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Peabody
I’m a kid

No ads. Not one. Not anywhere on Peabody.

Learning that feels like play, adapting to your kid as they go: reading, math and facts about the world, inside real games and stories written at their level. A free AI adaptive learning platform for kids from pre-readers to 8th grade.

Funded by Aaron, Skyler, Everett and Elliot's dad in Denver, Colorado. Not by advertisers, and not by your child's attention. See what other free kids' sites load · How free sites make money from kids

Start freeor see how it adapts ↓

  • Free AI adaptive learning for kids
  • Free for 2026
  • No ads
Hoot, a friendly violet owl, one of the Peabody friends

What should your story be about?

A dragon who’s scared of the dark!

How it adapts

A practice brain that climbs as your kid does.

AI writes the stories. Plain, checkable code decides everything else: the level, the next question, and when something comes back. The rules fit in a few sentences.

  • Every subject is a ladder. Counting, making ten, adding, taking away, times tables, dividing; first sounds, rhymes, phonics, sight words, spelling, word meanings. A grade only sets the first rung. Pass a rung and the next one opens, in every game at once.
  • A question right once is gone for good. Peabody never asks it again. Miss one and it comes back once, later in the round. The skill moves on to a fresh question, not a fresh lesson.
  • Most answers are wins. About 85% of a round is things your kid already knows, with a couple of new ones taught first. Three big boxes, no typing, and no clock on anything new.
  • Known things come back on a schedule. After 1, 3, 7 and then 21 days, so they stay known. A miss brings it back sooner.
  • Stories are written at their level, measured in code. Sentence length and word difficulty are checked on every story, and the level moves when their reading says the books ran too easy or too hard.
  • You see it in plain words. Which words and facts are known, which are being learnt, which were slow, and one thing to try tonight. Never a score for a kid, never a ranking against other kids.

What it never does: diagnose anything, record your kid’s voice, give a Lexile score, or compare them to grade norms. If reading worries you, their teacher is the right person to ask. The science behind every rule →

Learning through play

More than twenty games where the learning is the game.

Runners, a tower defense, a battle royale island, a pet-hatching world, a prison dig-out, a Stone Age planet, a dungeon crawl. Real games your kid would pick anyway, with the question living on a thing in the world: a gate, a crate, a door.

  • The answer is the move. Tap the right crate, run through the right gate, hand over the right potion. Every question is three boxes.
  • Runners stop, never slow. The run comes to a full stop at a station, the question is asked, then Go. Most of the run is pure running.
  • Heard, not shown. When the word is the answer, Peabody says it out loud. Matching letters isn’t reading.
  • Just play, in every game. A mode with no questions at all, because a game that only works as a quiz isn’t a game. Learning modes pay more.
  • Facts about the world, too. A World of sixteen lands (science, history, geography, money, code and more) with short read-aloud trails, and quests inside the games about space, food chains, time and rocks.

Play the best free games

Stories, too: a free AI story generator for kids

Built for a little every day, not a lot on Saturday.

Reading practice that starts from your kid’s own idea. The story is written at the level they read, with practice words that come back over the following days.

  1. 1 Dream one up.

    Your kid says what should happen, and Peabody writes it at their level, up to three stories a day.

  2. 2 Read it right away.

    It opens straight on page 1, with its new words to tap and hear.

  3. 3 Read one from the library.

    A story by someone else, at any level: big kids can read little kids’ stories too.

More about the story generator →

Start free

Read one right now.

This is the start of a Peabody starter story.

Peabody starter story

Pim and the Mitten

Grade 1 levelgentleanimalskindnesslost and found

In your kid’s own stories, they can be the hero.

Kids write for kids.

Unless you mark a story private, it joins Peabody’s library, where other kids can read the whole thing. Outside your family, your kid is a pen name, like Captain Moonbeam, never their real name. The hero is renamed for other readers too.

