Comparison
What code autograders cost a classroom, and who pays
One class of 30 can cost nothing or about $2,700 a semester for the same kind of test-case grading. The difference is who the vendor bills: you, your school or each student.
The Graidable team
Published
Graidable makes one of the tools compared here. Every claim about another tool links to that vendor’s own page.
| Tool | Who pays | Price | Free option | Free grades | LMS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CodeGrade | School or student | $24 per student a course | Up to 50 students | Code, by tests | Advanced and up |
| CodeHS | Teacher or school | By quote | Free for teachers | Code, by tests | LTI on School |
| Codio | School or student | $48 per learner a semester | Free trial | Code, during the trial | Not stated |
| Gradescope | Institution | By request | One-term trial, then Basic | No code on Basic | Institutional |
| Graidable | Teacher or school | $9.99 a month | First class free, without a card | Paper exams, from your key | PDFs and a spreadsheet |
| JDoodle | Teacher | $240 a year | Free, unlimited students | Code, by tests | Embed only |
| Vocareum | Not stated | $10 per user a month | Not stated | Not stated | LTI 1.3 |
| zyLabs (zyBooks) | Each student | $69–$90 per student | Evaluation copy | Not stated | LTI, with scores |
CodeGrade
- Who pays
- School or student
- Price
- $24 per student a course
- Free grades
- Code, by tests
CodeHS
- Who pays
- Teacher or school
- Price
- By quote
- Free grades
- Code, by tests
Codio
- Who pays
- School or student
- Price
- $48 per learner a semester
- Free grades
- Code, during the trial
Gradescope
- Who pays
- Institution
- Price
- By request
- Free grades
- No code on Basic
Graidable
- Who pays
- Teacher or school
- Price
- $9.99 a month
- Free grades
- Paper exams, from your key
JDoodle
- Who pays
- Teacher
- Price
- $240 a year
- Free grades
- Code, by tests
Vocareum
- Who pays
- Not stated
- Price
- $10 per user a month
- Free grades
- Not stated
zyLabs (zyBooks)
- Who pays
- Each student
- Price
- $69–$90 per student
- Free grades
- Not stated
In this article
This page compares what eight tools for grading programming assignments cost a classroom: CodeGrade1, CodeHS2, Codio3, Gradescope4, Graidable5, JDoodle6, Vocareum7 and zyLabs8. Graidable is ours. Every price comes from the vendor’s own pages, read on 9 November 2026.
Price these tools by who gets the bill. Some charge each student, some charge the teacher, and some only quote a school. The same 30 students can cost nothing, $240 or about $2,700 a semester.
One class of 30, one semester
Figure 1 takes one class of 30 through a semester of about four months and prices it at each published rate. Free plans are left out of the chart; most of these tools have one, and the table under the title says what each free plan grades.
The same class of 30 costs from $240 to $2,700 at published prices
One class of 30 students for one semester of about four months, in US dollars
- JDoodle Teacher, paid by the teacher (a year)240 USD
- CodeGrade Starter, $24 per student720 USD
- CodeGrade Advanced, $39 per student1,170 USD
- Vocareum, $10 per active user a month1,200 USD
- Codio, $48 per learner a semester1,440 USD
- zyBooks with zyLabs, top of $69–$90 per student2,700 USD
Figure 1 · Source: Vendors’ pricing and help pages, checked 9 November 2026. Our arithmetic: 30 students; Vocareum for four months, before its AI and lab fees; zyBooks at $90, the top of its stated range ($2,070 at $69).
The cheapest paid line is the only one billed to one teacher. The two highest are billed per student: Codio lets each student pay directly, and zyBooks is a book each student buys. CodeGrade also lets students pay, by card or access code. That makes a student-paid tool quick to adopt, since nobody has to go through procurement. It also makes the price part of the course cost your students see.
The eight, in alphabetical order
“Not stated” means the pages we read didn’t say. It doesn’t mean no, so ask the vendor.
CodeGrade
Programming courses, inside the LMS.
- Who pays
- The institution or each student, per student per course; students can pay by access code or card
- Published price
- $24 per student per course on Starter and $39 on Advanced; the AI assistant add-on is $15 more; institutional plans by quote
- Free option
- Free for up to 50 students per course, with no card, no trial and no expiration
- What the free option grades
- Code, with drag-and-drop autograding; fully customizable autograding starts on Starter
- LMS
- Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle and Brightspace on Advanced and Institutional
- The AI add-on is a coding assistant for students, not AI grading.
- Its AI page says the first course gets the add-on free; the pricing page lists it at $15 per student on Starter and Advanced.
CodeHS
Computer science courses in K–12.
- Who pays
- The teacher or school: Starter is one teacher and up to 100 students; school licenses are per teacher
- Published price
- No price published; every paid plan is by quote
- Free option
- Free for unlimited teachers
- What the free option grades
- Code, with built-in autograders and your own test-case autograders; AI grading starts on Starter
- LMS
- Google Classroom rosters on every plan and grade passback from Starter; LTI for Canvas, Blackboard, Schoology, D2L and Moodle on School, with a minimum purchase, and District
- Its AI grading has no weekly or monthly limits, per its help center.
- One help article puts “Control autograding” under the paid plans; the plans table gives autograders to Free.
Codio
Higher education and bootcamps.
