If you are writing plans for someone else to teach tomorrow, the tool depends on how much warning you got. Brisk Teaching is the only one of these seven with a generator built specifically for substitute plans, and it is free for teachers. MagicSchool is the better choice when you are starting from nothing at six in the morning. Diffit gives you a reading passage at the right level that prints, which matters more than it sounds like it should: a plan a stranger can run on paper survives a day when the laptop cart is locked in another room.
That is the whole problem with sub plans. You are not writing a lesson. You are writing instructions for a person you have never met, who may not know your subject, who cannot log in as you, and who will be handed your class at 8:05 with no time to prepare.
How this list was built
The pool was the 53 tools in the directory's lesson planning and resource creation category, narrowed to the ones that produce something a substitute can actually run without you in the building. Pricing and privacy claims were read from each vendor's own pages on September 25, 2026, not carried over from an earlier post. Nobody paid to be here and the directory's listing tiers played no part in the selection.
Two deliberate exclusions. Tools that only generate slides for you to present were left out, because the person presenting is not you. So were tools whose free tier requires students to create accounts, since a substitute has no authority to enroll anyone in anything.
What the directory says about tools built for substitutes
Here is the finding that made this post worth writing. Of the 138 tools in the directory, exactly one record mentions substitutes at all, and it is not among the seven below. Of the 53 lesson planning tools, 39 carry a free or freemium tier, but only one vendor publishes a generator purpose-built for the job of covering an absence.
So the market has produced dozens of tools for planning your own teaching and almost nothing for handing your teaching to someone else. You are adapting general tools to a job none of them was designed for, which is why sub plans still take an hour you do not have.
Two more numbers worth knowing before you pick. Eight of those 53 tools set a minimum user age of 18, meaning a substitute can use them but your students cannot touch them directly. And 15 of the 53 record a FERPA position of "yes" in our data, while 21 are marked not applicable and 15 are blank. A blank is not evidence of a problem; it means nobody has published an answer, and for the seven tools below the vendor pages were checked directly.
The three questions a sub plan has to survive
Before you pick a tool, it helps to know what you are optimizing for. Every sub plan that fails, fails one of these three.
Can someone open it without your login? A brilliant activity sitting behind your single sign-on is a blank hour. The test is whether the plan works as a link, a printout or a code, none of which requires the substitute to be you.
Can someone teach it without your subject knowledge? The substitute covering your chemistry class may be a retired social studies teacher. Instructions that say "review the mole concept" are not instructions. Instructions that say "play the video, stop at 4:20, ask question 3 on the handout" are.
Does it still work if the devices do not? Wi-Fi drops, carts go missing, and the substitute has no idea where you keep the dongles. Every plan below should have a paper version or it is not finished.
A plan that clears all three can be run by a stranger. A plan that clears two is a gamble on which one fails.
The seven, compared
| Tool | Best for | Free tier, checked September 25, 2026 | Main limitation | Privacy notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brisk Teaching | The sub plan document itself | Free for teachers, unlimited use, 20+ tools | Lives in a Chrome or Edge extension | Processor for the school; Student Data Processing Addendum applies |
| MagicSchool | Starting from nothing | Free forever, 80+ tools | Free tier caps generations | Vendor states FERPA and COPPA compliance; student data not used to train models |
| Diffit | A reading a stranger can run | Free, print and share | Free access covers only the last 90 days of your content | Directory record blank on FERPA and age |
| Edpuzzle | A video lesson that teaches itself | Free, up to 20 saved activities | 20-activity cap builds up fast | Directory record blank on FERPA and age |
| Canva for Education | The printed packet | Free for verified K-12 teachers | Excludes homeschool, tutors, preschool | Eligibility re-verified every three years |
| Wayground | Self-paced practice | Free forever for teachers | 20 stored activities, 100 students per class | Directory record blank on FERPA and age |
| Curipod | A lesson that runs on the board | Free, weekly sessions | Weekly session limits, no offline download | Directory record blank on FERPA and age |
Best for the sub plan document itself: Brisk Teaching
Brisk Teaching is the best fit for writing the plan because it is the only tool in this pool that publishes a generator built for the job rather than a lesson planner you have to bend into shape.
Its sub plan generator takes a document, an article or a blank page, plus your grade level and how long the class runs, and returns a plan with timed activities, a warm-up, an exit ticket, discussion prompts and a backup task for the group that finishes early. It exports to Google Docs or Word, which is the format a substitute can open on a school machine without an account. You can also keep chatting with it to add the detail only you know: that third period has a student who needs the instructions read aloud, that the projector remote lives in the desk drawer.
