Brilliant.org Review: Pros & Cons, Prices, and More
Are you one of those who think that Math is needed only for some nerdy tech specialists or scientists? No, Math is everywhere and can be highly beneficial for every person, no matter what their occupation is. For this aim, Brilliant.org has created an online platform where all, from tech professionals to just curious individuals can sharpen their brains and develop essential skills.
So, let’s find out more about this company in this review of brilliant.org.
- Very user-friendly interface
- The content is highly engaging
- Helps you improve your logical and creative thinking
- Can be accessed from anywhere, both from desktop and mobile
- Very responsive support
- Quite a high price for such an app with no monthly subscription
- Not a cost-effective solution if you just take a couple of courses per year
- Cancellation is not immediate so might be charged for the premium account
- Not very useful for advancing in your career or enhancing job-related skills
Evaluation Criteria | Score (5 is max) | Evaluation |
Content Quality | 5/5 | Brilliant’s course creators are math and science educators from prestigious universities, such as MIT, Duke, and Cambridge, who craft original and interactive content. |
Convenience | 4/5 | All Brilliant courses are self-paced. Yet, you can’t access advanced courses unless you finish the fundamentals. Their iOS app allows you to download lessons for offline viewing. This feature is unavailable for Android and desktop users. |
Free Content | 2/5 | Brilliant offers a 7-day free trial. You can start fundamental courses for free, but to finish them you will need to buy a monthly or annual subscription. |
Course structure | 3/5 | The course lessons typically comprise 10-15 exercises with graphic visuals and interactive engagement. There are no teacher-led videos. The lessons are self-paced and take 15 minutes to complete on average. |
User rating | 4.7 | 4.9 on App Store and 4.5 on Google Play |
“Very good for supplemental education, helps build intuition. Probably not the best as a sole resource in learning a new subject, introductions to new concepts are often brief and sometimes shallow. However they can often help you think about ideas in a new way. One example was their explanation of expected values in probability. They introduced the idea, then gave a name and symbol to it, not the other way round.”
Who is Brilliant for?
Brilliant might work for a lot of people and here are benefits you can expect for:
- You want to develop their critical thinking
- You want to keep your brain sharp and feel a lack of logic or math-related tasks in everyday life
- You want to learn STEM subjects with no huge commitment
- You are looking for engaging and useful quizzes to spend your time while waiting or on public transport
So, Brilliant.org is good for people who want to boost logical thinking, recall key math principles, or understand better what scientific thinking is. However, you will not really benefit from Brilliant is you want to improve specific professional skills or find a job in some field (e.g data analyst or software engineer). For this goal, you should consider other e-learning platforms like Coursera, DataCamp, or Udacity.
What is Brilliant?
Brilliant.org is a platform that helps people learn or recall key math, science, and tech concepts. The company has developed an app for learning subjects like Math, Computer Science, Data Analysis, and related topics in a story-driven environment.
Brilliant can be used by different types of users. These include individuals who want to improve professional skills, students, teachers who can use Brilliant.org for their students, parents who can buy a subscription for their children, and generally, everyone can utilize the platform. You will need to choose your category when you sign up. Based on this, the algorithm comes with the best options for your aims.
The company doesn’t state itself as a platform for getting into a new field and changing a career–it’s more about growing a STEM mindset and skills.
In a nutshell, the company offers over 110 different STEM courses that reveal various math and science topics. Each course includes quizzes and gamified tasks as a huge part of the learning process.
Brilliant can be used by adults of any age category as well as children and teens of 10 years and higher.
Brilliant offers the following user categories when you are signing up:
- Student or soon to be enrolled
- Professional pursuing a career
- Parent of a school-age child
- Lifelong learner
- Teacher
How does Brilliant work?
Brilliant works by gamifying the learning of complex ideas and abstract concepts. Short interactive lessons, quizzes and challenges keep students engaged and progressing. Courses are fun with lots of visuals, animations and games to cover complicated concepts.
