Photomath

Photomath turns a phone camera into a maths tutor. Point it at a problem — handwritten, printed in a textbook, or on a screen — and it returns not just the answer but the route to it, broken into steps you can expand one at a time. Word problems are handled as well as symbolic ones.

Steps are the product, not the answer. Most solvers stop at a result. Photomath's design assumption is that the result is the least useful part: each problem is decomposed into bite-sized steps, and Animated Steps show the actual progression of a manipulation rather than presenting before and after. Where a problem admits more than one approach, it offers several, so a student can follow the method their class is actually using instead of one the app preferred.

Coverage. Elementary arithmetic through algebra, geometry, trigonometry, statistics and calculus — school level through early college. The educational content is built by Photomath's own mathematicians and former teachers rather than generated wholesale, which is what keeps the intermediate steps pedagogically sane rather than merely correct.

Pricing. Free to download, and basic step-by-step explanations cost nothing. Photomath Plus, at $9.99 per month or $69.99 per year, adds the fuller explanations, custom visual aids and the extra "how" and "why" commentary.

Platforms. iOS and Android. The app has been on the App Store since 2014 and holds a 4.8 average across roughly 733,000 US ratings; it is owned by Google.

The obvious caveat applies: an app that solves homework can be used to skip homework. Photomath's own framing — steps, methods, explanations — is aimed at the student who wants to understand where they went wrong, and it is noticeably better at that than at simply producing answers.