Elevate Pro costs $39.99 per year or around $9.99 per month, with a 7-day free trial. The free tier gives you three games per day, chosen for you. At roughly $3.33 a month on the annual plan, Elevate is one of the better-value brain training apps — well under BrainHQ at $96 and Lumosity at $59.99.
Elevate is consistently one of the most-downloaded brain training apps and a former Apple App of the Year. If you have been using the free version and wondering whether Pro is worth paying for, here is the honest breakdown.
Elevate pricing at a glance
Pricing varies somewhat by region, platform, and current promotions. Always check the in-app purchase screen for the exact price where you are.
The annual plan is the obvious choice if you are going to subscribe at all — $39.99 for the year against roughly $120 if you paid monthly. Elevate pushes the annual plan hard for this reason.
What the free version actually gives you
Elevate’s free tier is genuinely usable, which sets it apart from apps where free is just a teaser. You get three full games per day — not previews, not 30-second samples, complete exercises.
The catch is that you do not choose which three. Elevate picks them for you. So if you want to work specifically on writing or mental math on a given day, the free tier may hand you vocabulary and listening instead.
For a casual user who wants a few minutes of daily skill practice and does not care which skills, the free version is genuinely enough. Many people use it for months without paying.
What Pro unlocks
All games, any time. Elevate has 40+ games across writing, reading, speaking, listening, and math. Pro removes the three-per-day limit and lets you pick what you train.
Personalized training plans. Pro builds daily workouts targeting your weaker skills rather than serving random games.
Detailed progress tracking. Skill-by-skill performance over time, comparisons against other users, and streak tracking.
Advanced difficulty levels. Some games have higher tiers that only unlock with Pro.
No ads.
How Elevate compares on price
| App | Annual price | Monthly equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Peak Pro | ~$34.99/year | ~$2.92/month |
| Elevate Pro | $39.99/year | ~$3.33/month |
| Zenelia | $44.99/year | ~$3.75/month |
| Lumosity | $59.99/year | ~$5/month |
| BrainHQ | $96/year | $8/month |
Elevate sits comfortably at the affordable end. It costs about a third less than Lumosity and well under half of BrainHQ, while being one of the better-regarded apps in the category.
Is Elevate Pro worth $39.99?
The honest answer depends on how you will use it.
Worth it if:
- You write, present, or communicate for work and want targeted practice
- You want to choose which skills to train rather than accepting whatever the free tier offers
- You will open the app several times a week
- You are studying or preparing for exams involving reading, vocabulary, or math
- You want progress tracking to see whether the practice is actually working
Not worth it if:
- You use the app occasionally and do not mind which games you get
- You want broad cognitive training across memory, attention, and processing speed — Elevate is narrower than that
- You have not used the free version consistently for at least two weeks
That last point matters most. If the free version is not already part of your routine, Pro will not change that. Use free for two weeks first. If you find yourself wishing you could pick your games or train more than three a day, that is the signal to upgrade.
For a fuller assessment of the app itself, see our Elevate review and our honest look at whether Elevate is worth it.
Does Elevate actually work?
Worth addressing since it affects whether the cost is justified.
Elevate trains practical skills rather than abstract cognitive functions — concise writing, careful reading, mental math, vocabulary in context. This sidesteps the biggest weakness in brain training generally: practicing these skills makes you better at these skills, with no ambiguity about whether the gains transfer.
What Elevate will not do is make you broadly “smarter” or fix attention problems. It is skill practice, honestly framed. For the fuller research picture, see our guide on whether brain training apps actually work.
How to save on Elevate
Use the 7-day free trial. Enough time to genuinely test whether Pro’s unlocked games change your usage. Cancel at least 24 hours before it ends if you decide against it.
Choose annual over monthly. Saves roughly $80 over a year.
Watch for the lifetime option. Elevate occasionally offers a one-time lifetime purchase. It is not always visible in the app — it sometimes appears as a special offer, often after you cancel a subscription. If you plan to use Elevate for years, it can be a strong deal.
Try the free tier seriously first. Three games a day is more than most people actually use.
Common questions
Is Elevate free? There is a genuinely usable free tier — three full games per day, chosen for you. Pro unlocks everything.
Does Elevate have a family plan? Not currently, unlike Peak and Lumosity which both offer them.
Can I cancel anytime? Yes. You keep access through the end of your billed period.
Is there a student discount? Not a formal one, though promotional pricing appears periodically.
Does the price differ on iOS vs Android? Occasionally, due to platform pricing and regional differences. Check the in-app screen.
The bottom line
At $39.99 a year, Elevate Pro is fairly priced for what it delivers — targeted practice in skills you actually use, with genuine real-world transfer. It is significantly cheaper than Lumosity and BrainHQ, and comparable to Zenelia at $44.99.
The smart approach: use the free tier for two weeks. If the three-game daily limit starts frustrating you, the upgrade is worth it. If you keep forgetting to open the app, Pro would not have fixed that.
For the full comparison across brain training apps, see our best brain training apps roundup or our Peak vs Elevate head-to-head.