Best AI tutors for students in 2026: ChatGPT, Gemini, NotebookLM, Khanmigo, Shikho and Porphy compared
There is no single best AI tutor, only the one that fits what you are stuck on. Seven options compared on Bangla, your own notes, voice, curriculum and how you pay, with where each one is better than us.
There is no single best AI tutor; it depends on what you need. For free, general explanations, ChatGPT study mode and Gemini Guided Learning guide you with questions instead of handing over answers. NotebookLM answers only from the documents you give it. Khanmigo is a nonprofit tutor whose paid plan for parents and learners is limited to adults in the U.S. with a U.S. billing address. Shikho and 10 Minute School are Bangla-first platforms built around board-style courses and human teachers. Porphy is built for a student in Bangladesh who wants a course or a spoken, whiteboard explanation in Bangla with technical terms kept in English, from a topic, a photo or their own slides. It runs on prepaid credits (2,000 free, no subscription). It is an AI with no human teachers, no live classes and no board-specific question bank, so it works best alongside your textbook and past papers.
Search for the best AI tutor and you get lists written by the companies on them. This one is written by the team behind Porphy, so treat our opinion of Porphy as the least neutral part. To make up for that, every product below links to its own site, we say what each one does better than we do, and we end with a ten-minute test you can run yourself instead of trusting any of us.
What we checked: each product's own pages and announcements in October 2026, plus press coverage where a company page was silent. These products change quickly, so confirm plans, prices and language support on the linked pages before you rely on them. Where we could not find something, we say so rather than guess.
How to choose an AI tutor: five questions
- Does it teach in Bangla, and keep technical terms in English? A tool that translates everything leaves you unable to match the lesson to your textbook and your exam script. Why that matters.
- Can it work from your own material: your lecture sheet, a PDF, a photo of the board? Your exam is on your syllabus, not an average one.
- How does it explain: text only, or spoken with a whiteboard when a line will not click?
- Is it built around a curriculum and human teachers, or around answering whatever you ask? Both are useful, for different nights.
- How do you pay, and who can pay? A subscription you cannot buy with a local payment method is not an option, however good it is.
The short version
- Free general tutor in the chat you already use: ChatGPT study mode or Gemini Guided Learning.
- Answers strictly from your own documents: NotebookLM.
- Nonprofit, curriculum-based K-12 tutoring, if you are in the U.S.: Khanmigo.
- Board-style courses with human teachers, in Bangla: Shikho and 10 Minute School.
- A Bangla-first AI tutor that explains aloud on a whiteboard, builds a course from a topic or your own notes, and bills by use: Porphy.
ChatGPT study mode
OpenAI added study mode to ChatGPT in July 2025. Instead of giving the final answer, it asks guiding questions and works through a problem step by step, and you can switch it on or off in the middle of a conversation. At launch it was available on the Free, Plus, Pro and Team plans.
- Better than Porphy at: breadth. It is a general assistant, so almost any subject, any file and any follow-up is in reach, and many students already have it open.
- Where it falls short for this audience: it is a mode inside a general chat, not a course with an order. Whether the Bangla keeps your textbook's English terms is down to how you prompt it, so test it with your own subject (the test is at the end).
Gemini Guided Learning
Google announced Guided Learning in the Gemini app in August 2025. It uses open-ended questions and step-by-step breakdowns, and its responses can include images, diagrams, videos and interactive quizzes. Educators can share a link to it through Google Classroom.
- Better than Porphy at: Google's ecosystem and its mix of media in an answer, inside an app many students already use.
- Where it falls short for this audience: like ChatGPT, it is a learning mode of a general assistant. Google's announcement does not list supported languages, so check Bangla yourself on a real chapter.
NotebookLM
NotebookLM is Google's notebook built around your own sources. You add documents such as PDFs, Google Docs, slides or links, and it answers from them. It is known for podcast-style audio overviews of what you added, and for generating flashcards and quizzes.
- Better than Porphy at: audio overviews, which Porphy does not have, and a tight focus on only what you uploaded.
- Where it falls short for this audience: it is a research and notes assistant, not a tutor. It does not teach you a topic from nothing in order, and we did not find a Bangla-specific teaching mode described. If you want to be stopped on a line and have it drawn out loud, that is a different tool.
Khanmigo
Khanmigo is the AI tutor and teaching assistant from Khan Academy, a nonprofit. Its own page says it tutors by guiding learners to answers rather than giving them, for students from elementary school through college, and offers teachers tools for lesson planning and quizzes.
