Two different jobs
Put ilmino and Medly side by side and the first thing to notice is that they are built for different people. Medly is a student-facing AI study app: a learner opens it to revise, practise questions and get instant help on their own. ilmino for institutions is a teaching platform: it gives teachers, departments and leaders the tools to set work, mark it, and see how a class is really doing.
Both can help a student learn. But if you are a teacher choosing what to bring into your classroom, the question is not "which is the better revision app", it is "which one does the job I actually need doing". This comparison is written from that seat.
What a teacher actually needs
Ask most teachers where their time goes and the answer rarely changes: marking, planning, setting work, and working out who needs help next. A tool earns its place in a classroom when it takes real work off a teacher's plate while leaving them fully in control.
So the useful questions are:
- Can it mark my class's work, including handwritten working, against the mark scheme, and let me check and override it?
- Can it build exam-style questions and tests in the styles my exam board uses?
- Can I see, at a glance, which topics my class has and has not mastered?
- Does it fit how a department and a school actually work, with the right roles, permissions and oversight?
How they compare
| For a teacher | ilmino for institutions | Medly |
|---|---|---|
| Primary user | Teachers, departments and leaders, with student access | The individual student |
| Marking your set work | AI marking of typed and handwritten work, mark-scheme aligned, in a split review view where the teacher accepts or overrides every mark | Built around a student's own practice and self-study, not marking a teacher's assigned work |
| Setting work and tests | Question and test builder in AQA, Edexcel, OCR and WJEC styles, scheduled to classes | Student-led revision rather than teacher-set, class-assigned assessment |
| Seeing the class | Topic-level mastery and intervention signals at class, department and trust level | Progress framed around the individual learner |
| Workflows | Raphael, an AI teaching agent, plans, generates, marks and reports, with teacher approval | An AI helper for a student's own questions |
| Control and governance | Roles, permissions and teacher review built in for whole-school use | A consumer study app, used per student |
Medly's exact features evolve, so treat this as the shape of the difference rather than a spec sheet. The honest distinction is a consumer study app versus an institution teaching platform.
Where Medly fits
For a student who wants a friendly, always-on way to revise and check their understanding at home, a study app like Medly can be genuinely useful. It meets the learner where they are, on their own device, in their own time. Some of your students may already use something like it, and that is fine.
What it is not built to do is run a teacher's workflow. It does not mark the homework you set your Year 11 class against the mark scheme, build your next assessment, or show you which four students to pull aside on Monday.
Where ilmino fits
ilmino starts from the teacher's job. You set work from a question and test builder; ilmino marks it, including handwritten method, and opens each paper in a review view where you accept the AI score or override it with your own. You see topic-level mastery for the class, and the students who need support are flagged before a gap widens. Raphael can plan a term of homework or draft a progress report, then hand it back for you to approve. All of it respects the roles and permissions a school needs, so it works for a department, not just one enthusiast.
The point is not that ilmino replaces a student's revision app. It is that ilmino does the part a revision app cannot: the marking, assessment, analytics and oversight that a teacher and a department run on, with teacher judgement always final.
The verdict for teachers
- Choose Medly, or a similar study app, if what you want is a self-study companion for individual students to revise and practise on their own.
- Choose ilmino if you want to cut your marking, set and assess work at your exam board's standard, see your class clearly, and keep teachers in control, across a department or a whole school.
For most teachers the honest answer is that these are not really rivals. A study app supports a student's independent revision; ilmino supports your teaching. If it is the teaching workload you want to lighten, that is exactly what ilmino is built for.
Want to see ilmino's marking, test building and analytics on your own class's work? Book a school demo.