Poll Everywhere
Poll Everywhere's free plan never expires and supports ~40–50 participants. Basic paid scales to 700 with LMS integration, reporting, and AI-assisted creation.
Hands-on comparison
Poll Everywhere vs. Kahoot! (2026)
One is built for game-show energy. The other for professional and academic depth. Here's how to choose.
Poll Everywhere and Kahoot! both engage audiences, but they are built for different moments. Kahoot! thrives when competition and fun are the point. Poll Everywhere is built for when you need results you can act on.
The bottom line
These tools take different approaches to the same goal. Kahoot! is a good choice when gamification is the point — classrooms and training sessions where timed questions, points, and leaderboards drive engagement. Poll Everywhere is a good choice when you want engagement to fit into how you already present: inside your slides and meeting tools, at your own pace, with a neutral look that keeps the focus on your content. It’s also the most widely supported engagement platform among top U.S. universities.
Side-by-side comparison
| Feature | Poll Everywhere | Kahoot! |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Presenters who want live engagement inside whatever they already present from — slides, video calls, Canva, PDFs, or the browser | Audiences where game-style competition drives engagement |
| Free audience limit | 40 participants |
40 for K-12; 10 for Higher Education |
| Paid audience limit |
Lecture ($108/yr) raises the audience to 700. Attendance and reporting start at Educator. LMS integration and grading are on Campus-wide. |
Up to 800 (standard plan); 2,000 (Pro); 5,000 (Premium) |
| Native PowerPoint plug-in | 2.0 PowerPoint add-in (2026); campuses are migrating from 1.0 through 2027. | Yes |
| LMS / LTI support | LTI 1.3 Advantage; Canvas Certified Integration & Canvas Partner | LTI 1.3 Advantage, Canvas Partner |
| Security certifications | SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001 + 27701 + 42001 | SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001 |
| Q&A moderation | Supported; advanced moderation implemented in 2.0 | Present in Kahoot! 360 products |
| Anonymous participation | Supported | Supported |
| AI-assisted creation | Available | Available |
Which tool is right for you?
The decision usually comes down to your use case, not the tools themselves. Here's a quick filter.
| Choose Poll Everywhere if… | Choose Kahoot! if… |
|---|---|
| The setting is professional or academic and a game format doesn’t fit the tone | Gamification genuinely drives engagement for your audience |
| You want a neutral or self-branded look that blends with your own slides | The fun, lively branding is an asset for the audience |
| You would prefer to bring content or use AI to get started | You want to start from a large library of ready-made quizzes |
How each tool performs by scenario
Both tools can handle basic polling. The differences show up in specific conditions. Below is a direct comparison across the six use cases covered in our hands-on testing.
| Scenario | Poll Everywhere | Kahoot! |
|---|---|---|
| Teaching a class | Yes — LaTeX, native slide integration, anonymous participation, formative assessment, reusable questions, LMS grade passback. Strong fit across disciplines. | Yes -- Kahoot! has similar capabilities for K12 and Higher Ed classes with a different brand and approach. |
| All courses at a university | Yes — LTI 1.3, Canvas Certified Integration + Canvas Partner, SOC 2, assessment and reporting workflows supported. | Yes — LTI 1.3, Canvas Partner, SOC 2, assessment and reporting workflows supported. |
| Team meeting | Yes — professional and reliable. Works inside slide decks. | Yes — professional and reliable. Works inside slide decks. |
| Company-wide Q&A | Yes — scales to large audiences. Voting, ranking, and real-time display. | Yes — scales to large audiences. Voting, ranking, and real-time display. |
| New employee onboarding | Yes — sessions reuse across cohorts. Engagement data is reviewable. | Yes — sessions reuse across cohorts. Engagement data is reviewable. |
| Conference presentation | Yes — reliable at scale. Wide question type variety. | Yes — reliable at scale. Wide question type variety. |
Watch our unedited first-time tests
Unedited first-time recordings of both tools — no scripts, no retakes.
Poll Everywhere
Video transcript – Poll Everywhere
0:00 Okay, it's time for Poll Everywhere. I'm on a casual Friday here — not the same day as the other recordings. I'm already familiar with this product, so it's not really fair for me to do a blind run-through, but I'll do my best to do a stream-of-consciousness walkthrough.
0:20 We're starting out after sign-up and login. We're going to ask about turtles again — that's our running theme. We'll go for a Competition, which is the gamified version with leaderboards.