- Better than Porphy at: trust and pedagogy. It comes from a long-standing nonprofit with its own curriculum, and it has real tools for teachers.
- Where it falls short for this audience: its page says the paid subscription for parents and learners is for adults aged 18 or over in the U.S. with a U.S. billing address, which rules it out for most families in Bangladesh. The page does not state a Bangla mode.
Shikho
Shikho is a Bangla-language learning app. Its site describes academic programs for SSC and HSC with live and recorded classes, animated video lessons, MCQ tests, class notes and report cards, plus admission preparation. The Daily Star has also reported on Shikho AI, a Bangla-first tool that began as a beta for solving doubts in Bangla.
- Better than Porphy at: a structured, teacher-made path through the board syllabus, live classes and mentors, and a community of students on the same track. Porphy has none of those.
- Where it falls short for this audience: a course follows its own syllabus and schedule. We did not find, on the pages we checked, a way to bring your own lecture sheet or a photo of your page and be taught from it.
10 Minute School
10 Minute School is one of Bangladesh's best-known online course platforms. Its AI offering that we could find is AI for Super Students, a course and book on using free AI tools to study smarter, aimed at students from class 6 to 12.
- Better than Porphy at: recorded courses by human teachers, brand recognition, and a learn-how-to-use-AI curriculum for beginners.
- Where it falls short as an AI tutor: as far as we could find, it teaches you to use other AI tools rather than being one, so you still need a tutor to ask at 11pm.
Porphy
Porphy is an AI tutor built around two things: Bangla, and being stuck on one line right now. You type a topic, and a planner splits it into questions, 5 researchers read the web in parallel, and a critic checks the plan before you see a course with the sources for every part. Or you bring your own slides and notes into a Project, and ask across all of them with answers that point to the page they came from.
- Bangla and English, voice included. The lesson is written in Bangla with technical terms held in English, and the live tutor speaks it, in 9 voices. You highlight a line and it explains aloud while drawing on a whiteboard.
- Your own material. A question takes up to 5 photos and 1 PDF (2 photos on a free account), handwriting included, and an uploaded PDF, PowerPoint or Word file works the same as a researched course. Exam paper mode answers every question on a past paper in order, sized to its marks.
- Practice and a map of what you know: MCQ sets, flashcards, and in a Project a concept map scoring each idea on memory, comprehension, structure and application. It reports where you are weak; it does not lock anything.
- Payment that fits: prepaid credits with no subscription, and a local way to pay so you do not need an international card.
Where Porphy is weaker, plainly:
- It is an AI. There are no human teachers, no live classes and no mentors, and it will not notice that you have stopped trying. Where a person is still better.
- It does not know your board's past questions or what your teacher stresses, so use it next to your textbook and past papers.
- It can be wrong. That is why every part of a course lists its sources, so you can check a line that surprises you.
- Free accounts run a lighter pipeline: at most 3 parts per course and no generated visualizations. An uploaded PDF needs real selectable text.
- It is a young product. It has none of the brand recognition or the ecosystem of Google or OpenAI.
Which should you pick?
- You want a free helper for quick questions: ChatGPT study mode or Gemini Guided Learning.
- You have a stack of PDFs and want answers only from them, or want to listen to a summary: NotebookLM.
- You are following the board syllabus with teachers and want a schedule and a community: Shikho or 10 Minute School.
- You are stuck on a line tonight, want it explained aloud in Bangla with the English terms intact, or want to learn a topic or your own lecture sheet from the ground up: Porphy.
- You are serious about an exam: combine them. Use a course platform for the syllabus, a general chat for quick questions, and a tutor for the lines that will not click.
A ten-minute test you can run on any of them
- Take one paragraph from your own textbook that you do not understand and ask for it in Bangla. Check whether the technical terms still match your book.
- Upload your own lecture sheet or a photo of the page. Does it work from it, or from the internet in general?
- Ask where a claim came from. Can you open the source and check it?
- Ask a follow-up that is wrong on purpose. Does it push back or agree with you?
- Find out how you pay and what a month of heavy use would cost before you start, not after.
If you have a product we should have included, or a fact above that is out of date, tell us and we will correct the page.
Every new account starts with 2,000 credits free, no card, no subscription, and they never expire. A full researched course runs about 600–1,200 credits, an MCQ set or flashcard deck 10–30, and the voice tutor 20–60 a minute. Free accounts run a lighter pipeline so the credits go further: at most 3 parts per course, with text and tables in place of generated visualizations.
