Buzztime puts a subscription, a set of tablets and a six-month commitment behind your trivia night. Quizado puts the same night on the TVs you already own and the phones your guests already carry.
Quizado is the Buzztime alternative for venues that want live trivia without renting hardware: you host from a laptop, tablet or phone, players join by QR code, and scores update on your existing TV, starting on a free plan instead of a monthly subscription.
Buzztime lists Bronze at $199, Silver at $249 and Gold at $299 a month, with a six-month commitment (business.buzztime.com, checked August 2026).
Quizado has a free plan that runs a real bar trivia night, so the first few weeks cost nothing while you find out whether the room turns up.
The Silver plan bundles five Arcade tablets and Gold bundles ten. Someone on staff charges them, counts them back in and chases the ones that walk.
Quizado players use the phone in their pocket. Nothing to charge, nothing to hand out at the door, nothing to replace.
Network trivia runs to a national schedule and carries the network brand on the screens in your room.
You choose the rounds, the theme and the time. Trivia Pro puts your own logo on the display and the player screens. Custom fonts, colors and white-label are on Hospitality Group.
If you want a round about your own town, your own beer list or the local team, network content will not have it.
AI question generation writes a themed Bar Trivia round from a prompt in seconds, and you can edit every question before it goes on screen. Monthly AI credits start on Trivia Pro.
A six-month term is a long time to discover that Tuesday is the wrong night for your venue.
Quizado is monthly. Run four nights, look at the till, then decide whether the trivia night stays in the calendar.
A room that has played the same trivia format for a year starts to thin out.
Swap in a Name That Tune round, or move up to Hospitality Group and swap in Family Feud, a Jeopardy board or Music Bingo. Nothing else to buy.
Built from the ground up for modern bar trivia and live events.
Plug a laptop into the TV behind the bar, or cast from an iPad. The display shows the question, the timer and the live leaderboard with no extra box on the wall.
Guests point a camera at the code on the screen and they are in. No app store, no account, no tablet to sign out.
In a Buzzer Race round the host console locks the first buzz it receives and puts that team on the big screen, so the room can see who is answering.
Type a topic and get a full Bar Trivia round back. Useful for a brewery release night, a sports final or anything a national content schedule will never cover. Monthly AI credits start on Trivia Pro.
Bar trivia, Family Feud, Jeopardy, Music Bingo and Name That Tune all sit in one app, so a slow month can be fixed by changing the format instead of the price of a pint. Family Feud, Jeopardy and Music Bingo are on Hospitality Group.
Run a season table across weeks so regulars come back to defend a position, not just for one good Tuesday. Leagues and seasons start on Trivia Pro.
Buzztime publishes three venue plans. Checked in August 2026 on business.buzztime.com, Bronze is $199 a month, Silver is $249 a month and Gold is $299 a month. All three are described with a six-month commitment and the option to cancel after that. On Bronze players use their own phones or tablets, Silver includes five tablets and Gold includes ten. Pricing pages move, so check their site for current pricing before you budget.
Put that next to what a venue actually spends to run trivia in-house. Quizado starts at zero: the free plan hosts a full bar trivia night with the free question packs, live phone buzzers, the big-screen display and up to sixteen players. When the room outgrows sixteen phones you move to a paid plan, and the player cap lifts. Trivia Pro adds your own question sets, media rounds, monthly AI credits, leagues and a custom logo. Hospitality Group adds Family Feud, Jeopardy, Music Bingo, custom fonts and colors, white-label and up to three venues, which is the plan multi-site operators tend to land on.
The honest comparison is not only the monthly number. Buzztime is a managed entertainment network: content arrives, the games run, and nobody on your staff writes a question. Quizado hands you the console and expects a human to press the buttons. If your bar manager already runs the Tuesday quiz off a clipboard, that trade is a bargain. If nobody on the rota wants to hold a microphone, a managed network or a hosted trivia company may be worth the monthly fee.
A lot of the search traffic for "Buzztime home trivia system" comes from people who played on the tablets in a bar and want the same thing on the sofa. Buzztime runs a consumer game room in the browser for that audience, separate from the venue plans above.
Quizado covers the home case from the other direction. The same app venues use is free for personal play: pick a free question pack, put the laptop on the living-room TV, and everyone in the house buzzes in from their phone. Family game night, a birthday, a holiday quiz for relatives on a video call - it is the same host console, only with a smaller room. Nothing about the free plan is a demo build; the buzzers and scoring are the ones a paying venue uses.
If you have been in hospitality a while you probably know the brand as NTN. The name and the ownership have changed more than once since then. The venue product carries on under the Buzztime name and is still selling plans in August 2026, where the site describes 41 years in business (business.buzztime.com, checked August 2026).
That history matters for one practical reason: a lot of the reviews, forum threads and pricing numbers you find under "NTN Buzztime" describe an older version of the product. If you are comparing on price or on what is bundled, read the current plans on their site rather than an old thread, and do the same with anything you read here.
There are real venues where a managed network beats software you drive yourself.
Most bars that move do it for one of these four reasons.
Create a free Quizado account and host a single round from a free question pack on a quiet night, while your current setup carries on. Nothing needs cancelling to try it.
Put the QR code on the table tents and the TV. Teams keep their names, and the first week is usually the only one where anyone asks where the tablets went.
Check the notice period on your agreement, return the equipment as instructed, and start a Quizado season table so regulars have a reason to come back next week.
Buzztime is an always-on entertainment network, and it covers formats we do not touch at all, including poker, bingo and arcade titles that run without a host. Quizado is trivia and game-show software for a hosted night. If your goal is unattended play from open to close, they solve that and we do not.
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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