PrepClass
A German web app that bundles a weighted digital gradebook, AI worksheet generation, projector live tools, an AI whiteboard and the Kleo assistant into one teacher account, hosted in Nuremberg with pupil names pseudonymised.
What is PrepClass?
PrepClass is a German web application that gathers a teacher's whole working day into a single account. Its author is a serving teacher who built it after switching between several programmes to prepare one lesson, and the homepage promise is blunt: everything for your teaching, in one account.
The core is a digital gradebook. Marks carry per-category weighting, a written test at 50 percent, oral participation at 30, everything else at 20, and the report average is calculated as marks are entered, next to attendance, homework, remarks, a seating plan and a per-semester split. Five further blocks sit around it. The material AI turns a topic, or an uploaded PDF or Word file, into worksheets differentiated across three levels with answer keys, plus quizzes, dictations, parent letters and marking support, all exportable as PDF. Live tools, among them word cloud, poll, scale, question collection, buzzer, quiz battle and exit ticket, run on the projector while the class joins from their own devices through a QR code or six-character code, with no account, no email address and no installation. The whiteboard offers free drawing, over 150 templates, AI-generated board images and a class-set mode that gives every pupil their own slate. A pinboard keeps contributions standing after the bell, and 21 projector games sit beside roughly 70 subject mini web apps spanning fifteen subjects, from a clickable periodic table to an equation balance.
Two layers reach pupils directly: a block editor for interactive lesson pages published by QR code, and a spaced-repetition card feed modelled on Anki. Kleo, the assistant, drafts plans, explanations and letters, and can see class data only once the teacher switches that access on.
What distinguishes the product is its data posture. Servers and database run on the provider's own infrastructure at Hetzner in Nuremberg, pupil names are replaced by pseudonyms server-side before any AI request, and everything touching stored pupil data goes through Mistral AI in the EU. Pupils never hold an account at all.
What it does
- Keep a digital gradebook with per-category weighting and a report average that recalculates as marks go in
- Generate worksheets differentiated across three levels, answer keys included, from a topic or an uploaded document
- Run live projector tools such as word cloud, poll, question collection, buzzer and quiz battle, which the class joins by QR code without an account
- Build a whiteboard from more than 150 templates or have the AI draw a whole board image, with the class editing live
- Ask the Kleo assistant to draft a lesson plan, an explanation pitched at a year group, a parent letter or a parents' evening briefing
- Assemble interactive lesson pages from blocks without writing code, publish them by link or QR code and collect optional submissions
- Digitise a class list or a timetable from a photograph, and draft end-of-term report comments
When to use PrepClass / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if PrepClass is the right fit.
When to use PrepClass
- Teachers at German schools who want gradebook, teaching material and live classroom tools in a single account instead of five separate subscriptions
- Trainee teachers in the Referendariat and education students, who pay 40 percent less on Plus and Pro against proof of status
- Form tutors handling weighted marks, attendance, homework and end-of-term report comments across several classes
- Teachers who need the whole class to take part without creating pupil accounts, collecting email addresses or installing an app
- Head teachers and data protection officers who must clear a tool before rollout and need a named processor list and a ready-to-sign processing agreement
When not to use PrepClass
- Teachers outside Germany: the interface is German only and the marking logic follows the German 1 to 6 grade system, school forms and federal states
- Developers or schools wanting to connect their own systems: there is no public API and no developer documentation
- Anyone expecting a native iOS or Android app, or a complete phone view for teachers, which the provider says is still being built step by step
- Pupils who want an independent personal account: they only ever enter through codes their teacher hands out
- Schools shopping for a full student information system covering enrolment, site-wide timetabling, staff administration or invoicing
How to use PrepClass
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create a free account with an email address or a Microsoft sign-in; the Free plan asks for no payment card
- Fill in the profile once, choosing school form, federal state, subjects and year group, since the AI calibrates itself from that
- Set up classes and the current semester, typing the pupil list in by hand or photographing the class list for optical recognition
- Define how mark categories are weighted, then enter marks, attendance, homework and remarks lesson by lesson
- Generate material by typing a topic or dropping in a PDF or Word file, pick the three-level differentiation and export as PDF
- Ask Kleo for a lesson plan with phases, timings and grouping, then refine the draft yourself
