Amira Learning cost, Amira price and what Amira Reading costs a school per student

Short answer: Amira Learning does not print a price on its own site, but its quotes and the intervention charts do. The full Amira Reading Suite lists at $35 per student a year, with Assess alone at $7.50, Instruct at $12.50 and Tutor at $15. What districts actually pay is lower: $30 per student net on a 2025 Idaho quote, $20 per student on a 2026 California quote, and about $15 to $17 per student on large state and district contracts. Teacher licenses are free. In several states the screener costs a district nothing.

The Amira Reading Suite page ends at a demo request. What is public is the paper trail: quotes attached to board agendas, fiscal notes, state program pages and the vendor's own entries on the National Center on Intensive Intervention charts. Every figure below comes from one of those, linked and read in October 2026. Coeducate is not affiliated with Amira Learning or HMH. We sell a different kind of reading product, and the section near the end says plainly where Amira is the better purchase.

How much does Amira Learning cost?

Amira is sold per student, per year, as separate modules or as a suite. The vendor's own list prices appear on the NCII screening chart, which cites the 2023-24 school year. The progress monitoring chart and Evidence for ESSA show the older, simpler $20 suite price that most early coverage quoted.

California districts see a different menu. The state's Amira overview lists a Screener Subscription at $4.99 per student with self-paced training, the same screener at $20 with live virtual training, an Amira Suite Subscription at $20, and an HMH bundle at $9, with bulk discounts by license count. The California Department of Education page would not load when we checked, so we confirmed those figures only from search summaries of it. Confirm them with your rep before you budget.

What districts actually paid for Amira

Two quotes show line items. The rest are board approvals, contracts and news reports with a total and a student count, which is enough to work out a per-student figure.

The pattern is clear enough to negotiate with. Small buyers pay close to list and get a modest discount: Dietrich's $600 off a $4,200 quote is 14 percent. Mid-size California buyers land on $20. Statewide and big-city contracts come in at $15 to $17 per student. If your quote for the full suite sits at $35, you are being offered the list price.

Is Amira Learning free?

For many districts the screener is, because a state pays for it. North Dakota funds Amira for qualifying districts through June 2027 under a direct state contract. Oklahoma provides Amira screening to K-5 at no cost to districts. Idaho provides Amira ISIP for every K-5 student, but its September 2025 FAQ says Amira Tutor "can be purchased through your district", which is exactly the line Dietrich bought. In California, Amira says the screener is covered by the state's per-student allocation. The free part is usually the assessment. The tutor, which is the part that works with students, is the part a district buys.

For families there is a separate consumer version. A December 2024 newsletter from a regional education service center listed it at $7.99 a month or $72 a year, against $20 per student a year for the school version.

How much does Amira cost per student for a school?

Take an elementary school that wants the full suite for 300 students in kindergarten through grade 3. Using the figures above:

Add the cost of live training if your rep quotes it separately, and the staff time to run screening windows. If your state already covers the screener, the honest comparison is the Tutor line alone, at $15 list.

Amira and Istation after the merger

Amira and Istation merged in June 2024, and the screener now appears on charts and state pages as Amira ISIP. Board agendas from 2025 describe the vendor as "Amira Learning (Former iStation)". The Dietrich quote carried an "Istation to Amira" upgrade insert offering current Istation customers special pricing for that year only. If you are renewing an Istation contract, ask whether the upgrade price is still on offer and whether your existing term carries over, before you accept a new quote at list.

Questions to ask before you sign an Amira quote

1. Which modules are on the quote, and at what list price per student? Compare each line with $7.50, $12.50, $15 and $35.
2. Is the screener already paid for by our state, so that we only need Tutor?
3. Is live training a separate line, or folded into a $20 bundle?
4. What discount applies at our license count, and is the rate locked for a second year?
5. Are teacher licenses free, as on the Idaho quote?
6. What does the data privacy agreement say about student voice recordings, and how long are they kept?

The last question matters more than it used to. The SF Standard's September 2026 report on San Francisco's rollout described families' frustration that the speech recognition misheard children with accents, that kindergarteners averaged about 12 minutes a month against a 120-minute target, and that the contract did not address voice recordings. None of that shows up on a price sheet, and all of it changes what each minute of use actually costs. When the board packet is a stack of scanned quotes and invoices from several vendors, it is faster to pull the line items into a spreadsheet automatically than to retype them, and the per-student comparison above takes minutes instead of an afternoon.

Where Amira is the better purchase, and where Coeducate fits

Amira listens to a young child read aloud and responds in real time. For kindergarten through grade 2, where the work is decoding and oral fluency, that is the right tool, and Coeducate does not do it: we have no speech recognition and we do not teach phonics. If your gap is K-2 foundational reading, buy Amira or a program like it.

The gap changes around grade 3. Students who decode well still miss inference, main idea and evidence questions, and a fluency score cannot say why. Coeducate works there. A student reads a passage you choose and types an answer, the tutor asks the next question instead of giving the answer, and the teacher gets a card naming the comprehension skill that failed, quoted in the student's own words, with a short reteach. The reading comprehension intervention programs page shows that card for grades 3 to 12, and the AI reading tutor page explains how it differs from a read-aloud tutor.

Coeducate's price is on the pricing page: $89 a month for one teacher and up to 60 students, $3,480 a year for a school of up to 600 students (about $5.80 per student), and $1,290 a month for a district with PO billing. Districts comparing reading programs usually price these alongside it: Lexia Core 5 cost per student and Read 180 cost.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Amira Learning cost per student?

Amira's list prices are $7.50 per student a year for Assess, $12.50 for Instruct, $15 for Tutor and $35 for the full Reading Suite, according to the vendor's entry on the NCII chart. Real quotes come in lower: $30 net in Idaho in 2025, $20 in California in 2026, and about $15 to $17 on large state and district contracts.

Is Amira free for schools?

The Amira screener is free to districts in states that pay for it, including North Dakota, Oklahoma and Idaho, and it is covered by state funding in California. Amira Tutor is usually not included and is bought by the district. Teacher licenses were listed at $0 on the 2025 Idaho quote we read.

How much does the San Francisco Amira contract cost?

San Francisco Unified licensed Amira for every K-5 student in 2024. The SF Standard reported in September 2026 that the contract covers 23,000 subscriptions for nearly $400,000 a year, which works out to about $17.40 per student.

Is Amira the same as Istation?

Amira and Istation merged in June 2024. The Istation screener is now sold as Amira ISIP, and districts that used Istation have been offered upgrade pricing to move to Amira. Board documents from 2025 list the vendor as Amira Learning, formerly Istation.

What grades is Amira for?

Amira markets its Reading Suite for PreK to grade 8, but the evidence and most purchases are in the early grades. The NCII charts list grades K-6, Evidence for ESSA reviewed it for K-4, and most state screening programs use it in K-3. For comprehension in grades 3 to 12, schools usually add a separate program.