Comparison

Photomath explains the problem in front of you. An exam is not one problem

Photomath's own site describes the loop in three words: scan, solve, learn. Point a camera at a problem, get the steps rather than just the final number, and that is genuinely worth having if maths is where you lose marks.

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Short answer

Photomath is the better tool when you are stuck on one equation and want the steps rather than the answer. It has no mechanism for making a chapter come back to you three weeks later, and that is the job WeSolve+ is built for.

It works one problem at a time, because one problem is what a camera frames. WeSolve+ starts from the whole document instead, and the tool below is the free part of that.

WeSolve+ reads the whole document and writes the questions for you

Upload your PDF, photograph your notebook, or point the camera. WeSolve+ writes questions from that material, explains why each answer is right, reads the chapter back to you as a podcast, and remembers every item you missed until you own it.

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The tool below is a small browser-only tool and it is not WeSolve+: paste a few lines and text rules turn them into cards on the spot. The real app, the one that uses AI, is behind the link above.

The formulas you keep re-scanning

This is a browser-only tool, and that is all it isIt splits the text you paste by rule, and nothing else. WeSolve+ is a different thing entirely: it reads your whole PDF with AI, writes the reasoning behind every question, speaks the chapter back to you, and remembers what you missed so it can return it. Try the real app now, free!

This tool uses text rules, not AI, and it does not solve anything. It takes the formulas you keep looking up and turns them into cards you have to produce from memory. A rule you can only recognise on a sheet is a rule you will re-scan in the exam hall, where there is no camera. Your text stays in the browser and is never sent anywhere.

Same maths, two units of work
QuestionPhotomathWeSolve+
What you point it atOne problemThe whole document
What comes backSteps for that problemQuestions across the material
SubjectsMathsWhatever the document is
What happens to a mistakeRescan it next timeThe item is returned later
Solves an equation for youYes, that is the productNo
Works without the source fileYes, a photograph is enoughNo, it starts from your material

What the camera actually does

It reads a printed or handwritten problem and returns a worked route to the answer, broken into steps you can expand. Underneath sit two well established pieces of engineering rather than anything mysterious: character recognition to turn the photograph into symbols, and a computer algebra system to manipulate them. Its own site covers elementary school through college, which is a wide but strictly mathematical range.

Steps are the product, and they are the right product

A tool that returned only the answer would be worth very little. Steps are what let you find the line where your own attempt went wrong, and that is a real diagnosis rather than a rescue. It also lowers the entry cost of a subject people avoid for reasons that are partly emotional: mathematical anxiety is a documented pattern, and a tool that never sighs at you has a genuine place in it.

Where one problem at a time stops

An exam is not a problem, it is a chapter under time. The camera has no memory of the ten problems you scanned last week and no view of which method you keep failing on, because each scan is its own event. That is not a flaw in the design; it is the design. Nothing about framing one problem in a viewfinder can tell you that the procedure you got right on Monday has faded by Friday.

Recognising a route is not being able to produce one

Watching a solution unfold in clean steps feels like understanding, and it is the most reliable illusion in studying. The real test is a question of the same type wearing different numbers and a different story, which is what transfer means and why it is genuinely hard. If you have to scan that one as well, the method has not moved yet, whatever the last screen made you feel.

Where WeSolve+ picks the chapter up

It begins with the sheet rather than one item on it. Photograph the worksheet and what returns covers everything the page taught, each question carrying the reasoning behind its answer so a method can be audited instead of a result accepted. Anything missed is reissued on a later day. There is no solver in it, so pointing it at a single equation will disappoint you. Web and iPhone, free to begin, counted per file: pricing, features.

The order that works on a Tuesday night

Scan the item that has you stuck, since that is the one thing a camera does that nothing else does as well. Then take the sheet it came from and build practice out of all of it, because what an exam samples is a chapter, not your worst ten minutes with one equation. Neither tool wants the same part of your evening, and anyone claiming one replaces the other is selling something. Second half: practice test maker.

Sources used on this page

Is Photomath better than WeSolve+ for maths?

For solving one problem in front of you, yes, and it is not close. For turning a maths chapter into practice that comes back over three weeks, it is not built for that at all.

Does WeSolve+ solve equations?

No. It reads material you provide and writes explained questions from it. If what you need is the worked route through one equation, a solver is the honest answer and this is not one.

Can I photograph handwritten maths in WeSolve+?

Yes, the camera reads handwriting as well as print. The difference is what happens next: you get questions built from the page rather than a solution to one item on it.

Does Photomath cover subjects other than maths?

Its own site presents it as a maths product, from elementary through college level. For a history or biology chapter you need a different kind of tool.

What is the right habit after reading the steps?

Cover them and redo the problem from a blank page, then do a second problem of the same type without scanning. Recognising a route is not the same as producing one.

Does the tool on this page solve anything?

No. It turns the formulas you keep looking up into cards you have to produce from memory, because there is no camera in the exam hall.

Last updated: 2026-08-15