- Start a live tool on the teacher device and project the QR code or six-character code so the class can join
- Open a whiteboard from a template or have the AI build one, and switch on live class collaboration when useful
- Assemble an interactive lesson page in the block editor, publish it and share the link or QR code, with per-pupil submission if wanted
- At the end of term, read off the calculated report average, have report comments drafted, and export the half-year as CSV
Pros & Cons
Pros
- One account genuinely replaces several separate subscriptions, which is the point teachers make most often in the published feedback
- The data posture is documented to a level schools can actually take to a data protection officer: named processor list with locations, a ready-to-sign agreement, a deletion concept and a DPA checklist
- Hosting sits on the provider's own infrastructure at Hetzner in Nuremberg, with the database and authentication layer self-operated rather than rented from a US cloud
- Pupil names are pseudonymised server-side before any AI call, and the mapping never leaves the teacher's account
- Pupils need no account, no email address and no app; a QR code is the whole onboarding
- The free plan is usable rather than decorative: three classes in the gradebook, all games and mini apps without limit, three live sessions a month
- The provider publishes its own weak points, from partial pseudonymisation in free-text fields to the fair-use ceiling behind the word unlimited
Cons
- German only, and tuned to the German school system: the grading logic, school forms and federal-state calibration make it hard to use anywhere else
- The teacher phone view is incomplete, which the provider admits and two published testimonials confirm
- No public API, no developer documentation and no integrations with the usual school timetabling or learning platforms
- No native iOS or Android app; everything happens in a browser
- The publisher is one person trading as a sole proprietorship under the German small-business VAT scheme, so continuity rests on a single individual
- No founding date is published anywhere and the domain has no Wayback Machine history, so the service's track record cannot be verified independently
- Annual billing locks in an initial twelve-month term, and OpenAI in Ireland stays in the chain for material generation and read-aloud even though pupil data does not reach it
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free plan is available at no cost and without a payment card. The cheapest paid entry point is the Plus plan at EUR 9.99 per month on monthly billing, or EUR 101.88 per year, equivalent to EUR 8.49 per month, on annual billing.
- gradebook for up to 3 classes
- 3 live sessions a month
- 3 whiteboards and 3 pinboards
- all class games and mini web apps without limit
- a small monthly AI taster
- half-year CSV export
- everything in Free without counters
- unlimited live tools with analysis and export
- 50 AI material generations and 50 Kleo requests a month
- AI-built whiteboards
- 10 document scans a month
- 25 report and parents' evening AI runs
- 12 classes
- 50 whiteboards and pinboards
- everything in Plus without limits under a fair-use ceiling
- AI tutors for pupils
- live whiteboard collaboration
- learning feed and submissions
- sessions with no participant cap
- unlimited gallery adoption
- premium voice and removal of the PrepClass branding
- 40 percent off for trainee teachers and education students against manually verified proof
- valid 12 months and renewable on fresh proof
- School and staff-room licences (Sammellizenz) on request
- with purchase against invoice and a processing agreement
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how PrepClass handles your data.
GDPR overview
Compliance is claimed explicitly and backed by documents rather than slogans. An Article 28 processing agreement is published in full, concluded at registration, with a countersigned copy on request. Processing is confined to the EU and EEA, on the provider's own servers at Hetzner in Nuremberg. Eight processors are named with purpose and location, among them Hetzner, Mistral AI, Cloudflare, OpenAI Ireland, Stripe, Mailjet, IONOS and Sentry, and transfers outside the EU rest on standard contractual clauses or Data Privacy Framework certification. Pupil names are replaced by pseudonyms server-side before any AI request. No data protection officer is appointed: the provider explains that Article 37 GDPR and section 38 BDSG do not bite on a sole trader. Data subject rights, an AI Act transparency classification and the competent authority, LDI NRW in Düsseldorf, are all named. Only technical session cookies are set.
Who owns the data?
Under the processing agreement, the teacher, or the school, is the controller for pupil data within the meaning of Article 4(7) GDPR, and PrepClass acts solely as a processor under Article 28. The agreement puts it plainly: the class data belongs to the teacher or the school, and the provider is only a technical service supplier acting on instruction. Material created with the PrepClass tools stays with its author as between users. The provider commits to no processing for its own ends, and names three in particular: no AI model training on customer data, no advertising analysis, no resale to third parties. Publishing to the shared gallery grants a simple, non-exclusive, unpaid and revocable display licence, nothing more.
