TL;DR
My School Year is an established online homeschool record keeper built around automated grading, scheduling, and student-friendly lesson check-off, at roughly $40/year for the whole family with a price-lock guarantee. Homeschool Fox is a phone-first platform built around logging what actually happened, then generating state compliance documents and a college-ready transcript from those records. My School Year is the cheaper, scheduling-and-grading record keeper; Homeschool Fox is the phone-first, AI-assisted, compliance-and-transcript option. Both are legitimate — the right pick depends on your workflow and what you need at year's end.
Where My School Year shines
My School Year has a long track record and a clear focus on keeping records and running the weekly schedule.
- Low family price with a price lock. Around $40/year for the family edition, with a guarantee your rate won't rise — predictable and affordable.
- Automated grading. Class averages update automatically as lessons are completed, so the gradebook stays current with little effort.
- Scheduling and student access. Assign lessons, let students mark them complete (including via QR-code emails), and set per-student permission levels.
- Family edition extras. Reading logs, standardized test scores, extracurriculars, and volunteerism tracking in one place.
- Works on any device's browser. Phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop.
For a family that wants an affordable record keeper with strong scheduling and grading, My School Year is a solid pick.
How Homeschool Fox is different
Homeschool Fox starts from a different premise: capture activities as they happen on your phone, then let the system build the reports, compliance documents, and transcript.
- Phone-first design. Native iOS and Android apps with an activity composer built for one-handed use. Voice transcription lets you dictate what you did and the AI structures it into title, subject, duration, and student.
- AI parsing. Paste a sentence describing your day and Homeschool Fox splits it into individual logged activities.
- State compliance documents. Beyond record keeping, Homeschool Fox produces the actual paperwork strict states require — IHIPs, quarterly reports, evaluator letters, portfolios, withdrawal letters — formatted to state DOE specifications. For the underlying rules, see homeschool laws by state.
- College-ready transcripts. A $29 add-on for subscribers builds a polished transcript PDF from logged courses and grades, with weighted/unweighted GPA, optional AI-drafted course descriptions, and a school-profile generator. Background: how to calculate your homeschooler's GPA.
The honest trade-off is price: at about $40/year, My School Year is cheaper than Homeschool Fox at $99/year. You're paying the difference for phone-first AI logging, state-specific compliance documents, and the transcript workflow.
Pricing
My School Year is about $5/month or $40/year for the family edition, with a price-lock guarantee (re-confirm current pricing on their site before subscribing).
Homeschool Fox is $12/month or $99/year — whole family, no per-student fees — with an optional $29 one-time college transcript add-on.
My School Year is cheaper on subscription. Homeschool Fox costs more and adds phone-first logging, compliance documents, and transcript tooling.
How to switch from My School Year to Homeschool Fox
- Export your My School Year records as CSV.
- Use Homeschool Fox's CSV import to bring activities in. Map columns (date, title, subject, duration, student).
- Set up your students, subjects, and goals — about 15 minutes for a typical family.
- Keep My School Year active for one billing cycle as a fallback while you confirm the migration.
If field mapping gets tricky, contact us for help.
Who should pick which
Pick My School Year if you:
- Want an affordable family record keeper with a price-lock guarantee
- Lean on scheduling, automated grading, and student lesson check-off
- Don't need AI logging or state-specific compliance documents
Pick Homeschool Fox if you:
- Want phone-first AI and voice activity logging
- Live in a strict-state jurisdiction where formatted compliance documents matter
- Plan to produce a college-ready transcript from your records
- Prefer logging what happened over scheduling lessons ahead
Both are legitimate — pick based on whether you want an affordable scheduling-and-grading record keeper, or a phone-first tool with compliance and transcripts built in. See all 50 states + DC for your jurisdiction's requirements.