Lumosity vs Elevate vs Peak: Which Brain Training App Actually Works? (2026)

In January 2016, Lumosity paid $2 million to settle charges from the US Federal Trade Commission that it had deceived customers with claims that its games could sharpen performance at work and school and delay age-related decline. A decade later, Lumosity, Elevate and Peak are still among the best-known brain apps on any phone. So which one is worth your time? The honest answer depends less on the games than on what you want from them, and on evidence that is more mixed than any of their store pages suggest.

The verdict in 30 seconds

Pick Elevate if you want practical skills: reading, writing, vocabulary and everyday maths. Pick Lumosity if you want a broad, polished set of puzzle games, on the web as well as your phone. Pick Peak for the widest variety. And if evidence matters most to you, look at BrainHQ, the only one tied to a large, long-term trial, although even that result is now debated.

App	What it trains	Price (US, 2026)	Free version	Platforms	Evidence
Lumosity	Games for memory, attention, speed, flexibility, problem solving (40+)	$14.99/mo on the App Store; yearly and lifetime plans exist	3 games a day	Web, iOS, Android	One large trial, run by the company
Elevate	Practical skills: reading, writing, vocabulary, speaking, everyday maths (40+)	$9.99/mo or $39.99/yr on the App Store	Daily workout, with ads	iOS, Android	A user survey only
Peak	Games across memory, attention, language, mental agility and more (45+)	Varies by store and promotion	Short daily workout, with ads	iOS, Android	One game tested by Cambridge researchers
BrainHQ	Adaptive speed and perception exercises (29)	$14/mo or $96/yr on the web	Daily Spark plus 4 exercises	Web, iOS, Android	Linked to the ACTIVE trial, now contested

Prices come from each app's App Store listing or website in October 2026 and vary by device, country and promotion, so check the price in the app before you subscribe.

Lumosity vs Elevate: games or skills?

This is the comparison most people are actually making, and the two apps are less alike than their names suggest.

Lumosity: the broad puzzle habit

Lumosity offers more than 40 short games covering memory, attention, processing speed, mental flexibility and problem solving, and builds them into a daily workout. It is the most polished of the group, and the only one of the three big names that also runs in a web browser. The free version gives you three games a day, which rotate daily, plus a free Fit Test.

Its evidence is thinner than its brand. The largest trial, published in PLoS ONE in 2015, followed 4,715 adults for 10 weeks and found a small advantage over doing crosswords (an effect size of about 0.26). But Lumos Labs funded it, and five of its seven authors were company employees holding stock options. And the FTC settlement is the reason Lumosity no longer says what it once did about dementia and school results.

Elevate: skills you use every day

Elevate feels less like a games app and more like a tutor. Its 40-plus games train reading comprehension, writing, vocabulary, speaking and everyday maths, the kind of skills you notice in an email or a restaurant bill. The free version includes a daily workout, with ads. On the App Store, Premium is $9.99 a month or $39.99 a year, after a 7 day trial. There is no desktop version.

On evidence, Elevate has less to show than its reputation suggests. We found no randomised trial of the app. The only peer-reviewed paper is a 2025 survey of 3,367 users reporting their own improvements, written by authors employed or paid by the company behind it.

So which one wins?

If the question is "which will make me better at something I do every day?", Elevate. Its training is closer to real tasks, and $39.99 a year is the easier commitment. If the question is "which will give me the most enjoyable daily puzzle habit?", Lumosity, with the broader game library and a web version. Neither can show strong independent evidence of benefits beyond the games themselves.

Where Peak fits

Peak sits closer to Lumosity than to Elevate: short games in a daily workout. Where it stands out is range. It lists more than 45 games across memory, attention, problem solving, mental agility, language, coordination and emotion control, plus separate Advanced Training modules. The free version gives you a short daily workout of random games, each playable once a day, with ads. Peak's pricing varies by store and promotion, so compare it in the app.

It also has one genuinely interesting piece of science behind it. Decoder, a game developed at the University of Cambridge, was tested in a randomised trial with 75 healthy young adults and improved sustained attention, before being licensed into Peak. That is a result about one game, not about the app as a whole.

• Peak vs Lumosity: the same format; Peak for more variety, Lumosity for polish and a web version.
• Peak vs Elevate: games against skills; Peak for range, Elevate for practical reading, writing and maths.

BrainHQ: the strongest evidence, and why it is still debated

BrainHQ, from Posit Science, looks plainer than the others: 29 adaptive exercises focused on processing speed and perception. Its case rests on research rather than design.

The ACTIVE trial randomised 2,802 older adults to memory, reasoning or speed-of-processing training. Ten years later, the speed group had a 29 percent lower risk of dementia than the control group, while memory and reasoning training showed no significant effect. BrainHQ describes the trial's speed training as an earlier version of its exercise Double Decision.

