About MathIt — and the Indie Developer Behind It

What MathIt is

MathIt turns arithmetic into something kids and adults actually want to return to every day. It brings together two things that rarely live in the same app: a structured, self-paced learning path — mental-math lessons, kindergarten object games, grade-by-grade practice, and hidden-rule logic puzzles — and fast, real-time multiplayer battles where two to five players race to solve the same equations. You can quietly work through a daily plan on your own, or share a room code and compete head-to-head with friends and family.

Around 90 game types span counting and number sense in kindergarten all the way through Grade 7 arithmetic, percentages, averages, estimation, and reasoning puzzles. An adaptive-difficulty system tunes each drill to the learner's grade and pace, so a first grader and an adult brushing up on mental math each get problems that are challenging without being discouraging. The entire app is localized into 20 languages, and it is free to download and play on both the App Store and Google Play.

Why MathIt exists

Most math apps make you choose between "fun but shallow" and "thorough but joyless." Arcade-style games are entertaining for an afternoon but never build real fluency; worksheet apps cover the curriculum but drain every bit of motivation out of it. MathIt was built to close that gap. The practice is genuinely fun because it is social and fast, and it adds up to real progress because it is backed by lessons, a daily plan, and difficulty that grows with the learner.

Speed is the hook. When the first correct answer earns two points and the next earns one, every millisecond of recall matters — and that pressure is exactly what turns slow, deliberate arithmetic into automatic fluency. Whether it is a math game for kids learning their times tables through a multiplication tables game, a family playing together on the couch, or an adult keeping their mental math sharp, MathIt is designed so the fun and the learning are the same activity, not a reward bolted onto a lesson.

Who builds MathIt

MathIt is built by Sergey Bogdanov, an independent software developer who has spent more than a decade making education apps. He is the founder of Songtive and Piano Companion, a family of music-education apps used by students and musicians to learn chords, scales, and music theory, and of KidTeller, a storytelling app for kids. MathIt continues that same thread: taking a subject people often find intimidating and making it approachable, playful, and habit-forming.

As an indie developer, Sergey designs, builds, and ships MathIt himself. There is no committee and no publisher between the people who play the app and the person who writes its code — feedback from parents, teachers, and players goes straight to the source, and it regularly shapes what gets built next. Lessons get rewritten, games get added, and difficulty gets retuned based on how real learners actually use the app.

Sergey writes about building software and running independent products on his blog at desunit.com/blog, and shares work in progress on X at @desunit. If you want to understand the thinking behind MathIt, or reach the person behind it, those are the best places to start.

Our approach: learning through play

The guiding idea behind MathIt is that people learn fastest when they are engaged, not when they are bored. Every part of the app is built around that belief. Kindergarten games show quantities as objects — circles, squares, stars — instead of bare digits, so pre-readers can build number sense before they can read. Mental-math lessons teach a strategy first, then let learners drill it at their own pace, untimed, until it clicks. Logic puzzles add reasoning practice that goes beyond memorized facts. And a personalized daily plan keeps each learner on the right mix of skills instead of leaving them to guess what to practice next.

Because many MathIt players are children, the app is designed to be safe by default. There is no chat and no way to communicate with strangers — multiplayer rooms are private and reachable only through a shared code. MathIt uses anonymous authentication, so no email, real name, or date of birth is required to play. Analytics are aggregated and anonymized rather than used to profile individual users, and the app follows a COPPA-conscious advertising approach: for a young audience, only limited, non-personalized ads are served, and parents can remove ads entirely with an optional ad-free subscription. Families can play together with confidence, and parents can hand the app to a child without worrying about who they might meet inside it.

Contact

Questions, bug reports, feature ideas, or feedback from teachers and parents are always welcome. Reach the team directly at [email protected]. You can also explore everything MathIt offers on the home page or download it free on the App Store and Google Play.