The backup task is the part that earns its place. Most plans fail late in the period, when the work runs out and twenty minutes remain.
Watch out for: it runs as a Chrome or Edge extension, so it works inside documents rather than as a standalone website. If your district blocks extension installs, this one is decided for you before you start. The free plan also has an upload limit on batch feedback, though Brisk does not publish the number (plans).
Pricing: free for individual teachers, with unlimited usage, the extension, 20-plus creation tools and content generation in 50 or more languages. School and district plans, called Premium and Intelligence, are custom priced with no public figure (plans page, checked September 25, 2026).
Safety: Brisk's privacy notice states that the school is the controller of student data and Brisk acts as a processor on the school's behalf, and that it never sells student data. For students under 13 it says the school provides consent when the service is used through a school, and that schools must enter into an agreement, with a Student Data Processing Addendum applying automatically where no separate agreement has been signed. The notice does not explicitly address whether student data trains AI models. Our directory record is blank on FERPA, COPPA, hosting and minimum age. Whether any of this satisfies your district is a question for whoever signs your data agreements, not for a blog post. Directory rating 4.77 from 35 reviews.
Best for starting from nothing: MagicSchool
MagicSchool is the best fit for the six-in-the-morning absence because its free tier gives you more than 80 teacher tools without a purchase decision, so you are never blocked by a paywall on a day you cannot deal with one.
If you woke up ill and have no lesson prepared, MagicSchool will write the plan, the passage, the comprehension questions and the exit ticket in sequence, and its output history means you can pull last month's version of the same unit rather than starting clean. That is the practical difference between it and Brisk: Brisk shapes an existing document into a plan, MagicSchool invents the contents when there is no document.
Watch out for: the free plan caps generations, and editing outputs and saving history are Plus features. On the morning you need it most, a cap is exactly the wrong thing to discover, so it is worth generating your emergency set in September while you are well rather than in February while you are not.
Pricing: free forever, with 80-plus teacher tools. Plus is $8.33 per user per month billed annually, or $12.99 per month billed monthly, and adds unlimited generations, output history, editing and 50-plus student tools. Enterprise is custom priced and is the only tier with custom data agreements, single sign-on and LMS integration (pricing, checked September 25, 2026).
Safety: MagicSchool's FAQ states that it is FERPA and COPPA compliant, that student data is encrypted and never used to train AI models, and that conversation data is not sold or shared for advertising. It says student access runs through school or educator approval where consent requirements are met, and that its student-facing mode, MagicStudent, keeps content moderation on at all times. Those are the vendor's statements about its own product. A vendor's compliance claim is not the same as your district's sign-off, and the custom data agreement sits on the Enterprise tier rather than the free one. Directory rating 4.74 from 19 reviews.
Best for a reading a stranger can run: Diffit
Diffit is the best fit for the reading portion of a sub plan because it produces a passage at a chosen reading level with questions attached, and the whole thing prints, which clears the third question in the framework above.
Give it a topic, a link or your own text and it returns a leveled passage, key vocabulary, and comprehension and discussion questions. For a covered class this is close to ideal, because the substitute does not need to know your subject to hand out a passage and ask the questions printed underneath it. Change the reading level and you have a version for the students who need it without writing anything twice.
Watch out for: the free plan only lets you reach content you made in the last 90 days. If you build your emergency folder in September and go down with flu in February, the September materials may be out of reach on a free account. Download the PDFs when you make them. That single habit removes the limitation entirely.
Pricing: the Basic plan is free and includes downloading to PDF, printing, sharing with colleagues and editing, with access to content made in the last 90 days. Diffit for Schools is a flat-rate annual subscription tiered by student enrollment, with no public figure; Google Docs and Slides export and standards alignment sit on the paid plans (pricing, checked September 25, 2026).
Safety: our directory record for Diffit is blank on FERPA, COPPA, hosting and minimum age. In its favor for this particular job, the sub plan use case does not require students to have accounts at all: you generate the passage, you print it, and the substitute distributes paper. That keeps students out of the tool entirely, which is the cleanest privacy position available to you. Directory rating 4.20 from 5 reviews.
Best for a video lesson that teaches itself: Edpuzzle
Edpuzzle is the best fit when the substitute cannot teach your content, because the video does the teaching and the embedded questions do the checking.
