Free Scavenger Hunt App for Teachers

Yes. PlayTours has a free tier with every feature and no credit card. The cap is 25 concurrent devices: 25 phones or Chromebooks in the hunt at once, not 25 names on a register. A teacher and a typical class fit. A larger room can play in waves, starting the next group after the first has finished. The free plan shows a small PlayTours watermark. Paid plans raise the cap and remove the watermark. Classroom use is allowed.

No. Students open a QR code or a short pyts.link code in the browser already on the device. There is no App Store or Play Store install, and no student account to create. That matters on school Chromebooks and locked-down phones, where IT will not approve another app for a single lesson. You build the hunt. Students open the code and play. The same link works if a few students share one device, and that shared device still counts as one concurrent device.

Yes. PlayTours runs in the browser, so a Chromebook, a phone, and a tablet can join the same hunt. Students do not install software. Indoor classrooms often have a weak GPS signal, so use a QR on the board, a quiz, a number answer, or a photo when the class stays in one room. A walk around the school grounds can use a GPS check-in when the signal is steady. Print the QR where students can see it, including the door and the board.

QuickBuild is meant for the gap between periods. Describe the lesson you have in mind: the subject, who is playing, and whether students stay in the room. It drafts a route of stops and tasks you can edit before anyone joins. Change wording, points, and order, then save. You can also skip the draft and write each task yourself in the full builder. A short quiz or photo hunt does not need an evening of setup. The audience list in QuickBuild includes a students and classroom choice.

Students do not need an account to play. On a photo task you can turn on face blur, and detected faces are blurred in the student's browser before the photo uploads. PlayTours cannot promise every face in every photo is caught, so skip tasks that need a clear photo of a child. Uploaded photos and videos are auto-deleted after about 90 days, and nothing is kept indefinitely. PlayTours is ISO 27001 certified and externally audited. You can also delete a session yourself when the lesson is over.

The same builder covers maths, science, history, language, and a short walk around school. Task types include text and number answers, multiple choice, fill in the blanks, photos, video, audio, QR scans, GPS check-in, and puzzles such as a combination lock or a word search. You, or an AI check, can approve a photo against the prompt before points count, which helps when the answer has to be right. You still plan the lesson. PlayTours is how the class plays it.