Questions? We've got answers.

Ponko is a free quiz game platform: host a quiz live on a big screen while players join from their own phones and answer in real time — or send it as a self-paced quiz that each person plays alone before a deadline.

Yes. Hosting, playing, and AI quiz generation are all free, and there are no paid plans. Ponko is supported by ads on its public pages — never inside a game.

No — anyone can join a game with just a code. Hosting a live game with an existing quiz doesn't require an account either, but generating a quiz with AI, saving it, sharing it publicly and sending a self-paced quiz do.

No. Players join from any phone's web browser using a code or QR code — nothing to install, and no account needed.

Ponko runs in the browser, so anything with a current browser works. The usual setup is the host on a laptop connected to a screen or projector, and players on their own phones — but you can host from a phone or tablet too.

Sign in, describe your topic, and pick a question count and difficulty — Ponko drafts the questions for you to review and edit. Prefer to write your own? Choose "Create manually" and start from a blank question.

They open the join page and type the six-character game code shown on the host's screen, or scan the QR code next to it. Then they pick a name and an avatar and they're in the lobby.

Describe your topic in a sentence, choose how many questions you want (1 to 20), a difficulty, and a time limit, and Ponko drafts a full multiple-choice quiz. Nothing goes live until you've reviewed it — every question stays editable.

Yes. Choose "Create manually" instead of describing a topic and you get the same editor with a blank question to fill in. You can mix hand-written and AI-drafted questions in one quiz.

Yes — 5 new quizzes per rolling 5-hour window per account, shown on the quiz creation page along with when your next slot frees up. AI generation has its own hourly budget on top of that.

Five: multiple choice, true/false, poll (no correct answer — just the vote split once everyone has answered), text answer, where players type their reply, and ranking, where players drag options into the right order.

Yes, all of them. Change the wording, rewrite any answer, switch the correct one, change the question type, adjust the timer, add an image, or delete the question entirely — before you launch and between games.

Yes — upload an image straight from your device, or paste an image URL, when creating or editing a question.

Yes, while you review a quiz the AI has just drafted. Each question then has a regenerate button that asks for a fresh one on the same topic while avoiding the questions already in the quiz — up to two times per question, and the button shows how many are left. It draws on the same hourly AI budget as generating a full quiz. Once the quiz is saved, or in a quiz built without AI, edit the question instead.

Yes — drag a question by its handle to move it, or use the remove button to delete it. The order you leave them in is the order they're asked.

Your personal library of saved questions. Save any question while editing a quiz, then pull it into a future quiz instead of rewriting it.

Yes — duplicate any quiz from your dashboard to get an independent copy with all its questions, then edit the copy without touching the original.

Yes. While creating or editing a quiz, choose Import questions and paste your questions. Ponko reads three formats and recognises which one by itself: its own simple text (a blank line between questions, a * before the right answer), rows copied from a spreadsheet in Kahoot's quiz format, or a Quizlet set exported with More → Export → Copy text. Quizlet terms become typed-answer questions.

Yes. After reviewing the questions, choose Save for later instead of launching. The quiz goes to your dashboard, where you can edit it and start a game whenever you're ready. Saving needs a free account.

Open a quiz and start a game. You get a lobby with the game code and QR code to put on the big screen; once everyone has joined, press start and control the pace question by question.

Every game gets a short code shown in the lobby. Players enter it on the join page to land in your game, and it stays valid for as long as that game is running. Each new game gets a new code.

Yes. The lobby shows a QR code next to the game code — scanning it opens the join page with the code already filled in.

Up to 190 players in a single game, which covers a full lecture hall or an all-hands. There's no charge at any size, and no sign-up for players.

That's exactly how it's meant to work. The host screen shows the question, the timer and the answer counts; each player's phone shows only the coloured answer buttons.

Yes — latecomers can still join a game that's already running, and they start scoring from the next question. They're flagged as having joined late in the results export, so the leaderboard is easy to read fairly.

Yes — the host can remove any player from the lobby list, which is the quick fix for a duplicate or inappropriate name.

Their score is kept on the server, so reopening the join page on the same phone offers to continue as the same player. Only the questions they actually missed are lost.

The game keeps running and reopening the host page restores control. If the browser has forgotten it was the host, a signed-in host who created the game can reclaim it from that page.

Yes. A quiz isn't consumed by playing it — start a new game from the same quiz whenever you like, and each run gets its own code, leaderboard and results.

Yes — schedule a quiz from your dashboard and it appears with its start time. Players who join early see that the game hasn't started yet instead of an empty lobby.

Yes. Players join with the game code from anywhere, not just from the same room. In Zoom, Teams, Meet or any other call, share the screen showing your game, and everyone joins at playponko.com/join on their own phone or computer. Share your computer's sound too if you want the game sounds.