You take a video, cut it to the segment you want, and drop questions into the timeline so it pauses and waits for an answer. Students cannot skip ahead. The substitute's whole job becomes pressing play and keeping the room calm, and you get the responses waiting for you when you return, which is more than most sub plans leave behind. For a class where the alternative is a worksheet nobody marks, that is a real gain.
Watch out for: the free plan saves up to 20 activities in your account, and that fills faster than you expect once you start building a library. You can add three more per verified colleague referral, which is a slow way to solve it. Edpuzzle's own help page does not publish the dollar figure for Pro (what Edpuzzle costs), so treat the upgrade price as unverified until you see a quote.
Pricing: the Basic plan is free with a 20-activity limit. Pro Teacher adds unlimited activities, and a Pro School plan adds curated curriculum and standards-aligned content packs. No public price for either tier on the vendor's help page, checked September 25, 2026.
Safety: our directory record is blank on FERPA, COPPA, hosting and minimum age. Unlike the paper-based options here, this one does put students into a platform and records their answers, so it is the tool on this list most worth checking against your district's approved list before you leave it in a plan. Directory rating 4.83 from 6 reviews.
Best for the printed packet: Canva for Education
Canva for Education is the best fit for the no-devices fallback, because it turns your materials into something you can print, staple and leave on the desk, and it is free for verified K-12 teachers.
Every plan here should end with paper. Canva is where the paper gets made: the instruction sheet for the substitute, the seating chart with the two names they need to know, the student handout, the bell-work slip. Its templates mean this takes minutes rather than an evening, and the output does not care whether the network is up.
Watch out for: eligibility is narrower than most people assume. Canva's eligibility guidelines limit the free education offer to certified K-12 teachers currently in post at formally accredited schools, plus school librarians, learning support assistants, curriculum specialists and technical or vocational instructors. Homeschool educators, tutors, public librarians, preschool staff and anyone in higher education are excluded. If you are a long-term substitute rather than a contracted teacher, you may not qualify.
Pricing: free for eligible K-12 teachers and their schools. Verification is immediate with a recognized school email domain, or by uploading a teaching license, school ID or employment verification within 48 hours. Teachers in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Europe need only supply a teaching license. Credentials are re-verified every three years (eligibility guidelines, checked September 25, 2026).
Safety: our directory record is blank on FERPA, COPPA, hosting and minimum age. Used this way, you are designing a document and printing it, so no student data enters the tool. Directory rating 4.62 from 39 reviews, the largest review count of any tool here.
Best for self-paced practice: Wayground
Wayground, the product formerly called Quizizz, is the best fit for the second half of a covered period, because a self-paced activity set absorbs the twenty minutes where sub plans usually collapse.
Students work through questions at their own speed with a code, which means the substitute does not have to pace anything or know the answers. You set it up once and it holds up whether the class has fifteen students or thirty, and the read-aloud accommodation is on the free plan rather than behind the paywall, which matters for the students who would otherwise sit out.
Watch out for: the free Basic plan limits question types, stores a maximum of 20 activities and caps classes at 100 students. The stored-activity limit is the same trap as Edpuzzle's, and for the same reason: an emergency library is exactly the thing that accumulates.
Pricing: Basic is described by the vendor as free for every teacher, forever, and includes assessments, lessons, passages, flashcards, videos and 25-plus accommodations including Read Aloud. School and District is quote-only with no published figure (plans, checked September 25, 2026).
Safety: our directory record is blank on FERPA, COPPA, hosting and minimum age. Students join by code, so you should decide in advance whether you want them entering real names, and say which you want in the plan itself. Directory rating 4.71 from 7 reviews.
Best for a lesson that runs on the board: Curipod
Curipod is the best fit when you want the room doing something together rather than reading in silence, because it builds an interactive lesson the substitute can advance with a single click.
You describe the topic and it assembles slides with polls, word clouds and short writing prompts built in. The substitute presents it and the students respond on their devices, so participation happens without anyone having to lead a discussion on a topic they do not know. Its writing feedback gives students a glow and a grow on what they submit, which is more response than a covered lesson usually produces.
Watch out for: the free plan is the most constrained here. Sessions renew weekly, student responses are capped at 1,000 characters against 5,000 on paid plans, and there are no PDF downloads or offline access, which means this is the one tool on the list that cannot become your paper fallback. Plan it as the main activity with something printed behind it.
Pricing: free at $0 per month, with weekly renewing sessions, unlimited student writers and limited usage on the writing practice. School and District and ELA Curriculum Alignment are both custom priced (pricing, checked September 25, 2026).
