Nine AI lab report graders and what each one reads

This page compares nine AI grading tools for lab reports: Brisk¹, Class Companion², CoGrader³, EssayGrader⁴, Gradescope⁵, GradingPal⁶, Graidable⁷, MagicSchool⁸ and TimelyGrader⁹. Graidable is ours. Every cell comes from the vendor’s own pages, read on 14 October 2026.

An essay grader reads prose. A lab report asks for more: a grader has to read the data table, redo the calculation and check that the conclusion matches the numbers. So the table under the title asks three things before price. Does the vendor name lab reports, does it read handwriting, and does it say it checks tables and calculations?

What a grader has to catch

Here is a short lab report excerpt we wrote, graded against a three-criterion rubric (Figure 1). It has two errors a teacher would take points for. The rate at 20 °C is off by a factor of ten and has no unit. The conclusion says the reaction got faster at every temperature, but the student’s own table shows the 50 °C run was slower than the 40 °C run.

A grader that reads only the prose will give the conclusion full points, because the sentence is well written. To catch it, the tool has to read the table and compare. That is the test to run before you trust any of these with a class set.

The nine, in alphabetical order

“Not stated” means the pages we read didn’t say. It doesn’t mean no, so ask the vendor.

Three things to settle first

Do your students hand in paper? Then ask Brisk and MagicSchool first, because neither page mentions handwriting. CoGrader reads handwriting on its free plan. Class Companion and GradingPal take photos too, and Gradescope was built around scanned work.

Who checks the numbers? Three vendors say their AI reads the data, not just the writing: GradingPal (calculations, units, significant figures, tables), TimelyGrader (tables and charts) and Graidable (tables, calculations, graphs). EssayGrader scores whether the conclusion follows from the data. For the others, run Figure 1 yourself.

When does the student see the grade? Seven of the nine hold every grade until you approve it. Class Companion can release feedback and scores to students right away, which suits practice and retakes. At Gradescope you grade, and its AI groups answers on exams, not uploaded reports.

Test a tool on one report before a class set

Write one short report yourself, or use one from last year with the name removed, and plant these.

If the tool misses one, tighten that criterion in your rubric and run it again. A rubric that says what earns each point gets better suggestions from any of these tools.

Graidable is one of the nine, and it is ours. You upload handwritten or typed reports with your rubric; it drafts points and a comment for each criterion, follows an error carried forward so it costs points once, and shows where on the page each point comes from. You approve every grade before anything goes to students.

More on how it handles lab reports is on the lab report grader page, and the same tools are compared by price in Free AI grading tools for teachers.