1:09 We could make a series of polls as well. These questions are AI-generated — trivia about the Ninja Turtles theme song. Not quite what we wanted, but we can run through it. You could edit the questions or adjust the AI prompt to improve output.
2:00 For the purpose of comparison I'm going to go ahead and present, and I'm joining with another device. Responding as "the helpful zebra." Let's see — Donatello — and the helpful zebra is in the lead.
2:48 My mistake — I started on the final slide. Let me jump back. Okay, so now we have the competition loaded. Leo. Zebra is ahead. Points are allotted based on response time. The radar visualization looks good.
3:37 You get confetti and a leaderboard at the end. There are a lot of little things you can do in a competition — showing who's connected, for example. You can also export polls to PowerPoint, view questions and correct responses, and pull reporting.
4:48 Let's look at billing quickly. We're on the Teams trial for the first 30 days, then we drop to Intro — 40-person audience size, some AI prompts per month, unlimited questions. Higher tiers increase audience size, reporting capabilities, AI access, and branding. Pricing feels fairly competitive with the others we've tested.
5:36 That's Poll Everywhere.
Kahoot!
Video transcript – Kahoot!
0:00 Alright, this is Kahoot. We're going to make polls about the Ninja Turtles, similar to the other platforms. Kahoot is known for gamification, bright colors, and K–12 use — but they have a lot of footprint elsewhere too.
0:19 K-360 test drive requires payment. All the initial options appear paid. I need to find another way in. Verify inbox — okay, that's security. Can I get started? I still need to buy something. Oh — this one I can test drive. A little bumpy to get started, but it matches the brand: rounded rectangles, bright colors, free resources.
1:35 Let's jump into Create. Quick Kahoot. We can generate from PDF, from a topic, or blank canvas. These are AI-assisted — we'll try generating from a topic: a series of polls about who is the best Ninja Turtle. Three AI tries left. Giving it a moment.
3:15 Got it — Favorite Turtle, Weapon Mastery, Jokes, Smartest, Fighter. Very bright, heavy full-background images — I like those. Generation took a bit longer, probably because of image retrieval or generation. We get to pick which questions to add. I'm adding Leader, mask color, team strategist, pizza partner energy. Saving.
5:01 It wants us to upgrade. Let's do the thing first. Classic mode — start. Generating a pin — that's a long pin, but we can use the camera to join. Picking a nickname. Get started.
6:20 First poll: What's your current favorite turtle? On my device I just see colored squares — I have to match them up to the answers on the main screen. Let's say Leo. Small bars appear. Next question: Who wins the leadership? Let's say Michelangelo — definitely not right, but okay.
6:59 Leaderboard. No correct answers set so we're at zero. Multi-select — I have to submit. Now I have some correct answers and a score. The AI set the correct answers — that's a nice touch. Partial credit. Intense fighter. The makeup slide looks great — the color pop really lands.
8:52 Pizza Partner Energy. Of course it should be Mikey. Podium — confetti, drumroll animation. 3,310 points, two out of six. Fun animation. Dancing. It's very bright, very colorful — the design sensibility is different from Mentimeter but it lands what it's going for.
9:52 I can look at the summary, rate the Kahoot, say if I learned something, and whether I'd recommend it. That's a nice touch. Upgrade options: Pro Plus — 1,000 participants at $4.68/year. Cheaper option at $2.28 for 50 participants. Goes from 50 to 200 to 1,000 to 2,000. This was fun — Kahoot's famous for that.
Pricing and limits
Kahoot!
Kahoot! has a trial with strong upgrade nudges. Free access is limited. Paid plans scale to 800 participants on higher tiers. Separate business and education plans with different feature sets.
What usually triggers a procurement conversation
Enterprise procurement for Kahoot! typically comes through team or business plans that include admin controls and LMS launch support. Poll Everywhere procurement conversations often center on LMS integration, security certifications, and SSO.
Switching between Poll Everywhere and Kahoot!
Moving from Kahoot! to Poll Everywhere
Organizations moving from Kahoot! to Poll Everywhere typically do so as a preference in the aesthetics and brand promises between the two companies or a preference for Poll Everywhere's proven track record across the US Higher Ed system and F1000.
Moving from Poll Everywhere to Kahoot!
Teams moving from Poll Everywhere to Kahoot! are usually shifting to a more game-oriented format — often for specific training or team-building contexts where the competitive energy is the point, rather than data collection.
See how Poll Everywhere compares to Kahoot! in your setting
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