🧠 Learn how AI works · 💻 Coding · 📱 Kids' phones, watches, tablets and speakers
BBC micro:bit
By Micro:bit Educational Foundation. Visit BBC micro:bit
Desk research from the maker's own pages. Not yet tried by us. Checked 2026-10-24.
The BBC micro:bit is a pocket-sized computer with an LED display, buttons, sensors, a speaker and a microphone. Children program it in free web editors with blocks or Python to make games, instruments, step counters and more. The free CreateAI tool lets them record their own movements, train a small machine learning model and run it on the micro:bit. A nonprofit foundation runs it, aiming at ages 8 to 14.
Our take: One of the best-value ways for 8- to 14-year-olds to learn coding and simple machine learning, with privacy-first tools; very young children will need help.
Checked in a browser
A browser check on 2026-10-25: what loads, the ads and trackers we saw, and what a child meets first. Not a hands-on test.
| Child safety: 4 out of 5 | No ads or chat; the only links out are to the foundation's social media, a newsletter and its course site. |
|---|---|
| Data: 4 out of 5 | Only Google Analytics and Tag Manager loaded, no ad or tracking networks, and no cookies were set before consent; the cookie notice says the site does not use third-party ads. |
| Ease: 3 out of 5 | A cookie notice covers the middle of the first screen, and the page is written mostly for teachers, though a clear 'Get started' box sits below it. |
| Cost honesty: 4 out of 5 | The editors and lessons on the page are free; the micro:bit itself has to be bought elsewhere, and no prices or shop prompts were seen. |
What we found
- Contacted 8 third-party sites: Google Analytics/Tag Manager, Google fonts, the Sanity content service and a YouTube no-cookie video embed.
- No ad networks, no tracking networks and 0 cookies set before consent.
- A cookie notice ('Allow all cookies' / 'Manage cookies') covered the first screen; it states 'We do not use third-party ads on microbit.org.'
- Links out to Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, YouTube, Mailchimp and a Thinkific course site.
From the test: A clean, ad-free foundation site with only Google Analytics; the page speaks mostly to teachers, and the hardware costs money.
| Ages it suits | about 8-14 |
|---|---|
| What its terms say about age | The foundation asks children under 13 to get consent from a parent or whoever has parental responsibility when using its services; the tools need no account. (terms) |
| Price | Paid. Sold through resellers, not by the foundation; micro:bit Go pack $21.99 at a US reseller (Oct 2026); editors and CreateAI are free |
| Works on | A device, Web, iPhone and iPad, Android |
| Account | No account needed |
| Ads | None |
| In-app purchases | None |
| The AI in it | With CreateAI, children train a movement-recognition model on their own data and run it on the board. |
What's good
- Very low cost
- Free, no-account coding tools
- CreateAI keeps training data on the device
- Run by a nonprofit
Watch for
- Needs a computer or tablet to program
- Has a microphone that children can program
- Bare board needs an adult's help to get started
Data and privacy
CreateAI keeps movement samples only in the browser's local storage and does not send them to the foundation; the site uses server logs and Google Analytics. The policy follows UK GDPR, with consent from a parent for under-13s. Read the privacy policy.
Does it work?
Research listed by the foundation includes a 2025 Platypus Research evaluation it commissioned, where 87% of teachers reported more confidence teaching computing; outcome studies by universities are linked on the same page.
In the Big Index
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Where these facts come from
- https://microbit.org/
- https://microbit.org/createai/
- https://microbit.org/buy/
- https://microbit.org/buy/bbc-microbit-go/
- https://microbit.org/privacy/
- https://microbit.org/about/impact/research/
- https://forwardedu.com/collections/micro-bits/products/micro-bit-go-pack
Prices, terms and features change. Nobody paid to be listed, nothing here is an affiliate link, and Peabody never rates itself. Where we and the maker disagree, the maker's own pages are the ones to trust.