  • Any kid can read any level. Your scariness setting still applies, and your kid never sees past it.
  • Every story is screened for safety and labeled (funny, spooky, dragons…) so kids know what they’re getting into.
  • Readers give one, two or three thumbs up. There’s no thumbs down.
  • Want one kept in the family? Mark it private and it stays out of the library.
  • A kid who made their own account, with no grown-up, keeps every story just theirs: never in the library, never on a share link.
  • Story buddies. Your kid can follow a friend’s pen name and see their new stories. You see every follower and can remove any.

Right now the library is mostly Peabody’s own starter stories. It fills up as kids write.

Read Peabody’s stories free in the library, no account needed.

  • Peabody starter story

    Pim and the Mitten

    Grade 1 levelgentle24 pages

    animals · kindness · lost and found

  • Peabody starter story

    The Tapping in the Fog

    Grade 2 levelspooky21 pages

    mystery · night · animals

  • Peabody starter story

    The Deep Field

    Grade 6 levelspooky18 pages

    science fiction · survival · undersea

Popular stories

Send one to Grandma.

Your kid taps Share and a grown-up sends the link: anyone with it can read the story, no account needed. Links stay out of search engines, and there are no comments.

What Peabody keeps, and what it never does.

Peabody keeps

  • Grown-ups’ emails and logins
  • Each kid’s first name, avatar, pen name and sign-in code
  • Their reading and numbers level, and the grade a kid picks, if they pick one
  • Your settings, like scariness
  • Each kid’s school, if you pick one
  • Their stories, and the ideas they gave for them
  • How they read: answers, time on each page, words they tapped, who they read to
  • Thumbs, reactions and link opens on their stories; their story buddies

Peabody never

  • Asks for age or birthday
  • Takes last names, photos, addresses, or a kid’s email or phone
  • Records a voice (a 🎤 button only turns speech into typed words)
  • Shows ads, or sells your data
  • Shows your kid’s real name outside your family
  • Sends anything about your kid to a school
  • Lets kids chat openly with an AI
  • What the AI is told about your kid: their first name (only if you let them star in their stories), their reading level and the words they’re working on, your scariness setting, and the ideas they gave (plus the earlier books, if it’s a series). Never their age, school or last name. Tip for the ideas box: no last names or addresses.
  • Not an open chatbot. The one chat with an AI is Talk with Peabody, a short typed chat for 3rd grade and up in a family account: every message and reply is checked, a grown-up can read it, and you can turn it off. To other kids they can send phrases from Peabody’s own list, never typed words. The one exception is the online co-op in the Doomcrawl game, where a party of up to four can type short messages to each other. Every line is checked first (no names, numbers, places, links or rude words), and you choose who your child can type to there, or turn it off; the privacy page says exactly how it works.
  • The AI, rule by rule. What it writes, what it screens, what it is never told and what it never decides are written out on how Peabody uses AI.
  • Pen names in public. Outside your family, your kid is a pen name. Their real name never leaves the family, not even inside a story.
  • You set the scariness. Four levels, from gentle to horror. Your kid never sees past yours. Hard limits at every level: no graphic gore, nothing sexual, no self-harm.
  • No leaderboards. Points come only from finishing stories and math, and nothing is for sale.
  • Shared by default, private on request. Stories join the kids’ library under a pen name unless you mark them private. A kid’s own account, made without a grown-up, keeps every story private.
  • Never sold, never used for ads. The only outside services that touch your data are the ones that run Peabody: Anthropic (writes the stories), Supabase (stores the data), Vercel (hosts the site and counts visits without cookies) and Resend (sends email).
  • Delete everything, any time, from the grown-ups’ privacy screen.

Read the privacy policy →

Start free

A share for your kid’s school, once there’s money to share.

Peabody is free right now, so no money is going to schools yet, and none is piling up. Aaron pays for every story.

If paid plans start, the plan is for a third of what a family pays to go to a partner school, and the rest to run and build Peabody, including the AI that writes the stories. A school receives a share only once it becomes a partner, and more schools will be joining.

Schools will get money, never data: no names, no levels, nothing about your kid. Once money flows, Peabody will publish what each school has been paid.

A note from Aaron

Hi, I’m Aaron. I’m a dad in Colorado.