Brilliant is an app for learning STEM subjects like math or logic in a gamified and engaging way. The company offers over 110 courses consisting of short interactive lessons, quizzes and challenges. There is progressive difficulty levels and you get rewards after finishing each. With each solved task, you get a more complicated one. For instance, Logic course is made of almost 20 games and puzzles that will take about 5-10 minutes to complete.
There are no instructors or deadlines, so you have no external pushing. The main aim is to train your brains to solve different tasks that you might not encounter in your everyday life.
Brilliant is a subscription-based service where you can pay for three months or for a whole year in advance. Then you choose a course you’re interested in with no limits on how many of them, you can take simultaneously. Then, you can access the content via your desktop or a smartphone as there are both Apple and Android apps, having 4.9 and 4.5 ratings accordingly.
Brilliant Courses
All the courses on Brilliant.org basically can be grouped into these categories:
- Math (Algebra, Mathematical Thinking, Geometry, Logic and Deduction, Contest Math, Calculus, Advanced Math, Math Puzzles)
- Data (Analysis, Probability, Statistics)
- Computer Science (Foundational Computer Science, Applied Computer Science, Computer Science Puzzles)
- Science (Scientific Thinking, Advanced Physics, Science Puzzles)
There is also a separate tab highlighting New Courses. Moreover, the company offers 5 learning paths, a series of courses united by the topic:
- Foundational Math (Algebra Fundamentals, Problem-Solving Essentials, Equations, Functions, etc.)
- Advanced Math (Calculus Intro, Derivatives & Integrals, Linear Algebra with Applications, etc.)
- Science (Waves and Light, Physics of the Everyday, Computational Biology, Solar Energy, etc.)
- Computer Science & Programming (Algorithm Fundamentals, Programming with Python, Artificial Neural Networks, Cryptocurrency, etc).
- Data Analysis (Data Foundations, Probability for Predictions, Correlation & Regression, Neural Networks)
Each learning path on Brilliant.org consists of 3 to 10 separate courses.
Each learning path on Brilliant.org consists of 3 to 10 separate courses.
If you don’t know where to start with Brilliant, here are their most popular courses:
- Logic
- Scientific Thinking
- Computer Science Fundamentals
- Pre-Algebra
Those courses were created by math and science educators from MIT, Caltech, Duke, the University of Chicago, and other people who work within the mentioned field.
So, to proceed, sign up with your email or your Facebook account, mention your learning goals, and choose the course that fits your needs the best.
Brilliant.org cost
The company has quite a simple pricing model where its cost depends on the period you are charged for. Basically, there are two options: you can pay for a month or annually. If you have long-term plans to use Brilliant, the annual subscription allows you to save money by reducing the monthly fee.
So, here is the Brilliant pricing in two currencies, USD and GBP. Total price in the table is the final price you will pay (billed as one payment).
The pricing depends on your physical location, and you cannot change the default currency (the only way is by using a VPN service). So, here is the Brilliant pricing in two currencies, USD and GBP. Total price in the table is the final price you will pay (billed as one payment).
Subscription type | USD, total price | USD, per month | GBP, total price | GBP, per month |
Monthly | $24.99 | $24.99 | £15.49 | £15.49 |
Annual | $161.88 | $13.49 | £126 | £8.75 |
Brilliant’s subscription renews automatically at the end of the term, and it will be billed for an annual plan automatically. You can turn off auto-renewal or cancel your subscription at any time on the Settings page.
The subscription on Brilliant.org can also be bought as a gift or can be purchased for a group of people.
There is also a 7-day free trial to test all the courses that are of interest to you. It allows you to try each course for some short period of time.
Brilliant.org courses
Mathematical Fundamentals
This course is built mostly as a set of quizzes with each step becoming more complicated as you move along. After the completion of the quiz, you see what percent of other users have also chosen the correct answer.
In a nutshell, this course includes almost 30 interactive quizzes and more than 225 concepts and exercises for improving your math education level and skills in logic, number theory, and algebra.
