Gradescope

Gradescope is an assessment administration and grading platform for instructors and teaching teams. It supports paper-based, digital, programming, bubble-sheet, and online assignments, then combines rubrics, manual or automatic grading, feedback, regrade requests, and item-level analytics. Students can submit work from the web or mobile app, while institutions can connect Gradescope to supported learning-management systems.

✨ Key Features

• Multiple assignment types — Create exams and quizzes, homework/problem sets, online assignments, bubble sheets, and programming assignments for different subjects and submission formats.
• Paper and scanned work — Students or staff can upload PDFs, photos, or scanned handwritten pages, then match submissions to students before grading.
• Flexible rubrics — Build question-level rubrics with partial credit, reusable rubric items, comments, annotations, and point adjustments; later rubric changes can apply to previously graded work.
• Online assignments — Let students answer supported multiple-choice, short-answer, checkbox, free-response, and file-upload questions directly in Gradescope.
• Programming autograder — Collect code from students, including supported GitHub or Bitbucket workflows, and combine custom automatic tests with manual grading and inline comments.
• Bubble-sheet grading — Define an answer key, scan batches of bubble sheets, separate test versions, confirm marks, and export the resulting grades.
• Answer Groups and AI assistance — For fixed-template PDF assignments, manually group similar answers or review Gradescope AI suggestions; these capabilities require an Institutional license or an individual Gradescope Complete course.
• Feedback and regrades — Publish scores and feedback, let students review results, and manage regrade requests online.

💳 Pricing

• Free — price not publicly listed — The official homepage offers free sign-up for Gradescope, but the pages reviewed do not publish a complete dollar price, quota, or feature matrix for the free access path.
• Gradescope Complete — custom or institution/course subscription — Official help pages state that individual courses can subscribe to Gradescope Complete; the public pages reviewed do not list its current price. Complete includes access to assignment capabilities such as programming and bubble-sheet workflows, and is also one route to Online Assignments after beta.
• Institutional license — custom pricing — Schools can purchase institutional access for features such as LMS integration, SSO, roster/staff controls, anonymous grading, course sections, admin dashboards, and AI-assisted grading/Answer Groups.

Pricing note — Gradescope’s public materials distinguish free access, individual Gradescope Complete courses, and institutional licensing, but do not expose a reliable current price sheet. Confirm the current plan, assignment-type access, AI features, LMS/SSO entitlements, student limits, and contract terms with Gradescope or the institution before purchase.

⚖️ Alternatives Compared

🎯 Use Cases

• Large lecture courses — Collect many exam or homework submissions and apply consistent rubrics across instructors, TAs, or readers.
• Handwritten STEM assessment — Scan math, physics, chemistry, or engineering work and annotate individual pages while preserving question-level scores.
• Programming courses — Run custom tests on submitted code, inspect failures, and add manual comments for code quality or partial credit.
• Multiple-choice exams — Use bubble sheets and answer keys to batch-grade exams, verify marks, and export results.
• Online quizzes and assignments — Let students answer directly in the browser and combine automatic grading with manual review of free responses.
• Department or institution administration — Connect courses to an LMS/SSO, manage rosters and permissions, and inspect institution-level usage where licensed.