Written for the person behind the bar who has to pay for it. Seven tools a UK pub can use to run a weekly quiz night, how each one charges, what the quizmaster has to do on the night, and where the paper still comes in.
Quizado suits a landlord who wants the quiz to stay in-house on a flat monthly plan with no app download at the door, while SpeedQuizzing suits a travelling quizmaster who wants fast buzz-in speed rounds and does not mind players fetching an app first.
Pricing moves, so check each vendor site for current pricing. Several sell in dollars or euros even when the customer is a British pub, so budget with the exchange rate in mind and confirm the figure before you commit.
| Tool | Price model | What you get | How players join | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quizado | Free plan, then a flat monthly plan for the pub. See the pricing page. | Host app, question packs, big-screen display, and league tables from Trivia Pro | Scan a QR code, straight into the phone browser | A landlord running the quiz with their own staff |
| SpeedQuizzing | Credits bought up front and spent on day activations; check their site for current pricing | Desktop host software, a quizpack of 70-plus questions per activation, a live screen | The free SpeedQuizzing app on iOS or Android | A travelling quizmaster who wants speed rounds |
| QuizXpress | Yearly licences that scale by device count; check their site for current pricing | A Windows quiz suite, buzzer and keypad support, mini games and scoreboards | Hardware buzzers, keypads or their mobile app | A produced show or a permanent install |
| Question One | No prices published; check their site for current pricing and ask them for a quote | A hosted quiz night or music bingo, run by their people in your pub | Whatever their host brings on the night | A pub that wants the whole night handed over |
| Redtooth | No prices published; they ask you to ring for advice, so check their site for current pricing | Supplied quizzes at volume, more than twenty quiz games, plus a pub poker league | Depends on the format you order from them | A landlord who wants content delivered every week |
| Kahoot | Business plans priced by how many people can take part; check their site for current pricing | A very large question library and a quiz format most people already recognise | A game PIN typed into a browser or their app | A one-off function room or a training day |
| Crowdpurr | A small free tier, then monthly tiers that step up with the crowd; check their site for pricing | Trivia, polls, bingo and tournaments aimed at events and conferences | A five-digit code or a join URL | A big one-off event rather than a weekly quiz |
Any system that needs the App Store loses the table of four who walked in at ten past nine on one bar of signal. The quizmaster ends up doing tech support instead of hosting.
Quizado puts a QR code on the screen. It opens a web page in the phone browser. Nobody installs anything, and latecomers join mid-round.
A paper quiz means photocopying before service, collecting sheets between rounds, and a landlord squinting at handwriting while the room waits for the scores.
Answers arrive already marked and the league table updates itself on the big screen. Be clear on one point: Quizado does not print answer sheets, it removes the need for them.
A quiz that never changes shape gets stale by the spring, and the teams who stopped coming rarely tell you why.
Five round types in bar trivia and Name That Tune, so the format can change without changing supplier. Family Feud, Jeopardy and Music Bingo are on Hospitality Group.
Somebody has to write forty questions a week. In most pubs that somebody is the landlord, on a Sunday, unpaid.
Use the question packs on any plan. From Trivia Pro you can write your own question sets, or type a topic and let AI generation draft a bar trivia round you then edit, using the monthly AI credits.
Several quiz platforms bill a British pub in dollars or euros, so the direct debit moves with the exchange rate and the VAT position needs checking.
Check the pricing page for the current plans and the currency you will be charged in before you commit anything to the wet-trade budget.
A quiz with no running table is a one-off entertainment. There is nothing to come back and defend next week.
Leagues and seasons keep a table across weeks, which is what turns a quiz night into a booking that regulars plan around. They start on Trivia Pro.
Built from the ground up for modern bar trivia and live events.
Guests point a camera at the screen and they are in. No app, no account, no clipboard at the door, and no pen to lose.
Media questions carry image, audio and video from Trivia Pro up, so the picture round runs on the same screen as the rest of the quiz.
A music round is the easiest way to pull a different crowd on a quiet week. Family Feud, Jeopardy and Music Bingo are on Hospitality Group. Your pub stays responsible for its own music licence.
Type a topic and get bar trivia questions back, then edit anything too hard or too obscure before it goes on the screen. Monthly AI credits start on Trivia Pro.
Run a season so the same six teams argue about the standings in the taproom, not just about the tie-break question. Leagues and seasons start on Trivia Pro.
