Common Planner vs LessonSmith
Common Planner
commonplanner.comLessonSmith
lessonsmith.aiSide by side
| Figure | Common Planner | LessonSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $5.59/mo | $8/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 5 | 4 |
| Spec score · AI Lesson Plan Generators | 9.2 (#1) | 7.2 (#25) |
| Spec score · Lesson Planning Software | 9.4 (#1) | 7.3 (#18) |
| Headquarters | Baltimore, Maryland, United States | Nairobi, Kenya |
| Purpose | Common Planner describes itself as a real-time collaborative lesson planner for teachers, schools, and districts. | LessonSmith drafts lesson plans and schemes of work to match a teacher’s curriculum, class and term dates. |
| Support | The Schools plan includes free staff training and ongoing support throughout the year. | Support is provided by email, with the maker stating that one person reads the mailbox and replies within two working days, Monday to Friday, East Africa Time. |
Plans
Common Planner
- Basic for TeachersFree
- Pro for Teachers$5.59 a month
- Pro for Teachers (monthly)$5.59 a month
- Pro for Teachers (annual)$71.88 a year
- Cc for SchoolsPriced on request
LessonSmith
- Pro$8 a month
- Max$40 a month
- CustomPriced on request
- DemoPrice not published
In their own words
Common Planner
Common Planner is a web-based collaborative lesson planner for teachers, schools, and districts. Teachers can create lesson and unit plans, organize classes, and reuse planbooks and lessons across school years. They can search for standards, attach them to units, and track which standards have been taught. Shared planbooks support co-planning, sharing plans with administrators, and borrowing plans from other teachers. School leaders can review planning status, standards coverage, and pacing, then comment on lesson plans. The school product page describes AI-assisted insights for identifying missing standards, pacing issues, or instructional gaps. Basic for Teachers includes an AI-powered lesson assistant, daily, weekly, and monthly planning, up to 50 Google Classroom posts, and file uploads from a computer or supported storage services. Pro includes unlimited Classroom posts, unit planning, automatic standards tracking, and up to five collaborators. The Basic plan is free forever; Pro is listed at $5.59 a month, with a one-payment amount of 71.88 USD. The Schools plan includes school-wide templates, membership management, staff training, and ongoing support. There is no app, but the service works through a browser on tablets and smartphones.
LessonSmith
LessonSmith is a web app that drafts lesson plans, schemes of work and support plans for individual learners. Teachers can upload a syllabus PDF or add notes, then build a week-by-week scheme against a calendar. Plans can be edited directly or revised by describing changes in plain language, and exported to Word or PDF. The service lists 11 curricula, including Kenya CBC/CBE, South Africa CAPS, England’s National Curriculum, Common Core and NGSS, IB and Cambridge International. The app and generated plans follow the teacher’s chosen language, with nine languages listed. LessonSmith has a free plan, a one-off Demo, and paid tiers. Pro costs $8 a month or KES 1,000 a month; Max costs $40 a month or KES 5,000 a month. Pro lists 40 lesson plans monthly, while Max lists 80. The maker recommends excluding learners’ personal details from prompts and reviewing every generation before classroom use.