Free Lumosity
alternatives.

Lumosity is the best-known brain-training app and the one with the most public history. In 2016 its maker paid $2 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it had claimed, without evidence, that its games could improve performance at work and school and delay age-related cognitive decline.^[1] The order requires clinical evidence before any such claim in future. That history is the right starting point for comparing alternatives, because it changes the question from “which app trains your brain best?” to “which is the most enjoyable, least costly way to spend a few minutes thinking?”

The comparison

What Lumosity does well

Variety and polish. Fifty-plus games with adaptive difficulty and a clean progress dashboard is a lot of entertainment, and the free tier is generous enough to try. The “Lumosity Performance Index” looks scientific but is a composite of your game scores; it tracks your improvement at Lumosity, which the research suggests is mostly what you are improving.^[2]

When to choose each

• Lumosity if you want a large, varied game library and do not mind paying for it as entertainment.
• Elevate if you want to practise reading, writing and arithmetic directly, where getting better at the exercise is itself useful.
• Brisk if you want a two-minute shared daily ritual with a leaderboard, no account, and a site that will not oversell you. Today’s challenge.
• A crossword if you want the puzzle with the best single piece of trial evidence and a century of practice behind it.

What the experts recommend instead of any of them

The Global Council on Brain Health concluded that commercial brain games have not shown everyday benefits and recommended sustained, novel, challenging activities: learning a language or instrument, taking a course, volunteering.^[3] Any app on this page is best treated as a small, pleasant part of a much bigger picture. That picture is set out in how to keep your mind sharp.