If you’re a parent, you know that it’s not just about giving your kids the best toys and games. You also want to give them the best educational resources. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of the best apps for toddlers—all free!
When choosing apps for your child, look for ones that have been reviewed by parents who have children the same age as yours. These are the people who can tell you whether an app is worth downloading or not.
We’ve also included links to reviews from other sources so you can read what others think about each app before downloading it yourself.
This list includes apps for all ages: 0-4 years old, 5-8 years old, 9-12 years old and 12+.
Best Apps For Toddlers Ipad Free
Your little one has probably been trying to play with your iPad since she was old enough to grab it. (No matter how many times you take it away!) Now that she’s a toddler, you might have decided it’s time to loosen up the reins just a little bit and let her explore more. So what are some of the best age-appropriate apps to start with?
Despite the many caveats that come with little kids and screen time, there’s no shortage of toddler iPad apps that are both educational and engaging. The key is using apps with your child, instead of, say, handing her your tablet while you’re trying to get dinner ready. (Which can be tempting, we know.)
Using apps together can help her make connections between things happening on the screen and things that happen in her everyday life, which promotes learning.
As for when exactly it’s OK to start checking these out — and how often you should be using them? The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends avoiding digital media for toddlers younger than 18 to 24 months (unless it’s video chatting). You can let toddlers as young as 18 months be exposed to a little bit of digital media, but make sure you’re watching or playing along with her. Once your child turns 2, start watching the clock: She shouldn’t be in front of screens for more than an hour a day, tops.
Here are high-quality picks that your toddler — and you! — are guaranteed to love.
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Best Overall Toddler App
Busy Shapes
best apps for toddlers – busy shapes
Available at Apple starting at $3
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Why We Love It
This award-winning app is about more than teaching kids to recognize a circle or a square. It encourages your child to learn how objects of different shapes relate to each other, which can help promote sensorimotor development. Even cooler? The app adjusts the difficulty automatically, depending on how your LO tackles each level, to keep her challenged. This is one of many educational kids’ apps created by Edoki Academy, so you can always move on to a different one later.
In-app purchases? No
Best Toddler App for 3-Year-Olds
Highlights Monster Day
best apps for toddlers – highlights monster day
Available at Amazon
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Why We Love It
Developed by the children’s magazine Highlights, Monster Day is designed to help kids explore the world around them and foster kindness and compassion. After choosing a monster buddy, your little one can help her new pal through her daily routine — from feeding him bagels for breakfast to tucking him in at night. The app is technically for kids 3 and up, but with parental guidance, it’s tons of fun for older toddlers.
In-app purchases? Yes
Best Toddler App About Healthy Habits
Duckie Deck Collection
best apps for toddlers – duckie deck collection
Available at Apple starting at $3
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Why We Love It
Take advantage of your toddler’s natural urge to call the shots and discover new things with this beloved collection of colorful mini games. What happens when she picks fruits and veggies, feeds animals or turn on the lights? She’ll delight in finding out the answer each time.
In-app purchases? No
Best Animal-Themed Toddler App
Farm 123
best apps for toddlers – farm 123
Available at Amazon starting at $3
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Why We Love It
In this interactive farm book, toddlers can hone their counting skills by helping Farmer Jo round up her animals. As your tot starts to learn her numbers, she can head to the back of the book to play mini games like finding, bathing or petting a certain number of animals.
In-app purchases? Yes
Best Toddler App for Potty Training
Pepi Bath 2
best apps for toddlers – pepi bath 2
Available at Amazon starting at $3
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Why We Love It
Try this one when you’re ready to introduce potty training (or are just dealing with an I hate brushing my teeth/taking a bath/getting dressed phase). This role-playing app turns basic personal hygiene activities into a total blast. Your tot can care for her furry friends by helping them take a bath, brush their teeth, use the potty and more. Best case scenario? She gets excited to do all those things on her own.
In-app purchases? No
Best Toddler App for Car Fans
Trucks
best apps for toddlers – trucks
Available at Amazon
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Why We Love It
Pull out this app next time you’re in a place where your truck-loving tot can’t crawl around with her favorite vehicles. She can run a truck through the mud and take it to the carwash, help fix a flat tire, make dirt piles with a dump truck, sort trash for the garbage truck and more.
