MyClassScreen vs Classroomscreen: a free alternative, compared honestly

On this page
- Short answer
- Feature table
- What Classroomscreen does better
- What MyClassScreen does differently
- Saving and accounts
- Privacy and student data
- Rebuild your Classroomscreen board in 5 minutes
- Which one to choose
- FAQ

Disclosure: MyClassScreen publishes this page. Classroomscreen is a trademark of its owner, and we are not affiliated with it. Competitor details come from its public pricing page, checked October 2026, and we have tried to describe its strengths fairly.

Short answer

If you want a projected classroom board and you do not want to pay to keep your layouts, MyClassScreen is a good free fit. You build a board once, press Save Board, give it a name, and it waits for you in "My Boards" the next morning. There is no paid tier on the board and no account to create.

If your school already pays for Classroomscreen, or you rely on students voting from their own devices, Classroomscreen is probably the better choice. It is a mature, well-known product with remote poll voting, an annotation bar, cloud-saved screens on its Pro plan and licensing that a district can buy with a purchase order.

Both tools run in a web browser, both are designed for a projector, TV or interactive panel, and neither asks students to sign up to see the board. The real differences sit in four places: what is free, where saved boards live, how polls collect answers, and which extras sit next to the timer.

Feature table

The Classroomscreen column uses its public pricing page as of October 2026. The MyClassScreen column describes the live board on the same date.

Prices change, and taxes are added at checkout in some countries. Check Classroomscreen's pricing page before you buy [1].

What Classroomscreen does better

A fair comparison has to start here, because Classroomscreen is good at several things we do not try to do.

• Polls on student devices. Basic includes remote poll voting, so students can answer from a laptop or phone. That gives you anonymous responses and a cleaner count in a class of 30. On MyClassScreen the poll is counted by the teacher at the board, which works without devices but is not anonymous.
• Drawing over everything. Its annotation bar lets you mark up the whole screen. Our Draw widget is a box you place on the board, so you annotate inside it, not over the timer or the text.
• Saving that follows you between computers. Pro screens live in your account. If you teach in three rooms, you sign in anywhere and your screens are there. MyClassScreen saves to the browser on the device you used, so moving rooms means using a link.
• Safety nets. Pro keeps deleted items for 30 days and lets you organise screens in folders. We have neither.
• School purchasing. The Organization plan has reassignable licenses, volume pricing, quotes, invoices and purchase orders. If your district needs a signed vendor relationship, that matters more than price.
• Familiarity and support. Many teachers already know where everything is, and the product has a large help centre and detailed widget pages. If your colleagues share Classroomscreen screens, switching alone has a real cost.

If two or more of those points describe your classroom, stay with Classroomscreen or ask your school about an Organization licence. That is a reasonable outcome of this page.

What MyClassScreen does differently

MyClassScreen was built around one job: the screen at the front of the room during a normal school day. These are the choices that make it different, not automatically better.

Saving is free and unlimited. The board has a Save Board button. Name the board, and it is stored under My Boards. A teacher with five sections can keep five boards, each with its own roster, agenda text and timer length, and switch between them in a few seconds between bells.

More widgets in one menu. The board menu lists 43 widget types as of October 2026. Next to the usual timer, clock, stopwatch, name picker, group maker, sound meter and traffic light, you will find:

• Routine widgets: work symbols (Silence, Whisper, Ask Neighbor, Work Together), a visual timetable, learning objectives, a calendar, a second countdown timer with one-tap presets and an attention signal.
• Check-in widgets: a poll, a this-or-that vote, an exit ticket and class points.
• Teaching widgets: text, images, a PDF viewer, a video player, embeds, link buttons, a webcam, flashcards, vocabulary, a quiz and a QR code maker.
• Review and brain-break games: a Wordle-style word game, crossword, word search, trivia, memory, math facts, a typing race, Snake, Tetris and Breakout.

Templates that open as live boards. The templates library has 22 layouts. Each one is a link such as /board/?template=bell-ringer, so it loads with the widgets already placed. You can edit it, then save it as your own.

