About Kidling
Kidling is a learning app for children aged two to eight that runs in a browser. There is nothing to download, no app store and no install. This page explains why it exists and where we stand on the three things parents ask about first: adverts, data and difficulty.
Why it exists
A great deal of children's software is designed to be hard to put down. Sessions have no end, rewards land on a schedule, and the next thing starts before the last one has finished. Kidling is built the other way round. Activities are short and they finish. A session should end with a child who has done a thing, not one who is mid-thing when the tablet gets taken away. Running in a browser is part of the same idea. Nothing installed, nothing sitting on the home screen asking to be opened.
Who it is for
Children from about two to about eight, and the adult who is somewhere nearby. That adult might be a parent halfway through making dinner, a home educator planning a week, or a grandparent with one afternoon and a laptop. The youngest children need someone within earshot. The oldest can run the whole thing alone. Sprout does the explaining either way, out loud, so nobody has to read an instruction to get started.
Adverts: none
There are no adverts in Kidling. No banners, no video breaks, no rewarded ads, no ad networks embedded in the pages and no cross-promotion of other apps. Nothing your child can tap will take them to a shop, a video site or somebody else's product. The only thing anyone can buy is a Kidling subscription, and that sits behind an adult check, along with settings and anything else involving money.
Data: as little as we can manage
You can play without making an account at all. A child profile is a first name, an age and an emoji avatar, and it is stored in your browser on the device you are using. That has an obvious downside, which is that progress does not yet follow you from the laptop to the tablet. We would rather say that out loud than collect more than we need in order to fix it. There is no microphone use, no camera, no photographs of children, and we do not ask for a school, an address or a date of birth. An age is enough. If you subscribe we need an email address for the receipt and for getting you back into your account, and that is the extent of it. Clearing your browser's site data removes the profile.
Difficulty: nothing to fail
There are no fail states. A wrong tap does not end anything. The prompt repeats, sometimes more slowly, and your child has another go. Nothing counts down, nothing runs out, no lives are lost and there is no leaderboard to be at the bottom of. Colouring has no correct answer at all. Activities are matched to an age band rather than made punishing, so a child who is struggling meets an easier version of the same idea instead of a screen telling them they got it wrong.
What Kidling is not
It is not a school and it does not replace one. It is not a childminder. It is not an argument in favour of screen time, and we are not going to tell you that fifteen minutes of tapping beats fifteen minutes outside. It is a decent use of the screen time you were going to allow anyway, and unlike most of the alternatives, it is built to end.
Common questions
Is there an app to download?+
No, and that is deliberate. Kidling runs in a browser, so there is nothing to install or update, it works on whatever device is to hand, and you can send a grandparent a link rather than talking them through an app store.
How do you make money?+
Subscriptions. That is the only revenue. There are no adverts, no in-game currency, no paid unlocks that a child can trigger, and we do not sell data about your family to anyone.
Does progress move between devices?+
Not yet. Profiles and progress are stored in the browser on the device you use, so the tablet and the laptop keep separate records. Accounts that carry progress across devices are the obvious next step, and we would rather ship it properly than half do it.
What ages does it really suit?+
Two to eight on paper, and strongest between about three and six. At two it is mostly naming, tapping and colouring. By eight most children are ready for longer reading than anything here.
Can more than one child use it?+
Yes. Each child gets a profile with their own progress, and switching between them takes a couple of taps. Progress is kept separately so one child racing ahead does not change what the other is offered.
What stops my child getting into settings or billing?+
An adult check on the parent area. It is a small barrier by design, enough that a four-year-old does not stumble through it, not so much that you dread using it.
Is it suitable for a child with additional needs?+
Some parents find the design helps: no timers, no fail states, everything spoken aloud, and any prompt can be repeated as often as a child wants. We make no clinical claims and Kidling is not a therapy tool. You know your child better than any product page does.