Brilliant

Two-minute review

Brilliant wins where learning apps usually lose people: the lesson itself, which teaches by having you solve something rather than watch it.

Brilliant is a learning app for math and coding, made for anyone from fifth grade up. The homepage says so in one line. Then it backs the line with names. Learning experts from MIT and Harvard. Ten million learners. An editor's choice badge on the App Store and Google Play. Five seconds in, you know what it is and who it is for.

Getting started feels more like meeting someone than filling in a form. A small animated tutor called Koji asks what motivates you and lets you choose how it sounds. Then it asks what you want to learn, at what level, and for how many minutes a day. Only after that does it ask for an account. By then you have made half a dozen choices. Signing up reads as saving your learning plan, not as a gate.

The lesson is where it pulls ahead. The first coding course has you program a delivery truck across a small city by tapping commands into order. Each puzzle adds one idea. A wrong answer earns a hint, not a penalty. The sound, the motion and the pacing are tuned like a game. And the second lesson holds up as well as the first.

Duolingo is the obvious comparison, and Brilliant invites it with the green, the streaks and the leagues. It is calmer, though, and narrower. It sticks to math, computer science and data analysis. Inside that range, it teaches better.

Overview

What is Brilliant

Brilliant is an interactive learning platform for math, computer science and data analysis, on the web, iOS and Android. Its lessons are short visual puzzles rather than videos or reading. You place a block, drag a step into order or fill in a value, and the lesson responds straight away.

Koji sits alongside the lessons as a tutor you can chat with. Ask it to explain a step and it walks through the reasoning. It says up front that it will not hand you the answer, only point you toward it. The product comes from Brilliant Worldwide in San Francisco.

The tutor arrives before the form does

Most learning apps open on a sign-up screen. Brilliant opens on Koji. The tutor introduces itself, asks why you want to learn, and offers two voices, melodic or deep. Then come your age, your subject and your level, with a pause to show the experts behind the course you picked. On a cold run the whole sequence took under two minutes.

The account request comes last, framed as the way to see your learning plan. One tip: the voice can be switched off once you are past the introduction.

Programming a truck across a city

The first lesson of Thinking in Code, called Writing Programs, never shows you syntax. You tap commands into a sequence. Drive forward. Turn left. Turn right. A self-driving truck then follows your program across a small city grid.

Each puzzle changes one thing. The grid gets bigger. The delivery moves further away. Then you learn that a block can be used more than once. Get the order wrong and the lesson says "not quite" and points you to the help button. A skill check closes the lesson, and the next one swaps the truck for a robot collecting gems.

Credentials on every screen

Brilliant builds trust in layers, starting above the fold. The homepage cites ten million learners and its app store awards. Further down, it names the universities behind its learning experts. MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Cornell and Caltech. A testimonial wall sorts reviewers by who they are, from students to parents to working professionals.

For parents, the detail that matters most sits lower down. Brilliant is a member of the kidSAFE Seal Program, and the badge links to the page explaining it. Onboarding repeats the expert credits for the course you choose, so the claim follows you into the product.

In practice: a novice's first two coding lessons

A cold run started as a self-described novice, someone who knows the basics but rarely touches code. Onboarding recommended a starting point from around eight courses and set a ten minute daily goal. Then it went straight into the lesson player. There was no dashboard to browse first.

The first lesson took a few minutes and ended on a one day streak. The second was a single tap away on the course screen. Midway through it, Koji explained step by step why a program runs from top to bottom. Finishing it opened a league, with a short explanation of how leagues work.

Changing subject is simple. Every path is open from the Learning paths screen, from programming to math foundations. The subject picked during onboarding is only pinned as a favorite.

The pricing take

Brilliant is freemium. The free tier gives you one lesson a day, with ads. Premium adds unlimited lessons, Koji's tutoring and personalized practice, in individual and family plans. The app steers you toward annual billing: from France, an individual annual plan came to €198 a year at checkout, while paying month to month on the website runs close to €40 a month. A seven day free trial needs a card, but it names the date it ends and emails a reminder first. For someone who will practice most days, the free week followed by annual is the sensible route. Go by the figure on the checkout screen, which adds tax for European buyers.

Final thoughts

If someone in your house is going to spend ten minutes a day on a learning app, Brilliant is the one to move those minutes to.

Choose it if:

• You learn by doing and want short daily puzzles rather than lectures

• You want screen time that teaches math or coding to a child in fifth grade or up

• You like Duolingo's daily habit loop and want it pointed at STEM

Look elsewhere if:

• You want one platform for languages, humanities or the arts, since Brilliant stays inside math, computer science and data

• You want to finish a single course in a couple of weeks, since Brilliant is built for months of steady practice

• You learn best from long-form lectures or reading, since every lesson here is hands-on