Boom Cards vs Articulation Station
The verdict, up front
These two tools solve different problems. Articulation Station is one deeply built articulation program — isolation through conversation, consonants and vowels, all included in the subscription — but it runs only on Apple devices. Boom Cards is a marketplace with a deck for nearly any goal you can name, and it works on anything with a browser, but the membership and the decks are separate purchases.
Pick Articulation Station if artic is most of your caseload and you work on iPads. Pick Boom Cards if you need breadth across goals, or if your students are on Chromebooks. Neither one scores whether the sound was actually produced correctly — that gap is covered at the bottom of this page.
We build SpeechTherapyMagic and are not affiliated with Boom Learning or Little Bee Speech. Everything below was checked against their own pricing and help pages in August 2026.
Side by side
| Feature | Boom Cards | Articulation Station |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A marketplace of interactive decks written by thousands of independent authors, spanning every subject and grade | A single articulation program authored entirely by Little Bee Speech, covering consonants and vowels from isolation through conversation |
| Devices | Any modern browser, plus iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire apps — Chromebooks included | Apple only: iPhone, iPad, Apple Silicon Macs, and Vision Pro. No Android app and no browser version |
| Internet | Required every session. Boom has no offline mode; decks will not run without a connection | A native app with cloud sync across devices. Little Bee does not document offline play, so verify before relying on it |
| Content scope | Enormous and general. Boom's own marketing cites 500,000+ decks on its Boom Cards page and 95,000+ interactive Boom Cards on its homepage | Narrow and deep. 17 activities across consonants and vowels, with word, phrase, sentence, story, and conversation levels |
| Cost model | Two purchases. A membership unlocks the platform; decks are bought separately, usually with Points. Boom's help center states plainly that a membership does not include access to purchased decks | One purchase. The subscription includes all content — there is nothing else to buy |
| Price (August 2026) | Free Limited tier plus paid Core, Premium, and Publisher tiers. Boom publishes a $6.99/month Premium membership on its blog and the Publisher tier is commonly listed at $69.99/year, but Boom renders its price table as images — confirm on its pricing page | Hive Professional $14.99/month or $119.99/year; Hive Parent $9.99/month or $83.99/year. Both include a 14-day free trial |
| Free option | Yes, but thin. Under Boom's December 2025 terms an unpaid Starter account gets FastPlay pins good for five days, and Boom states FastPlay does not record student progress. Prep mode is watermarked and not for use with students | No permanent free tier — a 14-day trial only. The old one-time-purchase Classic app was retired on December 3, 2024, though people who already downloaded it keep access |
| Data and reports | Per-student and per-card reports on paid tiers. Boom's help center is explicit that access to reports is a paid feature | Per-sound progress graphs and session data, with unlimited students on the Professional tier |
| Student recordings | A short voice memo the student can listen back to. Boom documents that recordings do not save and the instructor cannot access them | Responses can be recorded, saved, and scored, so you can review a production after the session |
| Automated pronunciation scoring | None. Correct/incorrect comes from the deck author's answer key | None. You tap correct or incorrect yourself — the app does not evaluate the production |
| Making your own material | Boom Studio, a browser-based editor, lets you build and even sell your own decks | Little Bee authors all of the content. There is no third-party marketplace |
| Group work | Presentation and Boom Live modes on paid tiers for whole-group play | Group sessions of up to six students on the Professional tier |
| Paper backup | A deck can be printed or downloaded as a PDF — static, but useful when the wifi drops | Not documented as a feature |
What it is
A marketplace of interactive decks written by thousands of independent authors, spanning every subject and grade
A single articulation program authored entirely by Little Bee Speech, covering consonants and vowels from isolation through conversation
Devices
Any modern browser, plus iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire apps — Chromebooks included
Apple only: iPhone, iPad, Apple Silicon Macs, and Vision Pro. No Android app and no browser version
Internet
Required every session. Boom has no offline mode; decks will not run without a connection
A native app with cloud sync across devices. Little Bee does not document offline play, so verify before relying on it
Content scope
Enormous and general. Boom's own marketing cites 500,000+ decks on its Boom Cards page and 95,000+ interactive Boom Cards on its homepage
Narrow and deep. 17 activities across consonants and vowels, with word, phrase, sentence, story, and conversation levels
Cost model
Two purchases. A membership unlocks the platform; decks are bought separately, usually with Points. Boom's help center states plainly that a membership does not include access to purchased decks
One purchase. The subscription includes all content — there is nothing else to buy
Price (August 2026)
Free Limited tier plus paid Core, Premium, and Publisher tiers. Boom publishes a $6.99/month Premium membership on its blog and the Publisher tier is commonly listed at $69.99/year, but Boom renders its price table as images — confirm on its pricing page
Hive Professional $14.99/month or $119.99/year; Hive Parent $9.99/month or $83.99/year. Both include a 14-day free trial
Free option
Yes, but thin. Under Boom's December 2025 terms an unpaid Starter account gets FastPlay pins good for five days, and Boom states FastPlay does not record student progress. Prep mode is watermarked and not for use with students
No permanent free tier — a 14-day trial only. The old one-time-purchase Classic app was retired on December 3, 2024, though people who already downloaded it keep access
Data and reports
Per-student and per-card reports on paid tiers. Boom's help center is explicit that access to reports is a paid feature
Per-sound progress graphs and session data, with unlimited students on the Professional tier
Student recordings
A short voice memo the student can listen back to. Boom documents that recordings do not save and the instructor cannot access them
Responses can be recorded, saved, and scored, so you can review a production after the session
Automated pronunciation scoring
None. Correct/incorrect comes from the deck author's answer key
None. You tap correct or incorrect yourself — the app does not evaluate the production
Making your own material
Boom Studio, a browser-based editor, lets you build and even sell your own decks
Little Bee authors all of the content. There is no third-party marketplace
Group work
Presentation and Boom Live modes on paid tiers for whole-group play
Group sessions of up to six students on the Professional tier
Paper backup
A deck can be printed or downloaded as a PDF — static, but useful when the wifi drops
Not documented as a feature
Choose Boom Cards if
- Your caseload spans articulation, language, fluency, social skills, and literacy, and you want one library that covers all of it
- Your students are on Chromebooks or Android tablets — Articulation Station simply will not run there
- You want to build or sell your own decks
- You already own a pile of purchased decks and switching means abandoning them
Choose Articulation Station if
- Articulation and phonology are the bulk of your caseload and you want a rigorous hierarchy rather than a scavenger hunt through a marketplace
- Your therapy runs on iPads and you are comfortable staying in the Apple ecosystem
- You would rather pay one subscription than a platform fee plus per-deck purchases
- You want student productions recorded and saved for review
The gap neither one fills
Both platforms leave the same job to you: deciding whether the production was accurate. Boom’s correct/incorrect comes from a deck author’s answer key and its voice memo is not saved. Articulation Station will record and save the attempt, but you still score it by ear while running the session.
That is the gap SpeechTherapyMagic was built for. Students play browser-based games, the microphone scores each attempt through SpeechAce, and the result lands on the student’s profile without anyone tallying tick marks. It runs on Chromebooks, iPads, and phones, there is nothing to buy per activity, and progress data is kept on the free plan. Pro is $9.99/month or $79.99/year — about $6.67 a month.
It is a younger and much smaller library than Boom’s marketplace, and it is speech-specific rather than general education, so it is a genuinely different trade-off — not a drop-in replacement for either tool.