For most people, Elevate wins — it costs less than half as much, and its practical-skills approach genuinely sidesteps the transfer problem. Choose Lumosity only if you specifically want its much larger catalog or desktop access.
Lumosity and Elevate are two of the most downloaded brain training apps in the world, and they could hardly be more different. One throws a vast catalog of abstract games at you; the other drills a focused set of practical skills. We tested both for thirty days.
Head to head
| App | Best for | Price (annual) | Rating | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elevate | Practical real-world skills | ~$40/yr | 8.4 | iOS, Android |
| Lumosity | Largest game variety | $109.99/yr | 7.4 | iOS, Android, Web |
The core difference
Lumosity is broad and abstract — 40-plus games designed to exercise cognition in general. Elevate is narrow and practical — it trains writing, reading, mental math, and speaking, skills you use every day. Almost everything else follows from that distinction.
Price — not close
Elevate typically costs around $40 per year. Lumosity Premium now costs $109.99 per year — more than two and a half times as much. Both have free tiers and 7-day trials, though Elevate’s free tier is more generous. On price, Elevate wins decisively.
Approach — which actually helps?
Lumosity’s abstract games run into the transfer problem: getting better at a brain game often does not make you better at anything outside it. Our guide on whether brain training works goes deep on this.
Elevate sidesteps the problem. It trains real skills, so improvement carries over by definition. That makes it the stronger choice if you want training that demonstrably matters in daily life. Lumosity’s counterargument is variety — if you simply enjoy a wide rotation of games as a habit, it delivers more of that.
Which should you choose?
- Choose Elevate if you want training that improves real skills, you write or present for work, or you want a fair price and a genuinely useful free tier.
- Choose Lumosity if you specifically want the largest catalog, you need desktop access, or variety for its own sake keeps you training — and you will pay more than double for it.
The honest verdict
For most people, Elevate is the better choice — far cheaper, with an approach that genuinely sidesteps the transfer problem. But neither was our top pick overall. If you want deeply adaptive, personalized training, Zenelia does that better than either, at close to Elevate’s price. See our full roundup before deciding.