In-app purchases? No
Best Ocean-Themed Toddler App
Fish School
best apps for toddlers – fish school
Available at Amazon
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Why We Love It
Have a little one who loves playing with sea creatures in the tub or watching tropical fish swim around in their tank? Build on that interest with this underwater-themed app, which offers eight educational activities geared toward helping toddlers learn letters, numbers, shapes, colors and more.
In-app purchases? No
Best Toddler App for PBS Viewers
Play PBS Kids Games
best apps for toddlers – play pbs kids games
Available at Amazon
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Why We Love It
If your toddler loves Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood or Dinosaur Train, she’ll go crazy for this app, featuring more than 120 educational games from beloved PBS shows. The games are geared for kids ages 2–8, so it’s worth previewing the app to find game options that are best suited for your tot.
In-app purchases? No
Best Toddler App for All Ages
Peekaboo Barn
best apps for toddlers – peekaboo barn
Available at Amazon starting at $2
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Why We Love It
Take a virtual farm visit to learn the names of animals and the sounds they make. Younger toddlers will get a kick out of opening each barn door to reveal a new furry friend, while older ones can try guessing which animal is which by listening to the sound they make.
In-app purchases? No
Best Musical Toddler App
Baby’s Musical Hands
best apps for toddlers – baby’s musical hands
Available at Apple starting at $1
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Why We Love It
Simple and fun, Baby’s Musical Hands was developed by a dad who wanted a fun app for his toddler son. Each of the 15 brightly colored squares plays a different piano, guitar or drum sound, encouraging budding Mozarts to flex their musical muscles.
In-app purchases? No
Best Simple Toddler App
Balls
best apps for toddlers – balls
Available at Apple
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Why We Love It
Toddler apps don’t have to be complex to be really, really fun. Your tot will love directing brightly-colored balls around the screen, which make a fun chiming noise when they hit each other.
In-app purchases? No
Best Toddler App With Planes
Sago Mini Planes
best apps for toddlers – sago mini planes
Available at Amazon starting at $4
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Why We Love It
Pick your airplane, get your passengers on board and go exploring! This app encourages budding aviators to fly through enchanting habitats and make exciting discoveries — like popping balloons mid-air, seeing rainbows or even catching up with flying pigs.
In-app purchases? No
Best Open-Play Toddler App
Eli Explorer
best apps for toddlers – eli explorer
Available at Apple starting at $2
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Why We Love It
Tots can tag along with Eli, a cute rabbit with propeller ears, to explore his colorful, interactive world in this open-play app. While playing, they’ll work on vocabulary development and understand the relationship between cause and effect.
In-app purchases? No
Best Food-Themed Toddler App
Bubl Ice Cream
best toddler apps – bubl ice cream
Available at Apple starting at $3
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Why We Love It
Looking for a sweet twist on the average toddler learning app? Bubl Ice Cream lets your LO build her own ice cream cone, stacking each scoop on top of the other. With help from six adorable pals, she can also explore four different “worlds” and learn how to say ice cream in 18 different languages.
In-app purchases? No
Best Children’s Book-Themed Toddler App
Hungry Caterpillar Play School
best toddler apps – hungry caterpillar play school
Available at Apple
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Why We Love It
This app is a subscription service that allows parents and kids (ages 2–6) to access new content monthly. Based on the beloved books by Eric Carle, your toddler will recognize the characters in a variety of puzzles, games and more in the app.
In-app purchases? Yes
best apps for 2 year olds
If you’re looking for some of the best apps for toddlers in 2022 then you’ll love this collection. These apps have been tested by myself (teacher and mother) and approved by my toddlers. They are apps that I would happily let my own toddlers play (in small, supervised sessions of course) and that I highly recommend.
best toddler apps 2020 educational ipad or android
Best Apps for Toddlers 2021
This post has been updated to include the best apps for toddlers 2021.
Are you looking for the best apps for toddlers? We have found some of the best toddler apps – all tested on my very own toddlers! I’m also an early years teacher so these apps get the educational tick of approval as well.
I don’t advocate letting your toddler spend a lot of time playing apps on tablets and phones, but as an educator and parent, I can definitely see the value in supervised play with some of the fantastic educational apps that are available. The biggest problem is finding the best apps for toddlers among the thousands, if not millions of toddler apps out there.
