quizquiz.co vs Kahoot for pub quizzes

Kahoot is the first tool most people name when you say "online quiz", because they've met it at school or at a work away day. So it's a fair question: can you run a proper pub quiz on it?

You can, but it's built for a classroom, and in a pub the seams show. The free plan caps a game at 10 participants, the default scoring rewards fast thumbs over knowledge, and typed answers sit behind a paid tier. None of that matters in a lesson. It matters quite a lot when twelve teams are arguing over a pint.

The short comparison

Kahoot's figures come from its personal pricing page, which I checked in October 2026. Prices and limits change, so look at it yourself before you commit.

The 10 player limit

This is the one that decides it for most people.

On the free personal plan, Kahoot lets you add up to 10 participants to a game, and a participant is a device that has joined. A decent pub quiz has 10 to 15 teams. So if every team shares one phone, you can run ten teams and not one more, and twelve teams is already over the line. Kahoot's normal shape is one person per phone, which is how most people will instinctively set it up, and that way you're over the cap before the second table has sat down.

The paid personal tiers raise the cap. At the time of writing (October 2026), with annual billing shown per month in US dollars, Bronze is $3 a month for 50 participants, Silver is $7 for 100, and Gold is $12 for 200. That's not expensive, and a regular host might well pay it. But it does mean "free" stops at roughly a birthday party.

There's also a team mode. The pricing page has a "Team experience" row described as "Participants can gather around a shared device to compete against other teams", with numbers of 3, 5, 10, 10 and 25 across the plans. The page doesn't say what those numbers count, and I couldn't confirm it from there, so I won't guess. It exists, and the limits are unclear from the pricing page. If team play is the whole point of your night, test it before you advertise anything.

This article is published by quizquiz.co, so factor that in from here on. Its free plan doesn't cap team play. The limits are elsewhere: you can keep 3 saved quizzes, and 20 AI-generated questions get applied to your quizzes before you'd need Pro. You can build and present without an account, but you'll need a free one to save. Details are on the pricing page.

How players join (this part is easy)

Plenty of articles get this wrong, so plainly: Kahoot players don't need the app and don't need an account. They open a browser and type the game PIN. Only the host needs an account, per Kahoot's own mobile app page.

That's a genuinely good join experience. Nobody downloads anything, which matters in a pub where the WiFi is shaky and nobody wants to install an app for a Tuesday night.

quizquiz.co's phone mode works in a similar spirit: one phone per team scans a QR code on the big screen, picks a team name, and plays. No app, no player account. Neither tool wins on joining. They're both fine.

Multiple choice versus writing the answer

This is where the classroom origins show most.

On Kahoot's free plan the question types are Quiz and True/False, with up to four answers. Moving up to Bronze adds up to six answers, multi-select, polls and puzzles. The "Type answer" question, where players write the response themselves, needs Gold or higher on personal plans.

Why does that matter for a pub quiz? Because multiple choice changes what the question is. "Which river flows through Baghdad?" is a proper question when teams have to come up with Tigris from nothing. With four options on screen, it's a one-in-four guess, and teams who half-remember the answer will recognise it. Hard questions get easier, and lucky teams get rewarded.

Plenty of quizzes are fun this way, to be fair. A rapid-fire pop culture round with four options plays well. But the classic pub format, where a team writes down an answer after a proper argument, is a different game. If that's the format you want, you'll want typed answers or paper, and on Kahoot that means paying for Gold.

On quizquiz.co, players answer on paper or on phones, and you choose per quiz. The sheets are generated from your quiz, so there's nothing to design. If you want a feel for what makes a good round, our guide to quiz round ideas goes through the options.

Speed scoring in a room full of teams

Kahoot's default scoring is speed-based. The faster you answer a question correctly, the more points you get. In a classroom this makes the game feel like a race, and the kids love it.

A pub quiz works differently. Teams confer. Someone says "no, it's Lisbon". Someone else writes it down. Everyone answers at their own pace, and a team that spends 20 seconds arguing its way to the right answer has done nothing wrong. Speed scoring rewards the team with the fastest thumbs rather than the team that knows the most, and quick-fire buzzing is a different skill from quizzing.

You can get away from it. Kahoot has an Accuracy mode where speed doesn't feed into the score and a correct answer is simply a point, and there's a per-question points setting with a "no points" option. So if the racing is what puts you off, that's a setting rather than a dealbreaker, and it's worth finding before the night rather than discovering it mid-quiz.

