A public school teacher from New York City, Paul Edelman, realized that his students worked best when he incorporated ideas from other teachers in his classes. This gave him an idea to establish a way for teachers who don’t work in the same school to collaborate, and in 2006, Edelman founded Teachers Pay Teachers or TpT for short.

Today, Teachers Pay Teachers is one of the most popular online sources for teaching materials, with seven million yearly users and over five million materials you can download. We’re presenting you with an honest review of the platform and its alternatives.

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Teachers Pay Teachers Key Features

Teachers Pay Teachers gained popularity by positioning itself as one of the first online marketplaces that focus on teaching materials. Aside from being the pioneer, they’ve become the teachers’ pet with their:

  1. Extensive material database
  2. Easy-to-use marketplace
  3. Blog

Extensive Material Database

TpT resources boasts having over five million materials available on their marketplace, with one billion downloads made. They cover teaching materials from pre-K to 12th grade and have dozens of resource types, including:

One issue with so many materials is that the website has dubious copyright infringement mechanisms, and you’ll often stumble upon the same materials packaged a little bit differently. For instance, you can find a lesson plan with shiny clip art that charges more than the original plan, and the original creator has no means of defending their product.

Easy-To-Use Marketplace

With so many resources on offer, Teachers Pay Teachers’ users benefit from a marketplace that has an intuitive interface and makes it easy to find what you need. You can filter the results by grade, subject, format, price, type, and standards you need them to align with. The best part is that you can combine various filters to show only results that fully meet your criteria.

Blog

If you’re looking for some reading material, you won’t make a mistake by visiting the Teachers Pay Teachers blog. They have hundreds of posts on various topics, such as:

They also have blog posts dedicated to different grades, from pre-K to high school.

Teachers Pay Teachers Pricing

Regarding pricing, Teachers Pay Teachers offers a flexible structure that includes both free and paid resources. You can discover teachers pay teacher free materials alongside others priced at $15 or more. The cost ultimately depends on the nature of the content and the individual creator behind it.

There is, however, a pricing page for sellers.

Since the company takes 45% of all sales and additional 30 cents per transaction, sellers are motivated to put higher prices on their materials. In addition sellers area able to purchase ads in order to get more visibility in the search results which might give lesser quality products more visibility.

As a buyer, your pricing will range from product to product. This is an issue for teachers as you’ll need to:

  • Spend money each time you download a material
  • Spend money even before you can assess the product that you’re buying
  • Pay extra because of the commission fee

You can end up spending hundreds of dollars on various products before you find the right ones.

Why Teach Simple Is a Great Alternative to Teachers Pay Teachers

Don’t want to spend over the top every time you see a lesson plan or a flash card that catches your eye? You don’t have to! The biggest advantage of Teach Simple is the fact that it offers a subscription model with unlimited access. Once you register for Teach Simple, you’ll receive a free trial, and you’ll be able to make unlimited downloads of all the available materials without spending a dime.

How Teach Simple Works

All our contributors are experienced teachers, and every material we publish gets reviewed by other teachers first to avoid subpar quality and plagiarism issues. The review process also ensures all of our materials meet various government and curriculum standards.

We value our teachers, so 50% of our monthly revenue goes back to our contributors, giving you the opportunity to support your fellow teachers instead of spending money on a website’s service.

You can use our marketplace to filter the results and find exactly what you need by choosing:

  • Grade
  • Subject
  • Material type
  • File type
  • Publishing date

When you sign up for Teach Simple, you’ll be able to find a variety of materials, including worksheets, lesson plans, flash cards, games, activities, assessments, curriculums, services, projects and more options. You can find additional information here.

Teachers Pay Teachers vs. Teach Simple

Here’s a quick overview of Teachers Pay Teachers when compared to Teach Simple:

What the Source OffersTeachers Pay TeachersTeach Simple
One-time subscription fee✗✓
Charge per download✓✗
Free trial✗✓
10+ material types✓✓
Special education resources✓✓
Only qualified teachers post materials✗✓

Overall Impression

Teachers Pay Teachers have paved the way for online teaching resources. Teachers from all over the United States can use the website to find millions of materials to enrich their classes and teaching styles.

The problem with the website is that anyone can register as a seller, and a nice presentation can encourage you to buy a product that is completely unusable. You’ll also have to pay a premium price every time you want to download a resource.

You can avoid both issues with Teach Simple’s subscription model, knowing that all of our materials are created by established teachers.

Other Teachers Pay Teachers Alternatives

Not sure Teachers Pay Teachers is the right choice for you? We’ve reviewed many other similar platforms that teachers can use to find inspiration for their classes—here are our favorites:

  1. Kindergarten Worksheets and Games
  2. All Kids Network
  3. Etsy
  4. Scholastic Teachables
  5. DadsWorksheets.com
  6. Learning Resources
  7. K5 Learning
  8. Really Good Stuff
  9. Teachers Pay Teachers
  10. Tes
  11. EasyTeacherWorksheets.com
  12. Super Teacher Worksheets
  13. Math Worksheets 4 Kids
  14. Amazon Ignite
  15. Education.com
  16. 123 Homeschool 4 Me
  17. Twinkl
  18. We Are Teachers
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