Like a lot of parents, I’ve walked out of a teacher conference and tried to fix everything in one weekend. Long sessions. It didn’t work. Kids can’t do long sessions. What they can do is a little, every day, and that turns out to be the hard part for a busy family.

So I built Peabody for my own kids. They tell it what the story should be about: a dragon, an ice monster, zombies, always zombies.

I learned some things the hard way. My kids asked me to tell the app they were in a higher grade, and once I did. The stories came out years too hard, and nothing caught it. My son told me so. He was right.

It’s free for the rest of 2026 while I find out whether other kids love it the way mine do. I pay for the stories. If something’s broken, confusing or wonderful, I want to hear about it.

— Aaron

Questions parents ask

What does “adaptive” mean here?

Something specific changes because of something your kid did, by a rule you can read. Pass a rung of the ladder and the next opens. Answer a question right and it never comes back. Miss one and it is asked once more, later in the round. The rules are the same for every kid and are written out on the science page.

Is it a learning app or a game?

Both, on purpose. The games are real games with a Just play mode, and in the learning modes the right answer is the move that gets you through. Stories and number practice sit beside them. Nothing a kid does is graded.

How old does my kid need to be?

Peabody never asks their age. Stories run from very first words (one big sentence a page, read with a grown-up) up to about an eighth-grade level.

Is it really free? What happens in 2027?

Free for everyone through Dec 31, 2026, with no card. What comes after isn’t decided yet. You’ll hear well before anything changes, and nobody is charged without choosing to pay.

Does Peabody use AI?

Yes. Stories are written by an AI model (Claude, from Anthropic). Code then measures each one’s reading level, and every story is screened for safety before your kid sees it.

Will my kid chat with an AI, or with other kids?

Only in one place: from 3rd grade, a child in a family account can have a short typed chat with Peabody (Talk), which you can read and turn off. Otherwise, not with an AI. Kids read stories, give thumbs up, tap reaction faces and share ideas for their own next story. With other kids, they can send phrases from Peabody’s own list (“Hi!”, a reaction face) by pen name, and you can turn that off. The one place kids can type to each other is the online co-op in the Doomcrawl game, where a party of up to four can send short messages. Every line is checked first, so names, numbers, places, links and rude words don’t get through, and you choose who your child can type to there: anyone, family only, emotes only, or no one.

How scary can stories get?

You choose: gentle, spooky, scary or horror. Your kid never sees past your setting. Some kids love a good scare; hard limits apply at every level.

What do other kids see about mine?

If you haven’t marked a story private, other kids can read the whole thing, with the hero renamed, plus its title, level, labels and your kid’s pen name. Never their real name, age or school.

Can my kid try it before I sign up?

Yes. From I’m a kid, they can make their own account with a first name and 4 numbers they pick. No email, no grown-up, and nothing else personal asked. Their stories stay just theirs: they never join the library and can’t be shared by link.

Do I need to sit with them?

For early readers, yes: those stories are built to be read side by side. Older readers can go on their own. A grown-up can type their ideas if your kid can’t type yet.

Siblings? Two parents?

One family account. Each kid signs in with their first name and a 4-digit code, and siblings can read each other’s stories. Each grown-up gets their own login. A kid can also make their own account from I’m a kid, with a first name and 4 numbers they pick; for now it stays on its own and can’t join a family account.

Are there numbers?

A little. Fractions, from naming them to adding unlike denominators, plus a times-tables drill. Problems are made and marked by code, not AI, and equivalent answers count (10/12 is 5/6). A wrong answer gets a picture that shows why.

What do we need?

Any phone, tablet or computer with a web browser. Nothing to install.

What does the school get?

Nothing yet, and never data. See the school section.

How do I delete everything?

From the grown-ups’ privacy screen. It’s gone within 30 days.

Their first game, and their first story, could be tonight.

A few minutes to sign up, and then your kid picks a game or dreams up a story. Peabody takes it from there.

Start freeFree for the rest of 2026. No card.

Kid right next to you? They can make a story now, no account needed: Make a Story →

Know a parent who’d love this?

Let’s make your first story!