How to choose an AI tutor as a student in Bangladesh: 7 things to check
Most AI tutors are built for someone else: English first, a dollar card, a foreign syllabus. Seven checks that matter if you are an SSC, HSC, admission or university student here, and where Porphy passes and where it does not.
Check seven things before you pick an AI tutor as a student in Bangladesh: whether it explains in Bangla while keeping technical terms in English, how it handles your syllabus, whether you can pay in taka through bKash without an international card, whether the price is a subscription or pay-as-you-go, whether you can talk to it and interrupt, how it handles accuracy, and what it will not do. Porphy writes and speaks lessons in Bangla with technical terms kept in English, takes payment by bKash or by card through Stripe, uses prepaid credits with no subscription, and has a live voice tutor with a whiteboard. It does not store the NCTB syllabus, it can be wrong, and it is an AI and not a human teacher.
Search for an AI tutor and nearly everything you find was built for a student somewhere else: English first, priced in dollars, paid with a card you may not have, teaching a syllabus that is not yours. They can still be useful. But a tool that is wrong on the first check will cost you weeks before you notice. Here are seven checks, in the order they usually decide it.
1. Does it explain in Bangla, and keep the English terms?
Your textbook is in English, your teacher explains in Bangla and your exam script is a mix. A tutor that translates everything into Bangla gives you words that are not in your book, and one that answers only in English leaves you where you started. The test is simple: ask it to explain a chapter you know and see whether the technical terms match the ones your teacher uses. Porphy does this on purpose and holds technical terms in English inside a Bangla explanation. The longer story is in AI tutor in Bangla, with English terms intact.
2. What does it do with your syllabus?
Be careful of any tool that claims to "cover the NCTB syllabus" without showing you how. Porphy does not store a syllabus. It researches the topic you name when you ask and writes a course from what it finds, shaped by a few questions about what you already know. That makes it flexible, and it means you must check the result against your textbook, because boards mark against the book's wording. If you want a fixed curriculum taught by a teacher on video, that is a different kind of product and it may suit you better.
3. Can you pay without an international card?
Many students and parents cannot pay in dollars. Porphy accepts bKash and BDT, and cards through Stripe in USD. How that works, step by step, is in AI with bKash. Whatever tool you consider, find out how you would pay before you build a habit around it.
4. Subscription or pay as you go?
A monthly fee is a bad fit for exam-season studying, which comes in bursts. Porphy uses prepaid credits instead: there is no subscription, credits never expire, and every new account starts with free ones. A course, an MCQ set and a voice minute each cost a different amount, and the app publishes the ranges. The reasoning is in what studying with AI should cost a student.
5. Can you talk to it, and can it draw?
Some things do not explain well in text: a curve, a circuit, a step in a proof. Porphy's live tutor is a real-time voice session with a shared whiteboard. You highlight the line you are stuck on, it explains aloud and draws, and you can interrupt. It speaks Bangla and English, and the call stays in the language you chose.
6. How does it handle being wrong?
Every AI tutor can be confidently wrong, and the exact detail, a number or a name or a sign, is often the one that costs marks. A good tool shows where an answer came from. Porphy's researched courses carry sources, but its exam-paper answers come from the model's own knowledge with no web search. Either way, check anything you will memorise against your textbook. Using ChatGPT to study goes into this in more detail.
7. What will it not do?
- It is an AI. There is no human tutor, no booking and nobody who knows you.
- It does not keep a revision schedule, send reminders or track streaks.
- It does not know any board's marking scheme or any admission test's question bank.
- It cannot sit your exam, and using it in one would be cheating.
A tool that tells you what it does not do is usually the safer one to build on. For a quick way to test any tutor, bring a chapter you have already studied, since then you can judge the answer yourself.
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.