Windows, macOS, Linux, iPad, Android or just a browser tab. There is no box to fit on the wall and no tablets to lock in the office.
Look at the shape of the bill first. UK pubs get offered three shapes: a flat monthly plan, a pack of credits spent per quiz day, and a supplier who sends content or a whole hosted night. A flat plan is easy to budget and does nothing when you skip a week for a bank holiday. Credits suit a quizmaster who works several rooms and wants to pay only on the nights that run. Supplied content suits a landlord who wants the week off from writing.
Then look at what the room has to do. Ask the question the way a customer would: what do I have to tap before I can answer the first question? An app install is a genuine barrier in a busy pub with patchy signal, and it is the single biggest difference between the tools in the table above. A QR code that opens a web page is one action. A store download plus a login is four, and two of them can fail.
Finally, be honest about who is standing at the front. Software does not host. If your bar supervisor enjoys the microphone, any tool here will do the mechanical work. If nobody wants it, you are really shopping for a quizmaster rather than for software, and companies such as Question One will quote for that. If you have never run one, read the how-to-run-a-pub-quiz guide before you spend anything.
The picture round is the part of a British pub quiz that people actually remember, and it is the part that most software handles badly. On paper it is a photocopied sheet of twenty faces. On screen it becomes one image at a time, which changes the pacing: the room looks up instead of down, and the quizmaster controls how long each picture stays visible. Media questions in Quizado carry image, audio and video from Trivia Pro up, so a picture round is built the same way as any other round. The picture-round guide covers how to run one and ten themes worth stealing, though you still supply your own images.
Answer sheets are the other habit worth examining. A phone quiz removes the photocopying, the collection, the marking and the arguments about handwriting, and it also removes something real: the sheet on the table that a team can argue over together. Some landlords keep a paper picture round precisely for that reason and run everything else on phones. Quizado does not print answer sheets and does not pretend to. It marks on the phone and updates the table on the wall.
For the questions themselves, most landlords end up mixing three sources: a supplied pack for the general knowledge, something local that only your regulars will get, and one topical round written the same week. Free and premium packs are in the app. Writing your own question sets, and drafting a topical bar trivia round with AI credits, starts on Trivia Pro. There are over two hundred free questions on the pub quiz questions page if you want to judge the standard before you buy anything.
Plenty of UK pubs already have a quiz machine in the corner on a revenue share with a supplier. It is a different product and it solves a different problem: it earns from individuals feeding it coins on any day of the week, with no host and no crowd. Quiz software earns nothing directly. It exists to fill a slow Tuesday with people who buy rounds, order food and stay for a fourth pint they had not planned on.
That is why the sums work differently. A quiz machine is judged on its own takings. A quiz night is judged on the wet sales for the evening against the cost of the software plus whatever you pay a quizmaster. In most pubs the software is the small number. If the night runs on the free Quizado plan with a staff host, the software line is nothing at all until the room outgrows sixteen players.
One thing worth saying plainly, because pubs get caught by it: music rounds and music bingo need the same music licences as any other music you play in the building. Quizado provides the game, not a licence, and does not arrange one for you. Speak to your licensing body before you put a Name That Tune round in the diary.
It is a good product with a long track record in British pubs, and these are its cases.
These are the four reasons UK landlords give us most often.
Sign up, take a free question pack and run a round with it. Fifteen minutes, no card, and you will know whether the console suits how you think about a quiz. Writing your own question sets starts on Trivia Pro.
Run it with staff and two friendly teams before you advertise it. Check the QR code is readable from the far tables and that the host position holds a connection.
Same night, same time, for at least eight weeks, with a league table running. A quiz that moves around the week never builds the crowd it needs.
Quizado does not print answer sheets, does not send a quizmaster, does not supply or arrange a music licence, and does not work without an internet connection at the host position and on player phones. If the paper quiz is part of the character of your room, or if nobody on the rota will take the microphone, a supplied-content company or a hosted quiz company is the more honest purchase.
New to running a night in-house? Start with the bar trivia software overview, then look at the trivia host app if you would rather run everything from a phone or laptop behind the bar.
Start free with the built-in packs, put the QR code on the TV and see how the room reacts. Writing your own question sets starts on Trivia Pro.
Shopping around? Here is how Quizado lines up against the rest of the market.
Download Quizado free and host your first trivia night tonight!
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