Generally, this course is more for having your mind sharp and practicing mental counting in a gamified way rather than grasping serious math concepts.
Logic
This course consists of 18 interactive quizzes and over 140 tasks that push you to think logically in order to solve them. They all are gamified and you can find yourself stuck dealing with a new and new task. Among the covered topics are Propositional Logic, Inclusive and Exclusive OR, Combinatorial Game Algorithms, and other subjects.
Computer Science Fundamentals
Here you can grasp the basics of algorithms and computational thinking. This course includes such topics as binary Search and brute-force search, greedy algorithms, decision trees, basics of programming among the other ones. The course helps you discover more than 125 concepts and includes 15 quizzes.
Scientific Thinking
This course comprises 21 lessons aimed at solving real-world puzzles with science. Users practice scientific principles to solve puzzles and make predictions about everyday phenomena. Below is an example of questions asked in this course.
If you have trouble answering the question, you can click on the “Explanation” button or skip it.
The course lessons experiment with gear mechanisms of increasing complexity, applying scientific principles of motion, energy, and force to a range of everyday situations. Every lesson finishes with a “Review and Reflect” section, summarizing the learned scientific phenomena.
Exploring Data Visually
This is the first course in the Data Analysis learning path. It consists of 9 lessons. The course is aimed at building a solid foundation in data analysis with visualizations and data transformations. It uses the case study of Starbucks to tech users make decisions with data.
Once you answer the questions, you can click on the “Explanation” button or continue to the next chunk of the lesson.
Throughout this course, users create charts and analyze data from companies such as Starbucks, FitBit, and Airbnb. It enables individuals to effectively communicate insights from complex data sets through compelling visual representations.
Brilliant for Educators
Brilliant for Educators offers a comprehensive platform for K-12 teachers to elevate STEM learning in their classrooms at no cost. With thousands of interactive lessons covering a wide array of subjects, educators can engage students with enriching content perfect for individual enrichment, class warm-ups, and inspiring critical thinking.
The platform is fully accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Schools, Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Moreover, Brilliant prioritizes data privacy, adhering to global privacy laws including COPPA, FERPA, and GDPR. Through active, inquiry-based learning experiences and access to over 90 courses and thousands of puzzles, Brilliant empowers educators to spark curiosity, foster problem-solving skills, and create dynamic learning environments.
Other reviews by Brilliant customers
Many users on Trustpilot, Quora, and Reddit give positive feedback on the service describing Brilliant as a good way to keep learning in an easy and engaging way. Some, however, complain that there is a lack of explanation and depth in the presentation of concepts. Also, there are many users who are upset with how hard it can be to cancel a subscription.
Here is what customers say about the content itself and their experience with Brilliant courses.
“Absolutely positive experience while learning Brilliant courses. I did Logic and Logic II courses and I would say it was the ideal mix of study and fun for me.”
“I used Brilliant for 1 year, I really liked the experience of learning something with almost not realising it. Curently I haven’t got time to use it on a regularly basis, that’s why I decited to deled my account.”
“The content is very interesting thought a bit too challenging for my 11 yo, but we will definitely be back in a couple of years.”
And here the customer describes how he feels about the growing complexity of the course (Logic).
“I recently bought the premium, and just finished the logic course. The lessons were pretty short, and I have to admit they did make an assumption that as you progressed through the course, your ability did as well, as the complexity of the questions noticeably increased, which is a shame considering how such courses cost money, and that lower ability users basically got nothing of the harder sections which they paid for. Anyways, aside from that petty note, it was fantastic, definitely sharpened my logical and reasoning skills.”
Here here we come to the aspect that customers complain the most about: the free trial and cancellation afterward.
“Be careful with your 7 days free trial period. I cancelled it on time, but it is convenietly designed the way that by cancelling it you just cancel a 7-day trial but the one year subscription has to be cancelled in a different menu”
“Disgraceful, I used the trial and cancelled before the renewal date – you guessed it they still take your £92 anyway and then make it difficult to get a refund. Just means after 2 weeks you can request it back from your UK bank.”