Reuse rights
Material generated in PrepClass, whether worksheets, quizzes, presentations or board images, can be used freely in class: printed, exported as PDF or Word, and handed to pupils by link or QR code, without asking anyone. The terms attach one duty to that freedom: the teacher must check every AI-generated item for accuracy and suitability before it reaches a lesson, since the provider warrants none of it. Reselling plan benefits, automated bulk use, scraping and circumventing usage limits are forbidden, as is publishing third-party personal data, pupil names above all, in shared or publicly reachable content. Teachers can pull out a half-year CSV, an export of marks and of the AI access log, or request a full export by writing to datenschutz@prepclass.de; Article 20 portability is listed among the rights. Content shared to the gallery can be copied and adapted by other teachers in one click, and its author can withdraw it at any time.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Servers, database and applications run on the provider's own self-managed infrastructure in the Hetzner Online data centre in Nuremberg, Germany. The database and authentication layer is Supabase, open-source software the provider operates itself rather than buying as a service. The processing agreement confines processing to an EU or EEA member state, and any move to a third country must satisfy Articles 44 to 49 GDPR. Eight processors are named with purpose and location: Hetzner in Germany, Mistral AI in Paris, Cloudflare with an EU-jurisdiction R2 endpoint for shared lesson pages, OpenAI Ireland with possible US processing under standard contractual clauses, Sentry storing in its Frankfurt region, Stripe in the US under Data Privacy Framework certification, Mailjet in France and IONOS in Germany. AI requests pass exclusively through the provider's German servers, and user metadata such as IP addresses is not forwarded to the model providers. Encrypted backups sit on physically separate storage in Germany or the EU, with the decryption key held apart. No Google service is used in the product.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting PrepClass.
- Pupil data is sensitive personal data, and the teacher stays legally responsible for what is entered and for the lawful basis; the provider explicitly recommends initials or pseudonyms over full names
- Automatic pseudonymisation only recognises pupils registered in the account, so names of parents, colleagues or pupils from other classes typed into free-text fields can reach the AI provider
- The provider states that stripping every plain name from error reports sent to Sentry cannot be technically guaranteed, so free-text fields should be treated with care
- AI output can be factually wrong, incomplete or pedagogically unsuitable; the terms make human checking mandatory before anything is used in a lesson, and the responsibility for assessment stays whole
- Delegating report card wording to a model is convenient and quietly consequential, since the judgement behind the sentence remains the teacher's alone
- Published HTML lessons are reachable by anyone who has the short link, with no file-level access protection, so nothing identifying should go into them
- On the pupil side, AI tutors and a swipeable revision feed can nudge learners toward instant feedback rather than the effort of recall, and teachers must check with their school authority that the use is permitted at all
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low. Nothing is installed and no technical knowledge is required: everything runs in a browser. Sign-up takes an email address or a Microsoft account, and the profile is configured once with school form, federal state, subjects and year group. Classes are typed in or photographed for optical recognition. Pupils set up nothing at all, joining through a QR code or six-character code. One teacher describes about a week of adjustment after three years of spreadsheets, and another found importing old marks fiddly. Optional extras are two-factor authentication and AI access to class data.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind PrepClass
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement PrepClass.
Frequently asked questions
What does PrepClass cost?
Do pupils need their own account?
Where is the data hosted?
Is my data used to train AI models?
Which AI providers are involved?
Is there a processing agreement for my school?
Is there a mobile app?
Is there an API?
Is there a minimum age?
How long is data kept after I delete my account?
Should you pick PrepClass?
PrepClass makes no attempt to be an international platform, and that is its strength. It is a German teacher's answer to a German problem: a gradebook that understands weighted marks and report averages, material generation that already knows the school form and the federal state, and live classroom tools that a class can join without anyone creating an account. Bundling six tools into one login is the pitch, and the published teacher feedback suggests it lands.
The second reason to look at it is the data posture. Very few tools of this size publish a full processor list with purposes and locations, a ready-to-sign Article 28 agreement, a deletion concept and a checklist for data protection officers. Servers sit at Hetzner in Nuremberg on infrastructure the provider manages itself, pupil names are pseudonymised before any AI call, and Google is deliberately absent from the product. The provider also names its own limits, from pseudonymisation that cannot catch third-party names typed into free-text fields to the fair-use ceiling behind the word unlimited. That candour is rare and counts in its favour.
The reservations are structural rather than functional. The publisher is a sole trader, so continuity rests on one person; no founding date is published and the domain has no archive history, so longevity cannot be checked from outside; there is no API and no native app, and the teacher phone view is admittedly unfinished. Annual billing commits twelve months.
For a form tutor in a German school, or a trainee teacher paying 40 percent less, the permanent free plan makes the evaluation cost nothing but time. For anyone outside that setting, the German-only interface and grading logic settle the question quickly.
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