Is Speech Blubs or Articulation Station better?

It depends on age. Speech Blubs is for one- to three-year-olds who need to start attempting words, using video of other children to prompt imitation. Articulation Station Hive is for four and up, drilling one sound at a time from words to conversation. Neither is a better version of the other.

How much do they cost?

Speech Blubs is $59.99 a year or $14.49 a month with a 7-day trial. Articulation Station Hive is $83.99 a year or $9.99 a month on the Parent plan, with a 14-day trial. Both download free and charge after the trial.

Do either of them work on Android?

No. Speech Blubs is iPhone and iPad only, and Little Bee Speech has only ever published for Apple devices. If you are on Android, our Android roundup covers what is genuinely available there.

Does Articulation Station still cost a one-time price?

No. Little Bee Speech retired the one-time-purchase Classic and Pro versions on 3 December 2024 and replaced them with the Hive subscription. If you bought the old app before that date you keep it, but it gets no further updates.

Which is better for a 4-year-old?

Articulation Station Hive, if the issue is specific sounds coming out wrong. Speech Blubs is aimed younger and a four-year-old who is already talking will run out of it quickly. If the four-year-old is barely talking at all, that is a different problem and worth an SLP evaluation before either app.

Do either of them tell you if the child said it right?

No. Speech Blubs is imitation practice with no scoring. Articulation Hive leaves the judgement to the adult, by design, because it was built for therapists. Apps that score the attempt are a separate category, which our page on whether an app can tell if your child got it right covers.

Comparison

Articulation Station vs Speech Blubs

These two apps get compared constantly and they barely overlap. Speech Blubs is video-imitation practice aimed at one- to three-year-olds who are not saying much yet. Articulation Station Hive is a clinician's drill tool for a school-age child working on a specific sound, and it assumes an adult who can tell a good R from a nearly-good one. Picking between them is mostly a question of how old your child is and whether the problem is "not talking much" or "talking, but unclear". Prices checked on the US App Store, 9 September 2026.

The short answer

Speech Blubs ($59.99 a year or $14.49 a month, 7-day trial, iPhone and iPad) is for ages 1 to 3ish: your child watches other children say a word on video and copies them. Nothing is scored. Articulation Station Hive ($83.99 a year or $9.99 a month on the Parent plan, 14-day trial, iPhone, iPad and Mac) is for ages 4 and up, one sound at a time, from single words to conversation, with you deciding if each attempt was right. Neither runs on Android.

The two apps side by side

The ratings gap is a reach gap, not a quality gap. Speech Blubs is a consumer app marketed to parents and has been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of families. Articulation Hive is sold to therapists, and a few hundred ratings is what a professional tool looks like.

	Speech Blubs	Articulation Station Hive
Best for	Ages 1 to 3, few words, needs to imitate	Ages 4 and up, talking but unclear on specific sounds
What the child does	Watches a video of another child, copies the word	Says target words, phrases and sentences for one sound
Price	$59.99 a year or $14.49 a month	$83.99 a year or $9.99 a month (Parent plan)
Free trial	7 days	14 days
Platforms	iPhone, iPad	iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Vision
Android	No	No
Who judges the attempt	Nobody. It is imitation practice	You do
Progress tracking	Basic	Cloud tracking, built for caseloads
Built for	Parents	Speech-language pathologists
US App Store rating	4.6 from about 55,000 ratings	4.5 from about 538 ratings

Which problem are you actually solving?

What is happening	Which app	Why
Two-year-old with under 20 words	Speech Blubs	The job is getting them to attempt words at all. Video imitation is built for that.
Four-year-old saying "tat" for cat	Articulation Hive	One sound, needs targeted repetition from words up to sentences.
Six-year-old with an R problem	Articulation Hive	Speech Blubs has no depth for a single late sound at this age.
Therapist already uses one of them	Whichever they use	Matching the clinic beats optimising the app.
You are on Android	Neither	Both are Apple-only. See our Android roundup.

What each one is genuinely good at

Speech Blubs solved a real problem: a two-year-old will copy another child on a screen when they will not copy their parent. The face filters and the video clips of real children are why toddlers stay in it for ten minutes, and ten minutes of attempts beats two minutes of a better-designed app they refuse to open. It has over 1,500 exercises and is aimed squarely at ages one to eight, though the useful window in practice is narrower than that.

Articulation Station Hive is the deeper tool. Practice runs from isolated sounds up to conversation level, it has roughly twice the content of the app it replaced, and progress tracks in the cloud rather than on one iPad. Little Bee Speech retired the old one-time-purchase Articulation Station on 3 December 2024, so the version being reviewed in older blog posts is not the version you can buy.

The third option, which we make

Help Me Talk sits between the two. It has Articulation Hive's structure, 30 sounds with words, phrases and sentences, but it scores each attempt out of 100 against a pass target rather than leaving you to decide. It runs on Android as well as iPhone and iPad, and it is $39.99 a year, cheaper than either.

The honest limits: it is not an assessment tool, it has no caseload features, and it will not get a barely-talking two-year-old to imitate the way Speech Blubs does. For a four- to eight-year-old who talks but is hard to understand, it is the category we built it for. Our word lists for all 30 sounds are free on this site if you want to try the content before the app.

	Speech Blubs	Articulation Hive	Help Me Talk
Yearly price	$59.99	$83.99	$39.99
Android	No	No	Yes
Scores the attempt	No	No	Yes, out of 100
Best age	1 to 3	4 and up	4 and up
Free trial	7 days	14 days	3 days

Practice these sounds

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

R Sound S Sound K Sound L Sound

Questions parents ask

Is Speech Blubs or Articulation Station better?: It depends on age. Speech Blubs is for one- to three-year-olds who need to start attempting words, using video of other children to prompt imitation. Articulation Station Hive is for four and up, drilling one sound at a time from words to conversation. Neither is a better version of the other.
How much do they cost?: Speech Blubs is $59.99 a year or $14.49 a month with a 7-day trial. Articulation Station Hive is $83.99 a year or $9.99 a month on the Parent plan, with a 14-day trial. Both download free and charge after the trial.
Do either of them work on Android?: No. Speech Blubs is iPhone and iPad only, and Little Bee Speech has only ever published for Apple devices. If you are on Android, our Android roundup covers what is genuinely available there.
Does Articulation Station still cost a one-time price?: No. Little Bee Speech retired the one-time-purchase Classic and Pro versions on 3 December 2024 and replaced them with the Hive subscription. If you bought the old app before that date you keep it, but it gets no further updates.
Which is better for a 4-year-old?: Articulation Station Hive, if the issue is specific sounds coming out wrong. Speech Blubs is aimed younger and a four-year-old who is already talking will run out of it quickly. If the four-year-old is barely talking at all, that is a different problem and worth an SLP evaluation before either app.
Do either of them tell you if the child said it right?: No. Speech Blubs is imitation practice with no scoring. Articulation Hive leaves the judgement to the adult, by design, because it was built for therapists. Apps that score the attempt are a separate category, which our page on whether an app can tell if your child got it right covers.

Keep reading

Last updated 9 September 2026.