After being overwhelmed with the options available (a large percentage of which were low quality, filled with ads or had very little educational value), I recently asked for YOUR favorite toddler apps in our Facebook group and have included many of those in this list.
There were several apps that were recommended many times, along with some great new suggestions. After having a closer look at your recommendations I have compiled a list of Apps your toddler will love!
You will notice that the list contains a mix of free and paid apps. While I could have focused on only the free apps, I feel that there are some excellent toddler apps that are worth paying a few dollars for (especially if it means no ads and excellent content).
If you are looking for only free apps I have put together a list of the best FREE ipad apps for toddlers. Please be wary of the free toddler apps as I’ve found that the developers of many of them (not the ones I’ve listed) are very sneaky with their ad placement and it’s really easy for your toddler to download all kinds of things. Sometimes it’s worth the dollar or two to avoid that.
What tablet is best for a toddler?
If you’re worried about your toddler dropping or breaking your own phone or tablet (I’ve had that happen to me!) then it can be worthwhile buying them their own one. While this seems a bit extravagant I’ve found that it’s much better than letting them drop your $600 tablet. The tablets for the kids don’t need to be anywhere near as powerful as your own one either as you’re not running many programs on it.
My recommendation for a tablet for your toddler is the Amazon Fire HD Kids Edition tablet which you can get HERE.
best tablet for toddlers 2019
Some of the main reasons that I recommend this tablet for toddlers is:
It comes with a kid proof case (and in a variety of colors)
They give you a 2 year guarantee – if your kids break it, Amazon will replace it
It comes with a free year of Amazon Kids + (kid friendly apps and ebooks). You can find out more about Amazon Free Time Unlimited and get a free trial HERE.
You might also want to look into headphones as well. I really like the volume limiting ones (for obvious reasons!). I really like these ones.
Teacher recommended apps for toddlers
Homer – 60 Day Free Trial (limited time)
The proven and personalized early learning program that helps kids ages 2-8 discover a lifelong love of learning. Designed by learning experts, HOMER takes each child’s interest and ability and combines them to make learning fun!
Homer focuses on
Reading
Math
Social and Emotional Learning
Thining Skills
Creativity
Check it out with your 60 Day Homer Free Trial HERE.
ABC Reading Eggs
You can read my full review of the ABC Reading Eggs program here but if you want to test it out you can go straight to their free 30 Day trial.
ABC Reading eggs has a Junior program that is fantastic for 2-4 year olds and you can use it on your computer or via the apps as well.
reading eggs review
ABCmouse
Get your 30 day free trial HERE.
This app is part of an online learning package that is extremely popular with early years teachers and you will find it used in lots of preschools and kindergartens. The program caters for children from 2 years of age and can be played on a desktop computer and via the app. Whilst this is a paid program they do offer a 30 day free trial which I highly recommend.
I am a member of many parenting and teaching groups and this program is one that is consistently recommended for early learning. You can start your free trial HERE.
Reading IQ
When our local library closed this year we tried ReadingIQ – an easy to use app that has a great range of award winning children’s books. They call it the Netflix of children’s books!
You can test out ReadingIQ with a 30 day free trial HERE.
Get 30 Days Free of RIQ!
PBS Kids – FREE
Download iTunes or Download Android
This completely free app allows your toddler to view all of their favorite PBS shows in a really easy, child friendly app, and was the app that was recommended the most by our readers. Sesame Street, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and Dinosaur Train are just a few of the great kids shows that can be streamed.
They also include weekly video features focusing on an educational topic, and have a great parent control panel which allows you to add particular shows to your toddler’s favorite list. For a free app, you can’t really go wrong this one.
Download iTunes or Download Android
ABC Kids Iview – FREE
Download iTunes or Android *only available in Australia and New Zealand.
Similar to the PBS Kids app, the ABC for Kids app is the Australian equivalent. It was also the most recommended app from our Australian readers. I have a feeling it can only be downloaded in Australia and New Zealand, but if you are outside of these countries and can access it please let me know. This app lets you stream all of the great ABC for Kids content including The Wiggles, Play School, Peppa Pig, Mister Maker and Sesame Street. You can also listen to some great ABC for Kids music, and it’s all FREE!