- Who pays
- The institution centrally, or each student directly, per active learner
- Published price
- Higher education $48 per learner a semester or $90 a year; bootcamps and workforce $10 per learner a month; volume discounts
- Free option
- Instructor accounts stay free; new organizations get a free trial, and nothing is paid until learners enroll
- What the free option grades
- During the trial, courses and labs with unit tests, style checkers or custom tests in any language
- LMS
- Not stated on the pricing and grading pages
- The headline says custom pricing with a quote; the FAQ publishes the per-learner rates.
- Bigger machines, GPUs and extra memory cost extra, with no price shown.
Gradescope
Instructors grading exams, homework and code.
- Who pays
- The institution; instructors are pointed to an Advocate Program to get a license
- Published price
- No price published for the Institutional plan
- Free option
- An Institutional trial for one term, then the free Basic plan
- What the free option grades
- Basic has no programming assignments; programming, code similarity and AI-assisted grading are Institutional
- LMS
- Institutional only, and not part of the trial
- The one-term trial includes programming assignments, so you can try the autograder before anyone pays.
GraidableOur tool
Handwritten or typed work, code on paper included.
- Who pays
- The teacher, per month; schools get a price on request
- Published price
- Student $9.99 a month (10 students graded) and Professional $24.99 (60); $0.49 or $0.35 per extra student if you turn it on
- Free option
- Your first class is free without a card: up to 30 students within 30 days, once your email is confirmed; the first plan then starts with 20 free gradings
- What the free option grades
- The same as the paid plans: handwritten or typed answers, code on paper included, graded from your answer key or rubric for you to approve
- LMS
- Results come as feedback PDFs and a spreadsheet of each student’s points per question
- For the written exam in a programming course, where students trace, fix or write code by hand.
- Each suggested point shows where on the student’s page it comes from.
JDoodle
An online compiler with classes and assessments.
- Who pays
- The teacher: the Teacher plan covers everyone in the account
- Published price
- Teacher $20 a month billed yearly ($240 a year); Student $48 and Pro $144 a year are one person’s plans; Custom by request
- Free option
- Free does not expire; students, assessments and questions are unlimited, with 1,000 code executions a day
- What the free option grades
- Code, run against test cases you write; open-ended answers are marked by hand
- LMS
- Embeds the code editor in your LMS or course pages; no gradebook sync named
- Automated grading is a Yes on Free and on Teacher in its own comparison table.
- Its AI writes questions and test cases; the pages we read describe no AI grading.
Vocareum
Cloud labs and notebooks for universities.
- Who pays
- Not stated
- Published price
- Individual / Academic $10 per monthly active user; Enterprise by contact; AI, virtual machines and cloud labs cost extra
- Free option
- Not stated; the page offers a demo
- What the free option grades
- Not stated
- LMS
- LTI 1.3 for Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle and D2L, with grade passback
- Its higher-education page describes an autograding engine and code-aware plagiarism checks without naming a plan.
zyLabs (zyBooks)
Programming labs inside a zyBooks course.
- Who pays
- Each student, by buying the zyBook for the class
- Published price
- Typically $69 to $90 per student for the zyBook; zyLabs is an added cost with no separate price shown
- Free option
- An evaluation copy and a demo for instructors
- What the free option grades
- Not stated
- LMS
- LTI 1.1 and 1.3 for Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, Brightspace and Sakai, with scores sent to the gradebook
- Autograding runs unit tests (Python unittest, JUnit) and custom bash tests.
- AI hints for students are a beta feature on advanced zyLabs.
Three ways the bill is built
CodeGrade, Codio and zyBooks charge per student. The cost grows with enrollment, and a student can pay it. Ask whether your institution allows a tool that students pay for, and whether students with financial aid are covered.
JDoodle and Graidable charge the teacher, and CodeHS quotes its Starter plan per teacher. You know the bill before term starts, and it doesn’t move when ten more students enroll.
Gradescope, CodeHS for schools and every vendor’s institutional plan go by quote. Count your sections and students before the call, because the quote is built from them.
If you looked at Replit: its Teams for Education page now returns “Page not found”, and Replit’s education page offers free accounts to verified educators without a classroom autograder.9
Ask before you sign
Five questions for the vendor
- Who gets the bill: me, my school, or each student?
- Is the price per course, per semester, per month or per active user?
- Does the free plan run test cases, or only show the code?
- Is grade passback to my LMS on the plan I’m pricing?
- What costs extra: AI, more compute, more students?
Graidable is the tool we make. This part is about it.
Where Graidable fits
Graidable is one of the eight, and it is ours. It grades the written part of a programming course: scanned paper exams where students trace, fix or write code by hand, graded from your answer key or rubric. A class of 30 fits the free first class, without a card. Every score waits for you to approve it.
For the features rather than the prices, see AI grading tools and autograders for programming assignments.
Sources
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CodeGrade, Pricing, Autograder and AI assistant. Checked 9 November 2026. ↑
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CodeHS, Plans and the help articles Using the AI Grading App, Adding custom autograders and Choosing the right CodeHS plan. Checked 9 November 2026. ↑
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Codio, Pricing and Auto-grading. Checked 9 November 2026. ↑
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Graidable, Pricing and the product itself; the tool is ours. Checked 9 November 2026. ↑
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JDoodle, Pricing, Assessments, Evaluation methods and Education institutions. Checked 9 November 2026. ↑
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Vocareum, Pricing and Higher education. Checked 9 November 2026. ↑
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zyBooks, zyLabs and the help articles Payment and cost, Teachers: getting started, zyLabs AI hints and LMS integration. Checked 9 November 2026. ↑
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Replit, Teams for Education (returns “Page not found”) and Replit for educators. Checked 9 November 2026. ↑