Best speech therapy apps for kids

First, work out which job you need

Nearly every disappointing app purchase in this category is a category error — the app worked fine, it just was not built for the problem. Find your row before you look at any prices.

The comparison

1. Articulation Station Hive — what the clinics use

Little Bee Speech has been building articulation apps longer than almost anyone, and Hive is the current one: 17 activity types across consonants, vowels, blends and vocalic R, working from the sound in isolation all the way up to conversation. If there is an iPad in a speech clinic, this is probably what is on it. It holds 4.47 stars from 485 US ratings.

Two things make it the professional pick: the completeness of that level ladder, and record-keeping built for someone tracking a caseload of students. Both are also more app than most families need. The parent tier runs about $6.99 a month billed annually — roughly $83.88 a year — with a 14-day trial, and there is no Android version at all.

• Strong: the most complete level structure available, trusted by SLPs, excellent data
• Weak: Apple-only, priciest for a single family, and every attempt is judged by the adult
• Choose it if: you are an SLP, or a parent working closely with one who already uses it

2. Help Me Talk — the app does the judging

Our app, and the honest case for it is narrow: it is built for the parent who has been handed a target sound and told to practise at home every day. Your child says the word out loud, the app scores how close the pronunciation was, and it tracks that sound's scores week by week. Most apps in this category put that judgement on whoever is sitting next to the child — fine if you know what a correct R sounds like, much harder if you do not.

Underneath there are 30 sounds, each with a recorded lesson and mouth-position guidance, and 6,342 words, phrases and sentences dealt out so your child sees new material rather than the same ten cards. A short set-up questionnaire turns into a dated daily plan of three short activities, so nobody has to decide what to do tonight. At $39.99 a year it is the cheapest annual price here, and it runs on Android.

The honest weaknesses: 36 US App Store ratings, because it is one independent developer rather than a funded company. It is English only. And the detailed scoring runs on a server — offline the app still records the practice, it just cannot show a number until you are back online.

• Strong: scores every attempt, 30 sounds, 6,342 practice items, Android, cheapest yearly, builds the daily plan for you
• Weak: small rating base, English only, scoring needs a connection
• Choose it if: you are the one doing the daily practice and you want the app, not you, to be the judge

3. Speech Blubs — first words, not sound fixing

The biggest name in children's speech apps, at 4.62 stars from 53,574 US ratings, and it earns that on one mechanism done well: video modelling, where your child watches and copies clips of real children saying words. For a two- or three-year-old building first words, that peer imitation is genuinely powerful — children copy other children far more readily than they copy adults.

It is a weaker fit for targeted sound work with an older child, because the structure is built around exploring themed word libraries rather than driving one sound up through the levels. At $59.99 a year it is also 50% more than Help Me Talk. If your child is four or older and working on one specific sound, this is not the tool.

4. Otsimo — autism-focused, but check the dates

Otsimo comes from a company with real credibility in autism education, and it does use speech recognition to check attempts. The $119.99 lifetime option is genuinely appealing if you expect years of use rather than months.

Two facts to weigh first: its US App Store rating is 3.36 from 180 ratings, the lowest here by a distance, and the iOS app's last update was May 2025 — more than a year before this was written. Neither is disqualifying, but an app that has not shipped in over a year is a risk worth pricing in.

5. Proloquo2Go — a different category entirely

Included because it dominates these searches and parents deserve a straight answer. Proloquo2Go is AAC: a full communication system that gives a child who cannot speak a way to say what they need, today. It is $249.99 once, iPhone and iPad only, and it holds 4.77 stars from nearly 12,000 ratings — one of the best-reviewed apps in any category.

If that is your child's situation, no practice app substitutes for it, including ours. Do not buy it on a hunch either: AAC works best when an SLP has done an assessment and helped set up the vocabulary. TouchChat HD ($149.99) and LAMP Words For Life ($299.99) are the other systems an SLP may recommend.

How to pick, in one pass

• Your child cannot make themselves understood at all → AAC, and an SLP assessment first. Not a practice app.
• Under three with very few words → Speech Blubs, plus a referral. Early language is not the same problem as articulation.
• An SLP gave you a sound to practise and you use Apple devices → Articulation Station Hive if you want what the clinic uses, Help Me Talk if you want it scored and cheaper.
• You are on Android → the field narrows sharply. Help Me Talk, Speech Blubs, Otsimo and Mio; see the Android roundup.
• You want to spend nothing → start with the free sound pages on this site, and read what is actually free before subscribing to anything.

Try the practice before you pay for any of it

Every sound in the app has a free page here: mouth-position instructions, an audio clip of the sound, the full word list grouped easiest to hardest, phrases, sentences and three games. That is the same raw material any of these apps gives you — what the apps add is feedback, structure and record-keeping, not the words.

Run a week of free practice first. You will learn more about which sound to target and whether your child will sit still for it than any review can tell you.

• The R sound — the latest to arrive and the most searched
• The S sound — lisps
• The L sound, TH, SH, CH
• All 30 sounds

Practice these sounds

Free word lists, mouth-position guides and games — no app needed.