Forio vs The Business School

Forio builds interactive simulations for training and higher education, with options for ready-made business learning and tailored projects. Epicenter is its platform for creating learning simulations with model-driven interfaces, cohort management, and secure deployment. Ready-Made simulations support individual, team-based, and asynchronous formats. Forio also develops custom simulations with customers and says the customer owns the resulting intellectual property. Performer provides branded role-play experiences with scoring criteria, facilitator dashboards, and AI feedback for select exercises. Epicenter supports Python, R, and Julia models, along with Vensim and Stella, and includes Flow.js, Epicenter.js, and REST APIs. It can connect LLMs and AI libraries through Python or APIs, and describes OAuth 2.0 security and role-based project access. Epicenter Personal is free. Ready-Made Simulations start at $168, paid once; Epicenter Professional costs $1,970 a year, and Epicenter Business costs $4,770 a year. Performer Business costs $7,200 a year, plus a one-time set-up and training fee of $2,700.

The Business School is a browser-based classroom simulation where student teams run rival firms in a shared market during one lesson. Teams decide prices, hiring, loans, VAT, crises, and deals, with the effects visible in the simulation. Each session supports 6 to 32 students across up to eight firms of three or four. Teachers can pause or resume phases, trigger a crisis, review firm activity, and display a live leaderboard. Students join using a six-digit PIN and a team label or first name, without student accounts or email addresses. They can download private reports, while the teacher receives a curriculum-mapped class report by email within 48 hours. Knowledge Check questions are listed for 23 business courses, including AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR, Eduqas, WJEC, Cambridge, BTEC, and IB courses. Session data is stored in an EU database in Frankfurt; the company says it does not sell data or use it for advertising, and teachers can end a session at any time. A free teacher demo is listed. School and trust licence prices are by quote after the pilot. The Autumn 2026 pilot cohort is full, with a waitlist open.