If you're trying to figure out how to help your kid with math or another subject right now, you've probably run into all three of these options and gotten a little lost about how they're actually different. That's fair, the marketing around all of them tends to blur the lines. So here's what each one actually is, without the sales language.
Khan Academy itself, the videos and practice problems, has been free since it started, and it's staying that way. It's a genuinely excellent library: thousands of lessons across math, science, humanities, and more, organized by grade level and standard, with practice exercises that adapt a bit based on how a kid is doing.
What it doesn't include, on its own, is anyone or anything responding directly to your kid's specific confusion. A video explains a concept the same way to everyone watching it. If your kid didn't get it the first time, the video doesn't know that. That's where Khanmigo comes in, Khan Academy's own AI tutor, which costs $4 a month for families. It uses a Socratic approach, meaning it won't just hand your kid the answer. It asks questions and gives hints to walk them toward figuring it out themselves, which is a genuinely good pedagogical choice, though it does mean a kid in a hurry can find it slower than they'd like.
The catch worth knowing: Khanmigo works best layered on top of the Khan Academy curriculum your kid is already using. It's not really built to jump in on a random homework problem from a different curriculum or textbook, it's most effective when your kid is working through Khan Academy's own material. There's also no live human anywhere in the loop. If Khanmigo's hints genuinely aren't landing, there's no one to escalate to.
This is the category everyone agrees is the gold standard, and for good reason. A real person, watching your kid's face, adjusting their explanation on the fly, catching the specific misconception rather than a general one. There's no substitute for a genuinely good tutor who knows how to do this well.
The two honest downsides are cost and scheduling. Good tutors, the kind who are actually skilled at diagnosing why a kid is stuck rather than just repeating the textbook explanation louder, tend to charge $50 to $100+ an hour depending on your area and the subject. And you're tutoring on their calendar, not your kid's moment of need. If your kid gets stuck on a Tuesday night and the tutor's next opening is Thursday, that gap just sits there.
Standalone AI tutoring tools work differently from Khanmigo in one important way: they're usually built to help with whatever your kid brings to them, a photo of a worksheet, a specific homework problem, a concept from whatever curriculum their school actually uses, rather than being tied to one platform's own lesson library. That flexibility is useful if your kid's school isn't using Khan Academy's curriculum directly.
The tradeoff is real too. AI tutors, even good ones, can occasionally misjudge a kid's specific point of confusion, and none of them can read a room the way a person can. Some products in this category pair the AI with real, live teachers for moments the AI can't resolve, others don't, so it's worth checking which kind you're actually looking at before assuming they all work the same way.
None of these is strictly "the best" option. They solve different problems. The honest way to choose is to ask what's actually failing for your kid right now: is it that they need more practice material, is it that they need judgment and encouragement from a real person, or is it that they get stuck at moments when nothing else is available. That answer points you toward a different one of these three.
Start with a free placement and feel the difference a tutor that adapts to you actually makes.