Digital formative assessment tools: an honest comparison
The best formative assessment tool is the one that gets you evidence from every student with the least effort, for the check you are running. Here is what the common tools are good at, where they fall short, and when you need no tool at all.
Updated October 2026
Mentora makes one of the tools on this list, and says so where it appears. Features and plans change often; check each tool's own site for what is current.
At a glance
| Tool | Best for | Student devices |
|---|---|---|
| Kahoot! | Checking the whole class live | Yes |
| Mentimeter | Checking the whole class live | Yes |
| Plickers | Checking the whole class live | No |
| Pear Deck | Questions inside your lessons | Yes |
| Nearpod | Questions inside your lessons | Yes |
| Google Forms | Quizzes students take on their own | Yes |
| Wayground (formerly Quizizz) | Quizzes students take on their own | Yes |
| Socrative | Quizzes students take on their own | Yes |
| Formative | Seeing student work as it happens | Yes |
| Edpuzzle | Questions inside videos | Yes |
| Mentora (ours) | Written answers, graded and summarized | Yes |
| Paper and whiteboards | Any quick check | No |
Checking the whole class live
Kahoot!
Best for: Energy and review. The class plays together against a shared screen, and everyone answers every question.
Watch out for: Points reward fast answers, so a quick guess can look like understanding, and the formats are mostly short, so you see answers more than reasoning.
Mentimeter
Best for: Taking the pulse of a room: live polls, word clouds and open questions, shown to everyone as they come in.
Watch out for: Built for presentations as much as classrooms, and responses are usually anonymous, so you see the class but not which student needs help.
Plickers
Best for: Classrooms without student devices. Students hold up printed cards and you scan the room with your phone.
Watch out for: Multiple-choice and true/false questions only.
Questions inside your lessons
Pear Deck
Best for: Adding interactive questions to the Google Slides or PowerPoint lessons you already have, with every response visible to you live.
Watch out for: The evidence lives inside that one lesson; pulling a picture across weeks takes extra work.
Nearpod
Best for: Complete interactive lessons with quizzes, polls and drawing activities built in.
Watch out for: Building lessons in it takes time. It is a lesson platform more than a quick check.
Quizzes students take on their own
Google Forms
Best for: Free, flexible quizzes and exit tickets. Multiple-choice answers can be scored automatically, and responses land in Google Sheets.
Watch out for: Written answers still have to be read and marked by you.
Wayground (formerly Quizizz)
Best for: Quizzes students take at their own pace, in class or as homework, with game elements, a large library of ready-made questions, and reports by question.
Watch out for: Like most quiz tools, strongest on multiple choice and quick-response questions.
Socrative
Best for: Quick quizzes and ready-made exit ticket activities with simple reports.
Watch out for: Simpler than the bigger platforms, which is the point, but you will outgrow it for longer assessments.
Seeing student work as it happens
Formative
Best for: Watching answers appear in real time, including handwriting and drawings, so you can step in while students are still working.
Watch out for: The more open the questions, the more there is to read.
Questions inside videos
Edpuzzle
Best for: Video lessons: questions embedded in a video, and a record of who watched and how they answered.
Watch out for: It checks understanding of the video, so it is only as good as the video.
Written answers, graded and summarized
Mentora (ours)
Best for: Real tests and checks with written answers. Each answer is graded against your criteria as students turn it in, grades the AI is unsure about wait for you, and a debrief shows what the class understood, which wrong answers came up and who needs help.
Watch out for: Not a live game or a quick poll: it is built for assessments with written answers. It is opening in small batches through a waitlist.
When you need no tool
Paper exit tickets, mini whiteboards and ABCD cards are fast, free, and need no devices or logins. For a single class and a single question, they are often the better choice. The trade-off is that the sorting is all yours.
How to choose
- Start from the check, not the tool. Live whole-class question, end-of-lesson exit ticket, or a longer quiz? See the formative assessment examples.
- Ask what you will see. Answers, or reasoning? Each student, or an anonymous picture of the room?
- Count the reading. Written answers are the best evidence and the slowest to go through. Know who reads them.
- Check the follow-up. A tool is only formative if its results change tomorrow's lesson. Can you see what to reteach in a few minutes?
Written answers, without the reading pile
Most tools here are at their best with multiple choice. Mentora is built for the written answers: graded against your criteria as they come in, with a debrief of what the class understood and what to teach next.
Frequently asked questions
What is digital formative assessment?
Formative assessment done with technology: polls, quick quizzes, forms or interactive slides that collect every student's answer at once, so you can see what the class understands while there is still time to adjust.
What is the best formative assessment tool?
The one that fits the check you are running. For a live, whole-class check, a polling or game tool; without devices, Plickers or mini whiteboards; for quizzes, Google Forms or Quizizz; for written answers, a tool that grades and summarizes them.
Are there free formative assessment tools?
Yes. Google Forms is free, several of the tools above have free plans, and paper exit tickets and mini whiteboards cost almost nothing. Check each tool's site for current plans.
Do I need a digital tool for formative assessment?
No. Exit tickets on paper, mini whiteboards and ABCD cards are some of the most effective checks there are. Tools help most with collecting and sorting answers when you have many classes.
Free tools
- Free exit ticket templates: 3-2-1, rate your understanding, muddiest point and more, printable or ready for Google Docs.
- Free easy grader: the percentage and letter grade for every possible number wrong, printable.
- Free AI essay grader: grade one written answer against your own criteria, in seconds.