Download iTunes or Android
Monkey Preschool Lunchbox
Download iTunes or Download Android
This app is my absolute favorite educational app for toddlers. It is a fun and easy to use toddler app that teaches basic literacy and mathematics. You can read my full review of this app here and I highly recommend it.
Peekaboo Barn (lite version is free)
Download iTunes or Download Android
This toddler app was also a very popular one, and there are many different versions of this great app available. It’s a simple but fun app that is great for younger toddlers who want to learn about farm animals. The app focuses on the animal names and the sounds that the animals make. You can download the Lite Version for free to get a feel for the app, however the full version is definitely worth spending a few dollars for.
Download iTunes or Download Android
Nighty Night – FREE
Download iTunes or Download Android
This is a great app to add to your evening routine. We don’t use it every night, but it’s always a favorite when we do. I really love this toddler app, and you can read an in depth review of it here.
Download iTunes or Download Android
Trucks – FREE
Download iTunes Download Android
Trucks is one of the great apps from Duck Duck Moose. Their range of apps is fantastic and previously were paid apps. They have recently partnered up with a non profit company to provide quality educational apps free of charge. While I highly recommend this app for the toddler age group, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend any of their apps. Between my toddler and my 5 year old we have played almost all of them and they are all great.
Download iTunes Download Android
Potty Time with Elmo
Download iTunes or Download Android
Lots of recommendations for this one, and who could blame them. If it helps the potty training battle then it’s worth a few dollars in my opinion. Featuring Elmo (obviously) there are songs, activities and an interactive potty chart. If you’re at the potty training stage with your toddler then this app is definitely worth a look.
Download iTunes or Download Android
Little Builders
Download iTunes or Download Android
If your toddler loves trucks then this is the app for them. You can drive the trucks, build the houses, pour the cement and so much more. A great app for the older toddler (recommended for ages 2+). This is from the award winning Fox & Sheep app designers and so far I have loved everyone of their apps.
Download iTunes or Download Android
The Very Hungry Caterpillar Play & Explore
Download iTunes or Download Android
If your toddler loves The Very Hungry Caterpillar book then they will love the app too. With the beautiful images that you would expect from Eric Carle, this app is a fantastic first app for toddlers. Using the familiar images from Eric Carle’s books, early learning skills are taught in a simple and fun manner. You can download a demo for free, but there is a fee for the full version of the app (highly recommended).
Download iTunes or Download Android
Disney Mickey Mouse Club House Color and Play
Download iTunes or Download Android
This app was the winner of the 2013 National Parenting Publications Award. With the quality that you would expect from a Disney product, this app is a fantastic painting app, using a combination of 2D, 3D and music. I guarantee that this one will keep your toddler engaged for quite some time.
Download iTunes or Download Android
Scribbaloo Train
Download iTunes or Download Android
Scribbaloo Train is my youngest toddler’s new favourite. She is 16 months and has already mastered this one. It’s a really lovely app and one of my favorites too! You can read my full review here.
Download iTunes or Download Android
Milli the Snail
Download iTunes or Download Android
Milli the Snail is a beautiful interactive story book for children. The illustrations are beautiful, and the story is lovely. You can read my full review here.
Download iTunes or Download Android
Owl and Pals
Download iTunes or Download Android
This was one of my daughter’s favorite apps when she was 2. Parental help is needed with this one, however I credit this app with helping my daughter with her letter and number recognition. This ap is normally around 99c.
Download iTunes or Download Android
Look and Find Elmo on Sesame Street
Download iTunes or Download Android
Another app from Sesame Productions is the Look and find Elmo app. Great for encouraging memory and observation, and it stars Elmo! What more could you want in a toddler app!
Download iTunes or Download Android
Nampa Forest
Download iTunes Download Android
Nampa Forest is a beautifully illustrated app filled with lovable characters and lots of disco dancing. There are no scores and no winners and it’s a great app. You can read my full review of Nampa Forest here.
Lego Duplo Train
Download Android Download iTunes
It’s Lego, it’s Duplo, it’s trains and it’s free. What more do you need! This app is lots of fun for the little ones. They can make their own train tracks, drive the train, load the wagons and build the bridges – so much fun!
Download Android Download iTunes
Daniel Tiger’s Grr-iffic feelings
Download Android or Download iTunes
Conclusion
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