Comparison
Gauth vs Socratic by Google
Start with the thing most comparisons still get wrong: Socratic is no longer a separate app. Google retired it and moved the flow into Lens and Gemini, where it is still free.
Verdict
Socratic is free and now lives in Google Lens. Gauth writes the derivation.
The Socratic experience — photograph a question, get an explanation with videos and articles behind it — is still available at no cost, but you reach it through Lens in the Google app rather than a Socratic install, and Google has since begun routing homework questions towards Gemini as well. For understanding a concept you have never met, that curated-resource approach is genuinely good, and free is hard to argue with. Gauth is the better choice when you need the specific problem in front of you worked all the way through in a predictable format, with a follow-up question answered afterwards — but we cost money past the third solution of the day and have no app on your phone at all.
Who should pick which
Pick Socratic, now Google Lens, if
- Your budget is zero and you want no limits attached to that.
- You learn best from a short video by a real teacher.
- Your question is conceptual — what does this term mean, why does this happen.
- Your homework spans history and English as well as math.
Pick Gauth if
- You need this exact problem solved, not the topic explained.
- You want every step justified in writing, the same way each time.
- You want to ask "but why that number?" and get an answer.
- You are working on a laptop and would rather type than photograph.
Feature by feature
| Gauth | Socratic | |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile app | No — browser only | Yes, inside the Google app on iOS and Android |
| Still a standalone product | Yes | No — folded into Google Lens and Gemini |
| Cost (September 2026) | First solution free, then 3 a day; Plus $11.99/mo | Free, no cap, no tiers |
| Photo input | Upload a photo in the browser | Live camera in Lens |
| Curated videos and explainer articles | No | Yes — a core part of the result |
| Full written derivation for whatever you enter | Yes, in the same format every time | Varies with the problem and the resources available |
| Follow-up questions on the answer | Included, no extra quota | Search again or refine the query |
| Subjects covered | Math, physics, chemistry | Broad, including history and literature |
| Rendered mathematical notation | Yes | Yes, in the math solver panel |
| Account needed | Not for the first solution | No |
Most of that table goes the other way, and the row that decides it is cost. Free with no cap beats three solutions a day for anyone counting, and being already installed on hundreds of millions of Android phones beats a website you have to remember to open.
Pricing
Socratic. Free, and it always was. There is no premium tier, no question allowance, and nothing to cancel. Google funded Socratic as an educational product, and the homework capability that replaced it is part of the Google app, so the price as of September 2026 is zero. What is not guaranteed is the shape of it: Google has already retired the standalone app once and has been shifting the flow between Lens and Gemini since, so plan for the feature to move rather than to vanish.
Gauth. The first solution is free with no account and no card. A free account gets three solutions a day. Gauth Plus is $11.99 a month with a three-day free trial, $31.99 a quarter, or $99.99 a year, as of September 2026, and follow-up questions are included on every plan without counting against the daily allowance. The pricing page has the current figures.
There is no honest way to spin this row. If cost is your binding constraint, use Lens. The question worth asking is not which is cheaper but whether a free explainer plus a video answers the question you actually have, which for a specific worked problem it sometimes does not.
The same problem, both tools
Factor . This is the trinomial that breaks students who learned factoring only with a leading coefficient of 1: you cannot simply find two numbers that multiply to −15 and add to 1, because the 6 changes the arithmetic.
Google Lenshandles the recognition well — point the camera and the expression is read accurately, handwriting included. What comes back is a result together with learning resources: explainer articles about factoring quadratics, videos on the AC method, and search results on the topic. For a supported problem type Google's math solver panel will also show guided steps. The strength of that design is that a good video on the AC method teaches the whole class of problems, not just this one. The weakness for homework is that the depth of the written working varies with the problem, so the answer to "what do I write on line two of my page" may be a fifteen-minute video rather than a line.
Gauth writes the specific derivation. It names the method, multiplies , states that it needs two numbers with product −90 and sum +1, produces 10 and −9, splits the middle term, groups, and lands on with the expansion shown as a check. The reasoning is attached to each move rather than left as an exercise, and you can ask what happens if no such pair of numbers exists — a question worth asking, since that is exactly the signal that a trinomial is prime. The four patterns worth recognising on sight are laid out in our guide to factoring quadratics.
Factoring 6x² + x − 15 with the AC method
0 of 6 stepsSolve a algebra problem now
First solution freeWhere Socratic is the better choice
Free with no ceiling is not a small thing, and it is worth stating plainly rather than hedging. A student can photograph fifty questions across a whole term and never see a paywall, a quota, or a card form. Nothing in this comparison competes with that, and for a household where a subscription is not happening, the argument ends there.
The curated-resource model is also genuinely better than generated text for one important case: the first time you meet an idea. If you have never seen the AC method, a well-made ten-minute video by a teacher who has explained it a thousand times will teach it better than any solver's prose, including ours. Google's homework help is built to find that video and put it in front of you, along with articles and examples from sources that were written to teach rather than to answer. That is a different and often superior product for concept-first learning.
Coverage is broader too. Gauth handles math, physics, and chemistry. The Lens homework flow will help with a history question, a poem, or a biology diagram, because behind it sits the whole of Google Search. For a student whose homework is not exclusively STEM, that breadth is worth more than depth on quadratics.
And the friction is close to zero. On an Android phone the Google app is already installed and the camera is two taps from the home screen. No download, no login, no new password, no subscription to remember to cancel. For a younger student in particular, that combination — free, already there, no account — is the reason to start here and only move on if it is not answering the question you have.