The story did not end there. A 20-year follow-up published in February 2026 found the benefit only in people who had also received booster sessions: 39.8 percent of them were diagnosed with dementia, against 48.7 percent of controls. Without boosters, there was no difference. Then, in June 2026, a reanalysis argued that once you correct for multiple comparisons, none of the results is statistically significant, and that any small effect may be shared by all three kinds of training. Worth knowing too: one of the follow-up's authors holds stock in Posit Science.

That is still more than any other app here can point to. It is a reason to try BrainHQ, not a promise that it prevents dementia. It costs $14 a month or $96 a year on the web, and its free Daily Spark plus four free exercises on brainhq.com are enough to see whether you like it.

What the research says about all of them

Zoom out from individual apps and the picture is consistent.

• 2014: more than 70 scientists, convened by the Stanford Center on Longevity and the Max Planck Institute, signed a statement that there was "no compelling scientific evidence" that brain games reduce or reverse cognitive decline. A counter-letter signed by 133 researchers argued that some forms of training do help. Both camps agreed the marketing ran ahead of the science.
• 2016: a major review by Daniel Simons and colleagues, examining the very studies brain training companies cite, found extensive evidence that people get better at the trained tasks, less for closely related tasks, and little for everyday cognition.
• 2023: a review of meta-analyses by Fernand Gobet and Giovanni Sala concluded that the overall effect of far transfer, meaning benefits beyond the trained skill, is null.
• 2026: a network meta-analysis of 115 trials and 16,824 healthy adults over 60 found that computerised training improved inhibition, but that dance and resistance training ranked higher for overall executive function and working memory.

Put simply: you will get better at the games. Whether that spills over into the rest of your life is, at best, an open question. So pick the app you enjoy, use the free version first, and do not pay for a year of hope. For a wider look at the category, see our guide to the best brain training apps.

The problem none of them solve: you stop opening the app

Every app on this list has the same weak point, and it is not the science. It is that each one depends on you deciding, every day, to open it. The first week is easy. By the fourth, the daily session is the first thing that slips when you are busy, and the app you paid a year for sits unopened next to Instagram, which you opened dozens of times that day without deciding anything.

Full disclosure: this is the problem I built Hopopop to work around, so weigh what follows accordingly. Hopopop is not a brain training app in the Lumosity sense. It is a screen time app that blocks the apps you choose and asks you to solve something before each one opens: a mental maths problem, at one of three difficulty levels, or a trivia question. The training is not a session you have to remember. It happens at the moment you reach for your phone on autopilot, which is the one habit almost nobody forgets.

It will not replace BrainHQ's speed training or Elevate's reading drills, and I would not claim it raises your IQ. What it does is turn a reflex you already have into a few seconds of effortful thinking, many times a day, while cutting the scrolling that prompted the reflex. If you want the evidence on the arithmetic side specifically, we gathered it in mental maths and the brain.

Which one should you pick?

If you want…	Pick
Practical skills you use every day (reading, writing, maths)	Elevate
A broad, polished puzzle habit, on the web too	Lumosity
The widest variety of games	Peak
The strongest evidence, even if it is contested	BrainHQ
Training without a daily session to remember, and less scrolling	Hopopop
The best-evidenced way to sharpen executive function after 60	Honestly: dance or strength training

A note on this article

I build Hopopop, which appears in this article, so read that section with appropriate scepticism. Prices and features for Lumosity, Elevate, Peak and BrainHQ come from their own websites and store listings, checked in October 2026, and the research claims link to the original papers or official records. I have not run a controlled trial of these apps, and I have tried not to write as if I had.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Elevate better than Lumosity?

For practical skills like reading, writing and everyday maths, yes. For a broad mix of puzzle games, and a web version, Lumosity. Elevate is also the easier commitment at $39.99 a year on the App Store. Neither has strong independent evidence of benefits beyond the games themselves.

Is Lumosity worth it in 2026?

As a daily puzzle habit you enjoy, it can be. As a way to prevent cognitive decline, no: in 2016 Lumosity paid $2 million to settle FTC charges that claims of that kind were deceptive. The free version, three games a day, is enough to find out whether you will stick with it.

Peak vs Elevate: which is better?

Peak is better for variety, with more than 45 games across memory, attention, language and more. Elevate is better for practical reading, writing and maths skills. Both have free versions with ads.

Is BrainHQ better than Lumosity?

On evidence, yes. BrainHQ's speed training descends from the ACTIVE trial, where it was linked to a 29 percent lower dementia risk after ten years, a result that a 2026 reanalysis has since questioned. Lumosity has more games and a more polished experience. BrainHQ costs $14 a month or $96 a year on the web.

Do brain training apps actually work?

You reliably get better at the games you train on. Evidence that this transfers to everyday thinking is weak: a 2016 review led by Daniel Simons found little evidence of it, and a 2023 review of meta-analyses concluded that the overall far-transfer effect is null. BrainHQ's speed training has the most promising long-term data, and that is still debated.

Is there a free brain training app?

All four have a free version. Lumosity gives you three games a day, Elevate and Peak offer a daily workout with ads, and BrainHQ offers a Daily Spark plus four free exercises on its website.