Otsimo vs Speech Blubs: which app fits your child?

The two names come up in the same searches, but they train different things. Speech Blubs is built on video modeling: children learn by watching a model, and the models are other kids, which young children tend to watch closely. The app lists more than 1,500 activities across 28 sections, and children can take photos with face filters that turn them into the word they are practicing. Speech Blubs’ website says the app supplements professional therapy and does not stand in for it.

Otsimo is three apps. Otsimo Special Education is a game curriculum (100+ games in premium) covering vocabulary, letters and numbers, emotions and social stories, with a Learning Path that adjusts difficulty. Otsimo Speech Therapy uses speech recognition and video modeling to practice pronunciation, with hats and masks as rewards. Otsimo AAC (Tap and Talk) lets a child tap symbols or type words that the device speaks.

A toddler who points, plays and understands well but has few words is a different learner from an autistic four-year-old who does not yet follow simple instructions, so start from your child.

A speech delay is mainly about saying words. A language delay is about understanding and using them, and many autistic children have both, plus differences in the social side of communication like pointing to show you something or looking where you look. Our speech delay guide walks through how to tell these apart and what to watch for at each age.

Joint attention and back-and-forth conversation grow in play with people. Apps help with the narrower skills that need many repetitions.

Both companies are open about what they show, and it is worth reading closely. MARS scores how well an app is built: engagement, function, design and the quality of its information. It is a fair signal that Speech Blubs is a well-made app. It does not measure whether children who use it talk more. Speech Blubs’ research page describes the trial it is running as asking how much progress a 2-year-old can expect from recommended use; results are not posted as of November 2026.

Otsimo quotes two research findings on its homepage: that AAC is an effective way to communicate for many autistic people who don’t use speech (Ganz, 2015) and that AAC improves speech production (White et al., 2021). Those findings are solid and support using AAC. They are studies of AAC in general, not of Otsimo’s games.

Video modeling itself has a research base in autism and speech therapy. How many minutes a day, on which targets, is a decision for your child’s speech therapist.

Both apps are free to download and sell subscriptions inside the app, and neither has a web pricing page. Both App Store listings show several price points for the same plan, which usually means offers or regional pricing, so the price on your screen may differ. Otsimo Speech Therapy lists a 7-day trial period on its annual plan.

For a year of use, the Speech Blubs annual plan is the cheapest option here. Otsimo Special Education is the most expensive per year, and its lifetime plan costs about the same as two years at the lower annual rate. The Speech Therapy app also lists an “Otsimo Bundle” at $189.99 without saying what it includes. Some reviewers mention billing and duplicate-purchase problems with Speech Blubs, which is a good reason to note your renewal date.

A 4.6 average across that many Speech Blubs reviews means most families are happy with it; the complaints that do come up are about content going stale, profiles not syncing across devices and billing. Otsimo reviews include praise from parents of nonspeaking children who say the games hold their child’s attention, and complaints about login problems.

Languages matter if your family speaks something other than English at home, and research supports keeping your home language. Speech Blubs lists 14, including Spanish, French, German and Portuguese. Otsimo Special Education lists English, French, German, Spanish and Turkish; Otsimo Speech Therapy lists English only.

What you see as a parent differs too. Otsimo Special Education’s premium plan includes daily and weekly report cards on games played and skills worked on. Speech Blubs offers a personalized report with tips and a library of 350+ parent articles. Neither listing describes a view for your child’s therapist. Speech Blubs’ App Store privacy label also says purchase data may be used to track you across other companies’ apps, which some parents will want to know.

Don’t let an app stand in for an evaluation. In the US, Early Intervention evaluates children under 3 at no cost, and our early intervention guide explains how to ask. Not responding to their name or not pointing to show you things is a reason to ask for a developmental evaluation too.

Most of a young child’s words are learned in conversation with people who matter to them. Ask your therapist which words and sounds to target, use the app on those, then carry the same words into meals, bath time and books.

Otsimo and Speech Blubs are built for parents to choose and run on their own. SuperChild works the other way around. The professional picks targets from 342 ready-made trainings mapped to VB-MAPP and ABLLS-R, the child practices them in 5 to 20 minute tablet sessions, and every trial is recorded so the professional can see accuracy, stuck targets and mastered targets per child. See how it works for the full loop.

For speech therapists, that makes it useful for the receptive and listener side of a language plan: selecting named pictures from a field, following instructions, categories, and feature, function and class. Your child hears a spoken instruction and answers by touch, so it fits children who don’t talk yet as well as children who do. Saying words, sound production and conversation stay in therapy and at home with you.

If what your child needs is more practice saying words, Speech Blubs or Otsimo Speech Therapy alongside a speech therapist is the better fit. Some families use both.