Boom Cards became the default digital material for speech therapy for good reasons: self-checking decks, a huge store of SLP-made content, & it runs in a browser, which made it a teletherapy staple. So the first honest point in any "Boom Cards alternatives" article is that Boom is still cheap & still good at what it does. The second is that SLPs leave for specific reasons, & each reason points to a different alternative. Pick based on why you're leaving.
Here's the TLDR (prices checked October 2026):
- Speech Therapy Magic (Magic Studio) - Best for: building your own decks that score the child's pronunciation. $9.99/mo or $79.99/yr, 7-day trial with no card.
- Ultimate SLP - Best for: a big ready-made library of games & card decks at a low price. $12.95/mo or $139.92/yr.
- The Digital SLP - Best for: no-print, interactive language materials for PreK-8. From $35/mo or $329/yr.
- Wordwall - Best for: quick DIY games from your own word lists. Free for 3 activities; paid from $7.20/mo.
- Easel by TpT - Best for: SLPs who already buy on Teachers Pay Teachers. Free tool; resources priced per seller.
- Baamboozle - Best for: screen-shared team games in groups. Free basic plan; Baamboozle+ from $4.99/mo.
- Articulation Station - Best for: structured articulation drill on iPad. Pro from $10/mo billed yearly.
First, What Boom Actually Costs Now
Boom renamed its membership tiers, so a lot of older comparison pages are wrong. Per Boom Learning's pricing page, the individual plans are now:
| Boom plan | Price | Students | Notable limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Limited | Free | 5 | 1 classroom; FastPlay pins last 5 days; 5 self-made decks |
| Core | $29.99/yr | 30 | 14-day pins; IEP & student success reports; 5 self-made decks |
| Premium | $49.99/yr or $6.99/mo | 150 | Full Boom Studio with uploads; share with colleagues |
| Publisher | $69.99/yr | - | Sell decks in the Boom Store |
Decks are bought separately in the Boom Store, mostly with points (roughly a cent a point). Schools can buy Boom Passport at $299 per educator per year, which Boom says includes 95,000+ Boom Cards without spending points. Boom's membership is cheaper than every paid alternative below except Wordwall; the real cost of Boom is usually the decks.
So why do SLPs look elsewhere? The reasons we see most: deck purchases add up across a caseload; Boom can't tell whether a child actually said the word (only whether they tapped the right card); building good decks yourself takes time; & quality in the store varies by seller.
Boom Cards Alternatives at a Glance
| Alternative | Format | Price (Oct 2026) | Free option | Beats Boom on | Loses to Boom on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Speech Therapy Magic | Deck builder + games + scoring | $9.99/mo, $79.99/yr | 7-day trial, no card | Pronunciation scoring, AI deck drafts | Tiny store, 10-student cap |
| Ultimate SLP | Ready-made library | $12.95/mo, $139.92/yr | 14-day trial | All content included | No data tracking advertised |
| The Digital SLP | No-print library | $35/mo, $89/qtr, $329/yr | 30-day trial | Curated language units | Price; data tools still in beta |
| Wordwall | Template game maker | Standard $7.20/mo; Pro $10.80/mo | 3 activities | Speed of building from a list | No speech-specific content |
| Easel by TpT | Self-checking digital resources | Per resource | Free tool, many free resources | Fits TpT purchases you own | Teletherapy-first design |
| Baamboozle | Team quiz games | From $4.99/mo (yearly) | Basic plan | Group energy | 1:1 drill, data |
| Articulation Station | iOS articulation app | Pro $15/mo or $10/mo yearly | 14-day trial | Structured artic drill + recordings | No Android, iOS/Mac only |
1. Speech Therapy Magic (Magic Studio) - If You Want Decks That Listen
Magic Studio is the closest thing to Boom Studio on this list, with one structural difference: recording prompts score the child's pronunciation of the word & each sound in it, using Speech Therapy Magic's own engine (ArticScore), & send the result to the child's progress chart. You build decks from 22 element types (flashcards, picture choices, minimal-pair pickers, recording prompts & more), or describe a deck in a short brief & let it draft one for you (5 briefs a month). Students open a published deck with a 6-digit PIN in any browser, with no student account & no install, which matters in teletherapy.