Safety: our directory record is blank on FERPA, COPPA, hosting and minimum age, and students submit written work into the platform. Of the seven, this is the one whose free tier is least suited to an emergency you cannot schedule. Directory rating 4.67 from 3 reviews.
The big names AI assistants keep suggesting
Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity for sub plan tools and the same names come back. Briefly, on each.
ChatGPT writes a decent plan if you give it your lesson and tell it the substitute is not a subject specialist. It will not produce the handout, the leveled reading or the printable, and nothing in it is covered by a school data agreement unless your district has bought an education tier. Use it to draft, not to store anything about a student.
Khanmigo is a tutoring product. It is built for students working through Khan Academy content, not for generating instructions a substitute follows, and it will not write your plan.
NotebookLM is genuinely useful for the adjacent job: feed it your unit materials and it will summarize what a covering teacher needs to know. It does not produce a timed plan or a student handout.
Quizlet covers the same self-paced practice ground as Wayground, and if your students already have sets for your unit, that is the faster route on the day. It is not a planning tool.
MagicSchool and Diffit are both on the list above, and both are recommended by assistants for good reason: they are the two that do the most of this job on a free plan.
A worked example: seventh grade science, one period, no warning
This is a plan you could follow, not a report of a lesson that happened. Topic: cell structure, 50 minutes, a class that has already met plant and animal cells once.
Before the day, in September, while you are well. Use Diffit to make a 700-word passage on cell organelles at two reading levels, with comprehension questions. Download both as PDFs so the 90-day limit never touches you. In Canva, make a one-page substitute instruction sheet: bell schedule, where the passage is, the two students who need the reading aloud, and the sentence "if the devices do not work, the paper packet in the red folder is the whole lesson." Print fifteen copies of everything and put the folder in the same drawer every year.
On the day. Open Brisk on last year's cell structure document and generate a sub plan for 50 minutes at grade seven. Give it the class notes: period four is right after lunch and needs the writing task first. It returns the timed sequence, a warm-up, an exit ticket and a backup task.
The period itself. Ten minutes of bell work from the printed slip. Twenty minutes on the leveled passage and its questions, on paper. Fifteen minutes on an Edpuzzle video on organelles with three embedded questions, which you built in September and which gives you the data when you return. Five minutes on the exit ticket. The backup task is the extension question at the bottom of the passage, for whoever finishes early.
Every step of that clears all three questions. The substitute needs no login, no knowledge of cell biology, and no working device.
How to actually choose
Do not pick a favorite tool. Pick by which of the three questions your situation is most likely to fail.
If your risk is the login, build in Diffit and Canva and leave paper. Nothing else is as reliable.
If your risk is subject knowledge, build in Edpuzzle and Brisk. The video teaches and the plan scripts the adult.
If your risk is the twenty minutes at the end, build in Wayground or Curipod, and leave the extension question printed.
If your risk is that you will never get round to any of this, use MagicSchool on the morning and accept the generation cap. A plan made in ten minutes beats the emergency folder you meant to build.
The thing worth noticing is that six of the seven have a free tier that covers this job. The constraint is not money. It is that nobody sets aside an afternoon in September to prepare for a February illness.
What to do before the next absence
Pick one class. Build one generic plan that would work in any week of the year: a leveled reading, a video with three questions, an exit ticket, and a printed instruction sheet. Put it in a folder a colleague could find without calling you. That is an hour, once, and it covers the first day of every absence you have for the rest of the year.
The Gallup and Walton Family Foundation survey of more than 2,000 public school teachers, run in February and March 2026, found that 82 percent had received no formal guidance on using AI tools across their work, and just under half had none for creating assignments or modifying materials (K-12 Dive's report). Which means most teachers writing sub plans with AI this year are doing it with no training and no policy, at six in the morning, while ill. The least you can do is not be inventing the process on the day.
The bottom line
Brisk writes the plan, MagicSchool covers the morning you have nothing, Diffit makes the reading a stranger can teach, and Canva turns it all into paper that works when the network does not. Six of the seven are free for the job described here. Start from the lesson planning and resource creation category if you want to see the rest of the pool, and read the companion piece on AI tools for substitute teachers if you are the one walking into someone else's classroom rather than leaving it.
Write the plan for the person who has never met your students. That is the whole skill, and no tool does it for you.
Dan Fitzpatrick is The AI Educator. He writes about AI in schools at aieducator.tools.