Built for rooms without student devices. The poll, this-or-that and exit ticket are counted at the board. Students answer with hands, fingers or mini whiteboards, and you tap the totals in. That suits younger grades and schools with shared device carts.

Classroom example: one Tuesday, two tools

Here is an example of how the same middle school teacher might run a day with four sections on each tool.

• Classroomscreen Basic: before each class, the teacher opens the board, adds a timer and a name picker, and loads one of three saved name lists. Section four needs its list retyped or swapped in. Upgrading to Pro removes that step and saves each screen.
• MyClassScreen: the teacher built four boards on Monday. At each bell they open My Boards, click the next section's board, and press full screen. The roster, warm-up text and 5-minute timer are already there.

Neither routine is hard. The question is whether you would pay $36 a year to skip the rebuild, or use a tool where saving is part of the free board.

Saving and accounts

This is the biggest practical difference, so here is exactly how it works on each side.

On MyClassScreen, a saved board is stored in your browser's local storage on that device [3]. You do not create an account, so there is no password to forget and no email list. The trade-offs are honest ones:

• A board saved on your classroom laptop will not appear on your home laptop by itself.
• Clearing your browser data, or using a private window, removes saved boards.
• A school computer that resets each night will not keep them.

To move a board, use Copy link on the board toolbar. If you opened a template and did not change it, the link points to that template. If you changed things, the link carries the layout itself, so opening it on another device rebuilds the board. Very large boards, such as ones with an uploaded photo, can be too long for a link; in that case, rebuild the image part on the new device.

On Classroomscreen, you log in to an account. Basic remembers up to three name lists and your widget bar, and Pro saves full screens to the account, in folders, with 30-day undo. That is more convenient across devices, and it is the main thing the subscription pays for.

A useful rule: if you teach in one room on one computer, browser saving is enough. If you move between rooms and devices every day, account-based saving is worth a serious look.

Privacy and student data

A projected board should collect as little as possible about students. Both tools let students see the board without an account, which keeps data collection low. In the United States, that matters under COPPA for children under 13 and under FERPA for education records [4][5]. Your district may have its own approved-tool list, so check it first.

What leaves the device on MyClassScreen:

Two practical tips: use first names or table numbers in name pickers, and keep shared links to colleagues. Articles on this site carry ads from our ad partner, but the board itself does not, so nothing on the projected screen is an advert.

Classroomscreen's remote voting does involve student devices. That is not a problem in itself, but it is one more thing to confirm against your district's rules before you use it with young children.

Rebuild your Classroomscreen board in 5 minutes

There is no import tool, so you rebuild by hand. For most boards that takes about five minutes.

1. Screenshot your current screen in Classroomscreen so you have a reference for widget positions and text.
2. Open a starting point. Use the free board for a blank canvas, or a template that matches your routine, such as Bell Ringer or Morning Meeting.
3. Add the widgets you use most from the menu: usually a timer, a text box for the agenda, a name picker and either the sound meter or work symbols.
4. Paste your class list into the name picker, one name per line, then press Save Names. Repeat for any group maker.
5. Set the timer length you use most, type your agenda, and drag each widget into place.
6. Pick a background. Choose one of the built-in styles (Dots, Grid, Lines, Navy, Cream, Rose, Teal, Sky or Dark) or upload your own image.
7. Press Save Board and give it a name a substitute could understand, such as "Period 2 Math".
8. Press full screen on the projector and run it for a week before rebuilding your other classes.

If something is missing for your routine after a week, that is useful information. Keep Classroomscreen for that job, or tell us through the contact page.

Which one to choose

Choose MyClassScreen if most of these are true:

• You teach mostly from one computer and want free saving.
• Your students do not have their own devices, or you prefer hands-up responses.
• You use review games and want them on the same board as your timer.
• You would rather not pay a subscription or ask your school to buy licences.

Choose Classroomscreen if most of these are true:

• Your school already pays for it, or colleagues share screens with you.
• You want students to vote on their own devices.
• You move between rooms and need saved screens on any computer.
• Your district needs a vendor with invoices, quotes and licence management.

Many teachers can try both in one planning period. Build the same board in each and see which one you still want to open on Friday.

We also cover TeacherStack vs Classroomscreen in detail.