What you can't do is have the default do the sensible thing for a pub. Speed scoring is what you get unless you go looking, and plenty of hosts won't think to.

If you do want a fastest-finger format, quizquiz.co isn't it either. For buzzer-style play, see our comparison with SpeedQuizzing.

Paper, the old reliable

Not every crowd wants a phone out. An older group might not want to, and a cellar bar with no signal won't let them. Paper is the fallback that always works.

I couldn't find a paper mode in Kahoot, or printable player answer sheets, and the live multiplayer game needs an internet connection. There are references to an offline mode in the mobile app, which I wasn't able to confirm, so if your venue's WiFi is poor or your crowd is reluctant, check what your fallback actually is before the night rather than assuming you have one.

quizquiz.co prints the sheets for you: one click gives you a PDF with blank sheets for teams and a host copy with the answers. To be fair, it's a web app. The slides keep running if the connection drops, but the YouTube clips won't play. A PowerPoint file with local media doesn't care either way. The paper option solves the players' side, not the media, so test the venue connection before the night regardless. One thing worth knowing: teams answering on phones are usually on their own mobile data, so patchy venue wifi matters less than people expect.

Music, pictures and the rest

A good pub quiz is often remembered for its music and picture rounds. On quizquiz.co you upload images and control what shows on screen versus on the answer sheet, and you can paste a YouTube link, set the start point and clip length, and play it from the presenter. Our notes on music rounds and picture rounds cover how to run them.

For Kahoot, I can only tell you what the pricing page says: background music and custom participant names on every plan, and read-aloud text from Bronze up. It doesn't mention YouTube clips or uploaded audio, and I wasn't able to confirm how media works on a home plan. If music rounds are central to your night, check that before deciding.

When Kahoot is the better choice

I want to be properly generous here, because Kahoot earns its popularity.

You're teaching or training. It was designed for this. If you want to check whether a class or a training group took something in, Kahoot is made for the job and a pub quiz tool isn't.

You've got a young, high-energy crowd. The timer, the music and the leaderboard racing up the screen create a pace that a table of adults with pens can't match. A room of teenagers, or a work event that wants noise, will have a better time with Kahoot's speed than with a slower paper quiz.

You don't have time to write questions. Kahoot's own site offers "100+ million ready-to-play games" and a question bank you can search, so you can usually find something on your topic in a couple of minutes. I haven't audited any of it, and with a library that size the quality will vary wildly, but having something to start from beats a blank page at 6pm. quizquiz.co has no built-in library of professionally written question packs. The blog has plenty of free questions, but you're still choosing and arranging your own.

Everyone already knows how to play. There's no explaining to do. Say "it's a Kahoot" and half the room knows what happens next. For a one-off event, that saved explanation is worth a lot.

It's a quick icebreaker, not a quiz night. At a work event where nobody wants rounds, answer sheets and a tiebreaker, ten minutes of Kahoot is exactly right. Fewer than ten people also fits comfortably in the free plan.

You'd rather work with a company. Kahoot is a well-established product from a well-established company. quizquiz.co is a small independent project, which suits some people and not others.

If that list sounds like your night, use Kahoot and don't feel bad about it.

When quizquiz.co fits better

If you're running a pub quiz in the traditional sense, with 8 to 15 teams, a mix of ages, written answers, a quizmaster walking the room and a tiebreaker at the end, the classroom tool starts working against you. You'd be paying for Gold to get typed answers, working around speed scoring, and without a paper fallback I could find.

quizquiz.co is built for exactly that format: unlimited rounds and questions, answer sheets or phones, a phone remote so you can walk the room, and a host view on your laptop while the big screen shows the quiz. It's free to run a quiz night. The free plan limits are 3 saved quizzes and 20 AI questions, and Pro removes them.

It won't do everything. There's no buzzer format, no league tables across a season, and no library of ready-made packs. If you need any of those, say so to yourself honestly before you pick it.

Try both before the night

Most hosts will be fine with either one. The sensible test is to run a short mock round with five or six friends on each tool. Time how long setup takes, see how the scoring feels, and notice whether anyone grumbles about the format.

If you're weighing up more options, our roundup of free pub quiz software covers the wider field, and how to run a great pub quiz is worth a read whichever tool you choose. When you're ready to build a quiz, the quiz maker is free to start.