Where Boom wins: content. Speech Therapy Magic's deck marketplace listed seven decks when we checked, all free first-party ones, against Boom's very large store. If you rely on buying ready-made decks, that gap is decisive. It also covers 3 student profiles (extras $4.99/mo each, up to 10), so it's built for a small caseload or home practice rather than a full school roster. And the scores are practice feedback: the engine doesn't detect distortions & hasn't been validated on disordered child speech. Pricing is $9.99/mo or $79.99/yr after a 7-day trial with no card; there's no free plan. Speech Therapy Magic's own Boom Cards alternatives page goes deeper on the head-to-head.
Right for you if: you already build your own decks & want kids to practice saying words aloud between sessions.
2. Ultimate SLP - If You Want Everything Included
If your main Boom complaint is buying decks one at a time, Ultimate SLP is the obvious answer: one subscription, everything included. Its site claims 100+ online games, 500+ card decks, 30,000+ flash cards & a large photo library, from preschool to high school, with games for up to 6 players. It's $12.95/mo or $139.92/yr with a two-week trial. Quick math: ten monthly payments ($129.50) cost slightly less than the annual plan, so school-year SLPs can skip annual.
Trade-offs: no data tracking is advertised, & the content counts vary between pages on its own site. You use what they made; you can't build your own like Boom Studio.
3. The Digital SLP - If You Want Curated, No-Print Units
The Digital SLP membership claims 2,000+ interactive, no-print activities (interactive PDFs, web games, videos & songs), strongest in language for PreK-8. It works in a browser on tablets, computers & SMART Boards, & says it's teletherapy-friendly, hosted on a HIPAA-compliant server & iKeepSafe FERPA certified. QuickLinks let you send activities home (5, 25 or 50 a month depending on plan). Pricing: $35/mo, $89/quarter, or $329/yr, with a 30-day trial & refunds only within 7 days.
Trade-offs: it's the most expensive option here, its caseload & data planner is still described as coming soon, & high school content is listed as in development.
4. Wordwall - If You Mostly Build From Word Lists
Wordwall turns a list into a game (match-up, wheel, quiz, maze chase) in about a minute, which is faster than building a Boom deck card by card. The free Basic plan allows 3 activities from 12 templates; Standard is $7.20/mo ($57.60/yr) & Pro is $10.80/mo ($86.40/yr) with more templates. One catch older guides miss: browsing the community library of other teachers' activities now requires a paid plan.
Trade-offs: nothing speech-specific, & you supply the target words. Pair it with a checked word list (our guide to using ChatGPT & Claude for therapy materials shows how to get one without the usual errors).
5. Easel by TpT - If Your Materials Already Come From TpT
Teachers Pay Teachers' Easel lets you assign digital versions of TpT resources, including self-checking assessments with results by student & question, through Google Classroom or another LMS. The tool is free; resources are priced by each seller, & many are free. If you've been buying TpT products for years, this gets more use out of them. It's built around classroom assignment more than live teletherapy, though.
6. Baamboozle - If You Run Groups
Baamboozle is a team quiz game that works well on a shared screen with a speech group. The basic plan is free; Baamboozle+ is $4.99/mo billed yearly ($59.88) or $7.99 month to month. Great for engagement & turn-taking; not a tool for one-on-one drill or data.
7. Articulation Station - If You Want Structured Drill on iPad
Not a deck tool, but SLPs often weigh it against Boom for articulation. Little Bee Speech now sells it as Articulation Station Hive: Pro is $15/mo or $10/mo billed yearly with unlimited students, & a Parent plan is $10/mo or $7/mo yearly for 2 students (in-app purchase prices on the App Store are higher). It's well organized by sound, position & level, with scoring, recordings & graphs. It runs on iPhone, iPad & Apple-silicon Macs only, with no Android or Chromebook version.