“I wanted to start working with Brilliant but even before I can start the free 7-days trial, I have to enter my creditcard info. So I’m sorry, this is not the way how we make websites attractive in Europe.”
There are a number of positive reviews about its customer support on Trustpilot:
“I installed it for the first time and accidentally bought subscription for an entire year. I dropped a mail to brilliant support. I was very unsure about getting a reply from them leave money aside. But I was so happy to see the reply and my problem was resolved.”
And here is the customer complaining about the Android app.
“At first I thought it is a good learning service, there is a bunch of usaful courses, but the Android app is very bad, it needs a full revamp. Too many bugs, and it resets the progress if I don’t finish the lesson and need to close the app and return later. Another concern is the lack of monthly subscriptions. And of course yearly subscription is too expensive.”
Brilliant Courses Alternatives
Read more about Coursera
As for similarities, Datacamp likewise includes a platform for practicing and some gaming elements like rewards. Moreover, when you buy a subscription (monthly or annual), both providers give access to all their courses.
Read more about Datacamp
FAQ
What is Brilliant.org?
Brilliant.org is an online learning platform that offers courses in mathematics, science, computer science, and engineering. It provides interactive lessons and quizzes designed to help learners develop problem-solving skills.
How much does Brilliant.org cost?
The cost of Brilliant Premium varies depending on the length of the subscription. There are two options– $24.99 paid monthly and $161.88 billed annually. There is also a 7-day free trial to test the platform.
What courses are available on brilliant.org?
Brilliant offers courses in a variety of subjects, including algebra, calculus, computer science, science, data analysis, and statistics. The courses are designed to be interactive and engaging, with a focus on problem-solving and critical thinking.
Who is Brilliant designed for?
Brilliant.org is designed for learners of all ages and skill levels who are interested in developing their problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. It can be used by students, professionals, and anyone who wants to improve their knowledge in math, science, and engineering.
How effective is Brilliant.org for learning?
Brilliant has been praised for its interactive approach to learning and its emphasis on problem-solving. Many users have reported significant improvements in their problem-solving abilities and confidence in math and science after using the platform. However, like any learning tool, its effectiveness depends on the individual learner’s motivation and commitment to the process.
Is there anything better than Brilliant?
If you want free content that is similar to Brilliant, Khan Academy is probably the best alternative. If you want to advance in your career or learn specific professional skills, check out Coursera.
I used brilliant for two years and completed several courses there. The biggest pro to me was I could access brilliant on the go and brush up on some relevant math subjects during times I would just be sitting around. Of course, you could achieve the same effect by just having a book with you as well.
Yes, it’s indeed one of the main selling points of Brilliant.
Brilliant is not going super deep into stuff, but it depends on the course. Some of them are fairly surface level and are good as a brief introduction to a subject, but not for studying it in depth (at least not as the primary source), whereas others go deeper.
Thank you for sharing! What are the courses that go deeper?
In comparison to Khan Academy, the explanations on Brilliant aren’t quite as good, but they cover a lot of material Khan academy either doesn’t cover at all or only has videos for and no exercises. Plus, Brilliant’s approach is just more engaging overall.
Thank you for your comment, Khan Academy is indeed a great source and it’s also free.
Hey! I tried out the free version of Brilliant after finishing my high school calculus class. Honestly, it’s kind of meh. The content is really basic, like they’re just giving you a quick peek into calculus without going into much detail. The first lesson covers stuff like derivatives, maximum and minimum values, and tangents, but it’s all watered down.
I think if you’re looking to learn calculus, you might be better off with Khan Academy. It’s free and more in-depth. You could also find a calculus textbook without spending money—maybe borrow one or check out OpenStax, they’ve got free textbooks online. Save your cash!
Hi David, thanks for sharing!