Nexus vs SchoolAI

[ SUMMARY ]

The short version

SchoolAI and Nexus both put AI in front of students under school control. They differ in where the student works.

• SchoolAI keeps students inside activities their teachers build, and picks the model for them.
• Nexus gives students the models your school approves, on any assignment, under a class learning mode they cannot switch off.
• SchoolAI is further along on safety alerts, rostering and published research. Nexus is new and has no outcome data yet.

What each product is

SchoolAI. Teachers launch Spaces, AI activities where SchoolAI's tutor works with each student inside the limits the teacher and district set. Mission Control shows teachers who is engaged or stuck. For 2026-27 SchoolAI added Sidekick, an always-available tutor, along with a Class Mastery Score, Smart Groups, Next Steps and alert routing to the right adult. SchoolAI reported more than 400 districts in April 2025, after a $25 million Series A ($32 million in total).

Nexus. Nexus is the AI your school can approve, built on Onyx, the open-source platform companies use to give employees approved AI. A student picks a class and asks for help on whatever they are working on. Each class has a learning mode (Hints, Guided, or Full answer with critique) that students cannot change, so no one has to build an activity before students get help.

Models: who chooses

SchoolAI uses models from Anthropic, Google and OpenAI, chosen by SchoolAI. Its Data Protection page says those providers work under zero-data-retention agreements that bar training on the data.

In Nexus, your school chooses which models each class can use from Nexus's reviewed list. Students can compare answers from two or three models the school allows and keep the one they prefer. Comparing answers is a small exercise in AI literacy: the OECD and European Commission framework asks students to "Evaluate whether AI outputs should be accepted, revised or rejected."

Provider rules for minors narrow any school's list. Google's Gemini API terms bar use in services "likely to be accessed by individuals under the age of 18," so a school-run AI cannot simply offer students every model.

What teachers see, and what students are told

SchoolAI's paid plans let teachers review all student AI chats in full. Its free trial offers drill-down into individual chats.

Nexus draws a line between two kinds of chat. Class chats can be reviewed by the class's teachers and the school's Nexus administrators, and students are told when a chat can be reviewed. Personal chats are not shown to teachers. Nexus records who opened each class conversation, so the school can see every read.

Neither design is right for every school. Some schools want staff to see everything a student types into a school tool. Others worry that full visibility discourages students from asking for help. Decide which you want before you compare features.

Safety alerts

SchoolAI's crisis alerts are on in every plan, including the free trial, and paid plans add admin and backup routing.

Nexus is a study assistant, not a counselor. Before any student uses Nexus at your school, we set up a safety route with you. Ask any vendor who receives a flag, in which hours, with what backup, and whether a person reviews it before anyone acts.

Price and evidence

SchoolAI publishes no prices. Its Free Trial, Pro and Scale plans are sold by quote. Nexus pricing is on our site.

SchoolAI's three ESSA Level III studies are correlational; none measures test scores. Nexus has no outcome data yet. In a field experiment with about 1,000 high-school students, answer-giving AI raised practice scores but cut unaided exam scores by 17%, and a hint-first version of the same AI removed that harm but did not beat no AI (Bastani et al., PNAS, 2025). That is why Nexus's pilots measure what students can do alone afterward, not how much they used the tool.

When SchoolAI may be the better fit

• Your teachers want to build and launch AI activities, with a live dashboard of who is stuck.
• You need crisis alerts to adults from the first day students log in.
• You need SSO, SIS rostering or LMS integration now.
• You want a vendor with published studies, even correlational ones, and a large district base.

When Nexus may be the better fit

• You want students to get help on any assignment without a teacher building an activity first.
• You want your school, not the vendor, to choose the models for each class, and students to compare answers.
• You want class chats reviewable with notice, personal chats not shown to teachers, and a log of every staff read.
• Your students are 13 or older. Nexus does not serve younger students.

Questions to ask in both demos

Run the same three prompts in every product: a homework question, a request for the final answer, and a request that breaks a class rule. Then ask who picks the models, what a teacher can read, and who gets a safety flag. Our IT review checklist lists the follow-ups.