The Free Tier Wars: Comparing the Free Plans of Top Brain Game Apps

Almost every brain-training app is free to download and then asks for money. The interesting question is not whether an app has a paid tier, but where it draws the line, and whether the free side is actually usable on its own. That varies enormously across the major platforms, and it is the difference between an app you can keep using for years and one you will abandon in a week.

Brain-game apps fall into two camps. The first treats the free tier as a demo: a small taste, with the real product behind a subscription. The second treats the free tier as the product, with paid features as genuine extras rather than the core. The distinction matters because a demo-style free tier is essentially unusable on its own. You hit the wall within days. A product-style free tier can be used indefinitely without ever paying.

Several well-known apps use the demo model. Lumosity, Elevate, and CogniFit all offer a free taste, but the structured programs, full game libraries, and detailed tracking that make up the real product sit behind a subscription that typically runs several dollars a month or more. The model is not inherently bad; it funds development and the paid versions can be genuinely good. But the free experience is a sample, not a full product, and if you are not willing to pay it will frustrate you fast.

Daily takes the product approach. The core is free: the daily puzzle, casual and competitive play, World Rankings, the six-dimension profile, and rated 1v1 duels. Daily Pro adds the archive and saved archive scores, but it does not gate the competitive core. A user who never pays still gets the full experience. The same is true of a few others: the New York Times daily games and Chess.com's tactical puzzles both give you a genuinely complete free habit, with subscriptions reserved for archives and extras.

When you size up any brain app's free tier, ask a few specific questions:

• Can you play every day indefinitely, or is there a daily limit that pushes you to pay?
• Do you get progress tracking and stats, or are those locked behind the subscription?
• Are the social and competitive features free, or only solo play?
• What exactly does the paid tier add, and is it a real extra or the actual core?

A tier that answers these favorably is one you can rely on. A tier that locks daily play, stats, and competition is a demo.

Paid tiers are sometimes worth it even when the free tier is generous. The clearest case is when the paid feature meets a specific need you actually have: an archive to replay old boards for practice, or deeper analytics for serious self-improvement. The weakest case is paying mainly to remove artificial limits the app imposed to pressure you. Removing a paywall that exists only to sell the subscription is paying to undo a frustration, not to gain a feature.

Price is not the only cost. Ad-supported free tiers extract value through your attention and data rather than your wallet. Frequent interstitial ads, data collection, and aggressive upgrade prompts all impose a real cost even when no money changes hands. Look past the price to the experience: how often are you interrupted, what data is collected, and how hard does the app push you toward paying. The best free tiers monetize through optional enhancements; predatory ones are technically free but charge in interruptions and tracking.

There is a deeper reason a generous free core matters for brain games: the benefit comes from consistency, and every barrier chips away at it. A daily limit that cuts you off, a paywall in front of stats, or a prompt every few minutes is a small reason to stop, and small reasons accumulate into abandoned habits. A free core removes those barriers, so the only thing between you and your practice is showing up. For a category whose value depends on doing it regularly over months, that is the difference between a habit that sticks and one that fizzles.

Compare free tiers not on whether they exist but on whether they work as standalone products. Demo-style tiers push you to pay within days. Product-style tiers, like Daily's free competitive core, can be used indefinitely. Decide whether you want a sample or a product, and choose accordingly.

Lumosity, brain-training program.

Elevate, brain-training app.

CogniFit, brain training and cognitive assessment.