LessonCues is free

Yes. Everything on this page is free, and you don’t need a card or an account to make your first clip. Sign in with Google to keep your clips (ones made without an account are deleted after 30 days) and to build lessons.

Watching shared clips and lessons will always be free. Everything else is free today. If I ever add a paid plan, it will be for extra creation tools for heavy users, I’ll announce it on this page first, and the clips and lessons you’ve already made will keep working.

LessonCues is my personal project and I cover the running costs. It runs no ads of its own, and I never sell your data.

No quotas. There are only short-term limits that stop abuse, such as a cap on how many clips one account can create within a few minutes.

LessonCues plays every clip in YouTube’s official embedded player, using YouTube’s API Services under their terms. Nothing is downloaded or copied. If a video’s owner has turned off embedding, it simply won’t play here.

No. The video plays in YouTube’s own player, like any YouTube video embedded on a website, so the creator’s name stays on it and the play happens on YouTube. Nothing is re-uploaded anywhere else.

They can. LessonCues shows no ads of its own, but the videos play in YouTube’s player, and YouTube decides whether a video shows ads, just as it does when a video is embedded on any website. The creator gets a share of that money. An ad is most likely when a lesson moves on to a different video; looping a clip or moving between clips of the same video usually doesn’t bring a new one. We can’t skip or hide YouTube’s ads, because YouTube’s terms don’t allow it. Viewers with YouTube Premium who are signed in to YouTube in the same browser usually see no ads, though some browsers (Safari, for example) keep that sign-in out of embedded players.

Students don’t need an account to watch a clip or lesson, and watching doesn’t create one. If you sign in with Google, LessonCues keeps your name, email and profile picture, plus the clips and lessons you make. Google Analytics only loads if you accept cookies, and the cookieless page counts from our host don’t identify anyone. Both stay off on pages with videos made for kids. Clips made without an account are deleted after 30 days. You can download or delete everything from your Account page.

Clips from it stop playing, and the clip page says the video isn’t available. Your clip stays in your library until you delete it. In presenter mode, a clip that can’t play is skipped after a few seconds.

No. Clips play from YouTube, so LessonCues needs YouTube to be reachable on the network. Printed handouts still work at home: each clip has a QR code and a short link.