Last reviewed October 2026
Side-by-side
| MathStar | Hit the Button | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Platform | iPhone and iPad | Browser, plus a paid app |
| Ages | 4–11 (Reception–Y6) | 6–11 |
| Curriculum | UK, all primary maths | Number facts only |
| MTC format | Yes — 6-sec drills | One-minute score attack |
| Adaptive practice | Yes | No |
| Progress tracking | Yes | None |
| Ads | None | Site advertising on the free version |
Which one your child needs
Use Hit the Button if you want a zero-friction, no-download, sixty-second warm-up. It's been a fixture of UK classrooms for years for good reason: it loads instantly and children understand it in five seconds.
Use MathStar if you need something that remembers what your child got wrong, covers the whole curriculum, and builds toward the MTC rather than a high score.
What Hit the Button gets right
Speed and simplicity. No account, no install, no setup — pick a mode, tap start, sixty seconds later you have a score. For a warm-up before homework or a filler on a wet lunchtime, it's excellent. The score-attack format also creates real motivation for children who like beating their own record.
The three limits
- No memory. It doesn't know your child struggled with 7 × 8 yesterday, so it won't bring it back today. Spaced repetition is the single biggest lever on long-term recall, and there isn't any.
- Narrow scope. Number bonds, doubles, halves and times tables. No fractions, place value, measure or reasoning.
- Format mismatch. Sixty seconds of as-many-as-possible rewards speed under pressure, which is useful, but it isn't the MTC's six-seconds-per-question rhythm.
Ads and the paid app
The Topmarks website carries advertising around the free browser game. There's a paid Hit the Button app that removes this. MathStar has no third-party advertising in any version.
The best use of both
Hit the Button as a ninety-second warm-up, MathStar for the actual ten-minute session. The warm-up gets a child's head into number mode; the session does the teaching. Many UK teachers run exactly this pattern in class.
Verdict
Hit the Button isn't really a competitor — it's a great free tool with a deliberately small scope. Keep it bookmarked, and pair it with something that tracks progress.