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🧸 Early learning (ages 2-6) · 🎨 Art, music and story makers · 💻 Coding

ScratchJr

By DevTech Research Group at Boston College and the Scratch Foundation. Visit ScratchJr

Desk research from the maker's own pages. Not yet tried by us. Checked 2026-10-24.

A free tablet app that lets children ages 5 to 7 make their own interactive stories and games. They snap picture blocks together to make characters move, jump, dance and sing, paint their own characters, record their voices and add photos. There is no reading needed for most blocks and no online community; projects stay on the device and can be shared by email or AirDrop. Built from years of early-childhood research.

Our take: An easy yes for families and teachers of 5-7-year-olds who want a calm, creative first coding app; older kids will outgrow it quickly.

The facts
Ages it suits5-7
What its terms say about ageNot stated in terms; the end user license agreement sets no age. No account is used. (terms)
PriceFree. Free (Oct 2026); donations requested.
Works oniPhone and iPad, Android, Chromebook
AccountNo account needed
AdsNone
In-app purchasesNone
The AI in itNo AI

What's good

  • Free, no ads, no account
  • No online community or strangers
  • Designed for pre-readers
  • Backed by research and a trial

Watch for

  • Uses camera and microphone if allowed
  • All users on a device share one project space
  • Usage analytics go to Google Firebase
  • Chromebooks and Macs run it with limits

Data and privacy

Projects, photos and recordings stay on the device and are not sent to the makers. The app collects country-level IP, device details and usage (which characters, time spent) through Google Firebase for analytics and research; policy dated April 2022. Read the privacy policy.

Does it work?

A randomized trial of the ScratchJr-based Coding as Another Language curriculum with 1,057 K-2 students in 26 schools found gains in coding skills but not in broader computational thinking; it was run by the ScratchJr research group, so it is not independent.

In the Big Index

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Where these facts come from

Prices, terms and features change. Nobody paid to be listed, nothing here is an affiliate link, and Peabody never rates itself. Where we and the maker disagree, the maker's own pages are the ones to trust.