyone deciding which course you should be in.
Two features come close, and both stop at the edge of a course. A Course Challenge samples skills from across one course and gives you mastery credit for those you get right, so you can test out of material you already know. A Mastery Challenge brings back skills you have already practised, six questions across three skills at a time, and Khan Academy offers these in its maths courses. Neither one looks at a different course. Finish algebra, move to geometry, and nothing will ask you to factorise a quadratic again until a later course assumes you still can.
So the answer splits. If you are following a syllabus, or a teacher or tutor is setting the order and checking the work, Khan Academy covers the rest and you do not need to pay for anything. If you are an adult working alone, the missing pieces are the ones that matter most at the start: where to begin, what to fix first, and how to keep hold of what you learnt two months ago. You can do those yourself, as the next section shows, or hand them to a product that does them for you.
Doing the planning yourself with Khan Academy.
Placement first. Pick the most advanced course you think you might partly know and take its Course Challenge cold, without revising. If it goes badly, drop down one course and take that challenge too, and keep going until most of the questions come easily. Write down every topic you got wrong on the way. That list, not the name of the course you landed in, is your real syllabus.
Order second. Go through the list and ask of each topic what it needs underneath it. Negative exponents, for example, need dividing powers with the same base and the reciprocal of a fraction. Equations with fractions need multi-step equations and multiplying fractions. Anything on your list that sits underneath something else gets done first. This takes an evening with a pen and the course outlines open. You will misjudge a few dependencies, and you will find out which ones when a later topic stalls.
Review third. Once a week, go back to a course you have finished and take a Mastery Challenge there, or rework a handful of problems from a unit you completed a month ago. Keep a short list of problem types you have struggled with, such as “solve for x when x is in a denominator”, rather than a list of facts, and pick from it when you review.
The method is free. What it asks for is a few hours of setting up and a weekly review that nobody else will remind you about. If you have tried this before and the planning was what slipped, the planning is what the paid options in the table charge for.
Why the order is hard to see from inside one course.
The prerequisite list for a topic is rarely contained in the course that teaches it. Take the chain rule, one of the first techniques a calculus course asks you to use fluently. In the prerequisite graph Consiliae is built on, the chain rule has 6 direct prerequisites: definition of the derivative (limit form), composition of functions (algebraic), derivative of sin x, derivative of cos x, derivative of tan x and power rule. Follow each of those back and you reach 101 earlier concepts spread across 7 chapters of the map: Foundations of Arithmetic, Pre-Algebra, Algebra I, Geometry, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus & Discrete Foundations and Single-Variable Calculus.
- direct prerequisites
- 6
- earlier concepts
- 101
- in the longest chain
- 23
- Foundations of Arithmetic38
- Pre-Algebra10
- Algebra I11
- Geometry13
- Trigonometry7
- Pre-Calculus & Discrete Foundations8
- Single-Variable Calculus14
- Multivariable Calculus0
- Linear Algebra0
Two of those dependencies show the problem well. Power rule, as the map derives it, leans on binomial theorem (Pre-Calculus & Discrete Foundations). Derivative of sin x, as the map derives it, leans on sum formula for sine (Trigonometry). If either has faded, the derivation in front of you stops making sense, and nothing on the calculus page says which earlier course to go back to. The longest unbroken chain behind the chain rule in the map is 23 concepts long, from counting to 100 up to the chain rule itself.
Smaller topics behave the same way. Negative exponents sit in pre-algebra, but of the 37 concepts underneath them, 34 are arithmetic: place value, the four operations, fractions and integers. A learner who skips early arithmetic as too basic can find that a rule about exponents does not make sense, without any hint that fractions are the reason. We go through the course order itself in what order to do Khan Academy maths in.
See where your maths actually stops
The Knowledge Scan is up to 25 questions and needs no account and no card. Sign up to keep your route and take your first lesson; after that comes a 7-day free trial, then the Student plan. The scan marks on the map what you hold and what is missing, before you decide anything.
Find my routeNo card needed. Free scan and route.
Khan Academy and Consiliae, side by side.
Khan Academy details are from its help centre and pricing pages, read on 26 October 2026.
| Aspect | Khan Academy | Consiliae |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Video lessons, articles and practice sets, grouped into courses by grade and subject. You choose the course and the order. | Short written explanations followed by freshly generated problems, in an order worked out from a prerequisite graph for the goal you set. |
| Price | The maths library is free. The Khanmigo AI tutor is $4 a month or $44 a year for learners and parents, on its learners pricing page. | No free plan. The Student plan is $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year, after your first lesson and a free trial. |
| Placement across all of maths | None across the subject. A Course Challenge samples skills from one course at a time. | A Knowledge Scan of up to 25 questions that walks the whole map and stops early once it has placed you. |
| Prerequisites between courses | Not enforced. You can open any course or video in any order. | Each concept lists the concepts it rests on, and your route includes the missing ones before the topic that needs them. |
| Review after you finish a topic | Mastery Challenges review skills inside one maths course, six questions across three skills. To review a course you have left, you have to go back to it yourself. | Spaced review brings finished concepts back on a schedule, wherever on the map they came from. |
| Coverage | Broad: maths from early counting to multivariable calculus, plus many other subjects. | Maths only, 1,424 concepts on one graph, from foundations through school maths into early university. No video library. |
What Consiliae does differently, and what it does not.
Consiliae is our product, so weigh this section accordingly. It takes on the three jobs above and leaves explanation in a smaller, plainer form than Khan Academy offers. The Knowledge Scan is up to 25 questions, needs no account, and places you on a map of 1,424 maths concepts, each joined to the concepts it depends on. You can browse that map before signing up and check for yourself whether the chain rule really sits where this page says it does.
When you set a goal, your route is worked out by walking back from that goal through its prerequisites and dropping the ones the scan showed you already hold. Lessons are short written explanations followed by problems generated fresh each time; in practice and in reviews, a wrong answer shows the right one and links back to the lesson. Finished concepts come back in spaced reviews so that a topic you learnt in the first month is checked again before you rely on it in the fourth.
There are no videos, so if you learn best by watching someone work through a problem, Khan Academy is still where you will go for that. It covers maths only. And it is a subscription: the Student plan is $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year. The scan and your route are open to anyone; lessons need an account and, after the first, the trial or the plan.