Other Options SLPs Use
- SLP Now ($29/mo or $249/yr) is a materials-plus-planning subscription; it's more printable than interactive. Covered in our SLP subscriptions comparison.
- Google Slides is free & flexible, with drag-and-drop "movable piece" activities, but nothing self-checks.
- Genially has a free education plan for building interactive boards; EduPro is €4.99/mo billed yearly.
- Kahoot & Nearpod are whole-class tools; they work for language groups but are overkill for 1:1 sessions. Our roundup of classroom AI tools covers more of that category.
So, Should You Leave Boom?
- Tired of buying decks: Ultimate SLP (cheapest all-included) or The Digital SLP (more curated, more expensive).
- Want to know whether the child said it right: Speech Therapy Magic for scored decks you build, or Articulation Station on iPad.
- Build your own & want it faster: Wordwall for list-based games, Magic Studio for speech-specific decks with AI drafting.
- Happy with Boom's content, just watching the budget: stay. Core at $29.99/yr is hard to beat, & FastPlay plus Presentation Mode cover most teletherapy needs.
Many SLPs end up keeping Boom for the decks they've already bought & adding one tool for the gap. That's a perfectly reasonable answer.
A Note on Student Data
Every tool here holds some student information once you create rosters. Ask whether your district has a data agreement with the vendor, & prefer tools where students don't need accounts (Boom FastPlay, Magic Studio PINs). ASHA's Telepractice practice portal covers the privacy & security basics for remote sessions, & the Department of Education's FERPA pages cover what counts as student PII. For the wider context on tech for kids with disabilities, see our piece on AI & inclusive learning for students with special needs.
How We Evaluated These
We started from the reasons SLPs give for leaving Boom (deck costs, no speech feedback, build time, store quality) & looked for the tool that best answers each. For every option we checked price, free tier, trial, platforms, content claims & data features on the vendor's own site in October 2026. Content counts are the vendors' own claims, not our tallies. Boom's prices were read from its pricing page; its points-pack pricing comes from its help center & may change. We didn't run a hands-on classroom trial of each tool & aren't claiming one. Speech Therapy Magic facts come from its live product pages.
FAQ
Is there a free alternative to Boom Cards for speech therapy?
Yes: Wordwall's free plan (3 activities), Easel by TpT (free tool, many free resources), Google Slides, & Baamboozle's basic plan. Boom's own Limited plan is also free for up to 5 students. None of the subscription libraries are free beyond their trials.
What is cheaper than Boom Cards?
Very little, on membership alone: Boom Core is $29.99/yr. Wordwall Standard ($57.60/yr) & Speech Therapy Magic ($79.99/yr) cost more but include things Boom doesn't. Where Boom gets expensive is buying decks, so compare your yearly deck spend, not just the membership.
Can I use Boom Cards in teletherapy?
Yes. Boom runs in a browser, & FastPlay pins & Presentation Mode work over screen-share. On the free Limited plan, FastPlay pins expire after 5 days.
Which Boom alternative tracks articulation accuracy?
Speech Therapy Magic scores recorded words automatically & charts accuracy by sound & position; Articulation Station records attempts with scoring & graphs. Neither replaces your clinical judgment, & automated scores aren't validated assessment data for disordered child speech. Our sibling guide to apps that score a child's pronunciation explains the limits.
Can I make my own decks somewhere other than Boom?
Yes: Magic Studio, Wordwall, Genially & Google Slides all let you build your own. Magic Studio is the only one of those built specifically for speech therapy, & can sell your decks on its marketplace (sellers keep the sale price minus a 15% platform fee & payment processing).
Disclosure: Justin Gluska, who writes for Gold Penguin, also builds Speech Therapy Magic, which appears in this article.
