Best apps for SLPs: what speech therapists actually use

The comparison

1. Articulation Station Hive: the in-session articulation app

Little Bee Speech has been building articulation apps for longer than almost anyone, and Hive is the subscription version of Articulation Station Pro. It covers consonants, vowels, blends and vocalic R, works up the full level ladder from isolation to conversation, and the Pro plan tracks unlimited students with group sessions, which is the feature that makes it a clinic tool rather than a parent tool.

Pricing: Hive Pro is $14.99 a month or $119.99 a year and includes Articulation Test Center Hive. The parent tier is $9.99 a month or $83.99 a year, limited to two students, no groups. Both have a trial. The limits: Apple-only (iPhone, iPad, Mac), so a school issuing Android tablets is out, and every attempt is judged by the adult; there is no speech recognition.

2. Articulation Test Center Hive: assessment on the iPad

A screener and a full articulation and phonology assessment with automatic scoring and a report. It is included with Hive Pro, which is the main reason the Pro tier is worth the extra $36 a year over the parent plan for anyone who assesses. Rated 4.8 from 134 US ratings. Apple-only, like the rest of the Hive.

3. Tactus Language Therapy 4-in-1: adult aphasia, bought once

Tactus Therapy's apps are the adult-neuro standard on the iPad: comprehension, naming, reading and writing in one $89.99 purchase, no subscription, on iOS and Android. A free Lite version exists for evaluating it. Tactus also sells the single-purpose apps (Apraxia Therapy, Speech FlipBook, Advanced Language Therapy) separately, which is worth knowing because the bundle is usually cheaper than two of them. The limits: built for adults with acquired disorders; the material and the voice are wrong for a child.

4. Constant Therapy: adult home programmes with a free clinician side

Constant Therapy's clinician app is free, and it lets you assign a programme of tasks from its 90-plus categories that the patient then does at home on their own subscription ($29.99 a month after a 14-day trial, on iOS and Android). The app lists aphasia, dementia, stroke and TBI as its target conditions. For an adult caseload it is the closest thing to assigning homework that reports back. The limits: adult-only in practice, and the patient pays a subscription that not every family can carry.

5. Boom Cards: digital task cards that survive teletherapy

Boom Cards is a marketplace of self-checking digital task cards, huge numbers of them made by SLPs for SLPs, and it runs in a browser, which made it the teletherapy tool of choice. The starter plan is free; premium is $6.99 a month and adds student reporting and larger class sizes. The limits: quality varies by author, it is a card format rather than a therapy structure, and the good decks cost extra.

6. Word Vault Essential: free word lists, aging gracefully

Home Speech Home's app is a free searchable bank of words, phrases and sentences by sound and word position, which is exactly what a therapist needs at 4pm with a new client. It is rated 4.7 from over 2,000 US ratings. The honest caveat: it was last updated in May 2020. It still runs, but it is not being developed, and it may not survive a future iOS change. The sound pages on this site carry the same kind of lists, free and current, if it ever disappears.

7. Tactus Apraxia Therapy: video modelling for adults

A $29.99 one-time app that uses video of a real mouth to cue syllable and word production, with tapping to keep rhythm. Designed for adults with apraxia after stroke or brain injury, and rated 4.7 from 768 US ratings. It is on this list because it is the best-regarded apraxia app on the store, and it is here with a warning: it is not built for children, even though it turns up in searches for them. Best apps for childhood apraxia deals with the paediatric side separately.

8. Help Me Talk: the app you send home with the parent

Our app, and the case for it in a clinician's toolkit is narrow and specific. The gap in most articulation caseloads is what happens between sessions: a parent is handed a target sound and a sheet of words, and by Thursday nobody knows whether the practice happened or whether the productions were any good. Help Me Talk gives the parent a guided lesson for the target sound, dealt-out practice words, phrases and sentences (over 6,000 items across 30 sounds), and the app listens to each attempt and scores it. The parent sees per-sound progress over weeks and can show it to you.

Pricing: $6.99 a month or $39.99 a year, with a 3-day trial, on iPhone, iPad and Android, which makes it one of the few options for the Android households on a caseload. The limits, plainly: there is no clinician account, no caseload dashboard, no way to set targets remotely and no data export; the parent shares the screen with you. Scoring is automatic speech recognition, which is useful for trend and unreliable for any single production, and it needs a connection. English only. Treat it as structured, scored homework, not as a clinical instrument.

For AAC caseloads

This is a separate decision per child and it belongs to an assessment, not a list. The systems clinicians reach for are Proloquo2Go ($249.99, Apple-only), TD Snap (free download, $9.99 a month speaking upgrade, iPad and Windows), LAMP Words for Life and TouchChat with WordPower ($299.99, Apple-only), Speak for Yourself ($299.99), Grid for iPad ($10.99 a month or $349), and Avaz for Android families. Proloquo2Go vs LetMeTalk and the rest has the current prices and trials side by side.

What is usually meant by “speech therapy software”

Searches for speech therapy software often mean something other than therapy apps: practice-management and documentation tools such as TherapyNotes, SimplePractice or Fusion, or teletherapy platforms. Those are a different purchase with a different budget line, and this page does not rank them. If you are choosing one, the questions that matter are HIPAA compliance, IEP and Medicaid billing support, and whether it runs a session's video and notes on one screen.