Brain Training Apps Compared: What Each One Documents

The only honest way to compare apps in this category is to compare what each publisher documents on its own site, and to say clearly where your own product loses. This article does that for four widely used brain training products and for ours, using each company's official pages as read on 21 September 2026 — and, for ours, its Google Play listing as re-read on 2 October 2026, after the app was renamed and re-described.

A disclosure that belongs at the top rather than the bottom: IQ Test & Brain Training Games is our own app, published by Reign Creative, so the row describing it is written by an interested party. Treat it the way you would treat any manufacturer's specification sheet, and check the claims that matter to you.

How this comparison was built, and what it deliberately leaves out

Three rules shaped it.

Only official documentation counts. Every statement about another product below comes from that publisher's own website. A review site's description of a feature is not evidence that the feature exists, and a feature missing from a publisher's marketing page is not evidence that it is missing from the product — only that the page does not mention it. Where that distinction matters, this article says so.

No prices, ratings or install figures. Prices vary by region, platform and promotion and go stale immediately. Ratings and download counts measure popularity and satisfaction, not capability, and they are trivially misread. None appear here. What a paywall typically gates in this category is covered separately in what a brain training subscription buys.

Capability, not efficacy. This is a comparison of what each product says it contains. Whether any of it produces broad cognitive benefit is a different question with a much less comfortable answer, handled in the cornerstone article do brain training apps work.

What each publisher says its product contains

The table below summarises the official descriptions; the detail underneath it is where the meaningful differences live.

Lumosity. Its site groups the games under memory, speed, attention, flexibility, problem solving, word and math, and describes working out "with a fresh set of games each day to keep you challenged". It also states that "detailed progress tracking helps maintain your brain-training habit" and that "we interpret your scores to offer actionable feedback and rich insights into your cognition". Notably, the same page carries its own limitation: "These results are promising, but more research is needed to determine the connection between improved assessment scores and everyday tasks in participants' lives."

BrainHQ, from Posit Science, describes "dozens of online exercises" organised into "attention, brain speed, memory, people skills, navigation, and intelligence". Its personal trainer feature "continually tracks your performance to serve up the exercises that are right for you", and users can "track your progress over time, and — if you like detail — drill down into performance reporting on individual exercise levels". The site states that "more than 100 published research papers — most of which were independently conducted by respected scientists — show the benefits", while adding that "every study is conducted on a different group of people, and individual results vary".

Elevate describes itself in one line: "With 40+ games, you'll strengthen reading, writing, speaking, memory, and math." Its progress framing is comparative — the app "shows you where you excel, where you can grow, and how you compare with others".

Peak describes "more than 40 games and activities" covering "Focus, Memory, Problem Solving, Mental Agility and more", built as "short, intense workouts designed around your life" with a daily routine. It also describes "Advanced Training Programmes" developed with scientists from institutions including Cambridge, and states that it works with researchers from Cambridge, Yale, UCL and King's College London.

Ours. IQ Test & Brain Training Games — listed on Google Play as Mental Math & Memory Games when this comparison was first written — now documents an IQ-style test covering numerical reasoning, logic, patterns, vocabulary, working memory, spatial reasoning and processing speed, followed by brain-training recommendations. Around it sit brain games with quick play, daily, survival, boss and progression modes; memory games built from digit span, sequences, grids, colours, letters and symbols; logic games with analogies, conditional reasoning and deduction; vocabulary games; focus games; and mental math from the four operations to percentages, ratios, estimation and money problems. It also has a memory test, a reaction time test and a personality questionnaire with a Big Five profile, which the listing presents as self-reflection rather than diagnosis, and it tracks personal bests, accuracy, streaks, response speed and assessment history. The listing states that IQ test, personality test, memory test and other results are estimates based on app activities, not medical, psychological, clinical or professional diagnostic assessments.

Where the comparison is not equivalent

Two differences are large enough that a feature table hides rather than reveals them.

Scope. Ours is no longer the narrow arithmetic-and-memory product this comparison first described: its listing now spans reasoning, memory, logic, vocabulary, focus and mental math, plus a personality questionnaire. What it does not describe is any navigation exercise, anything addressing social cognition, or writing and speaking practice. If those are what you came for, BrainHQ's navigation and people-skills categories and Elevate's writing and speaking areas have no counterpart in our listing, and the sensible decision is to choose one of them.

Evidence posture. These four publishers sit in visibly different places. BrainHQ cites a research volume on its own site. Lumosity carries a published caveat about the gap between assessment-score gains and everyday tasks. Peak describes research partnerships and researcher-developed programmes rather than outcome claims. We publish no efficacy research. Our listing describes its IQ-style test and other results as estimates based on app activities rather than professional assessments, and where it says the app builds memory, focus and speed, no research of ours stands behind that wording. Those are different positions, and readers should notice that "cites research" and "demonstrates a benefit for you" are not the same statement.