A quiz you send as a link instead of hosting it live. Each person plays it alone, on their own phone or computer, whenever suits them before a deadline you set — homework, a check after a training, onboarding or a challenge between friends. Players don't need an account.

Sign in, then choose "Send as self-paced quiz" on the create page, on a quiz's page or on your dashboard — or at the end of a live game, for those who missed it. Pick the deadline and your options, then share the link or the code: copy it, send it by WhatsApp, show a QR code, post it to Google Classroom, or share it to Microsoft Teams (in Edge or Chrome on a computer).

The deadline, from 10 minutes to 60 days away; whether each question keeps its timer; whether the right answers show after each question or only after the deadline; who it's for (students, participants, friends or anyone), which changes the words players read; an optional pass mark; whether players also give their class, team or department; and whether everyone sees the final ranking after the deadline. Your last choices are filled in next time, except the ranking.

No — each player gets one try, so the score shows what they really know. If they reload or close the page on the same device, they continue where they stopped, and a question's timer keeps running.

By default, players see their score at the end and the right answers only after the deadline, so nobody can pass them around. You can choose to show them after each question instead. With a pass mark, players also see "Passed" or "Not yet" when they finish.

Not unless you choose to. You alone see everyone's results. If you pick "Everyone sees it after the deadline", every player sees the final ranking — names, avatars, scores and their class, team or department — once the quiz has closed.

Your dashboard lists every self-paced quiz you've sent, open ones first, with how many players have finished. Its results page has the link to share, every player's score, who passed, a filter by class, team or department, and the CSV export. From there you can close it before the deadline, or send the same quiz to another group with a new link.

Only a quiz that has always been private can be sent. A public quiz shows its right answers on its own page and anyone could have copied it, so its answers may already be known — even after you make it private again. Copies of public quizzes can't be sent either. Create a new quiz for it instead.

Correct answers score more points the faster they're given, so answering quickly matters as much as answering right.

Answering correctly several times in a row builds a streak, which adds a bonus on top of the points for the question. One wrong answer resets it.

The host groups players into teams that share a score, handy for classrooms or office games. Team names are set when creating the game, and players pick their team as they join.

Yes — that's the poll question type. Nobody scores; once everyone has answered, the host screen shows how the votes split. Useful for opinion questions and icebreakers.

Yes. Each question carries its own time limit, adjustable in the editor from 10 seconds up to a minute, and you can give different questions different limits in the same quiz.

The host reveals the correct answer with how many players picked each option, then moves on when ready. Players see whether they got it right along with the points they earned.

Yes — turn on shuffling for a quiz and each player sees the answer options in a different order, which makes copying a neighbour's screen much less useful.

Yes — players can tap an emoji and it floats up on the host's screen. It's a small thing that makes a remote room feel a lot less quiet.

Yes. There's a sound toggle on the host and player screens, so you can mute the lobby music and effects at any point.

An account is what lets you generate quizzes with AI, save them, come back to them later, publish them, send them as self-paced quizzes, and see the results of games you've hosted. Playing never needs one.

Yes — set a logo once in Account settings, and every game you host afterward shows it automatically: on the big screen while players join and on the podium, and on each player's phone while they wait and on their final result. Useful for schools and companies running lots of games.

Yes — in Account settings, under the password section. You'll be asked for your current password first.

Use "Forgot password?" on the sign-in screen and we'll email you a link to set a new one. The link works once, so request a fresh one if you need to change it again.

Yes — in Account settings, under the email section. Enter the new address and your current password, then confirm from the link sent to the new inbox. Your old address stays active until you do.

Yes — Account settings has a one-click export containing your profile, every quiz with its questions, and every game you've hosted with its players and scores.

In Account settings you can permanently delete your account. It's worth exporting your data first, since deletion can't be undone.

An extra check when you sign in: after your password (or Google), Ponko asks for a 6-digit code from an authenticator app such as Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator or 1Password. It's free. Turn it on in Account settings → Two-step sign-in: scan the QR code with the app, then type the code it shows. You can turn it off in the same place. Lost your phone? Contact us and we'll remove it once we've checked it's you.

It needs at least 8 characters. While you type, Ponko shows a strength bar (weak, OK, strong) and warns you if the password is a very common one. A phrase of a few unrelated words is both strong and easy to remember.

Yes. Use the sun and moon button at the top of the page (inside the ☰ menu on phones). Until you press it, Ponko follows your device's setting; after that, your choice is remembered on that device.

Your dashboard lists every game you've hosted, with your self-paced quizzes in their own list at the top. Open one for the final leaderboard and a per-question breakdown, including which question the room found hardest.

Yes — each past game on your dashboard has an "Export CSV" link, which opens straight into a spreadsheet.

One row per player: rank, name, team (in team games), total score, number of correct answers, whether they joined late (live games), and then a column per question marking whether they got it right. A self-paced quiz adds the class, team or department players gave and whether they passed, when you asked for those.

Yes — turn on "Make this quiz public" in the quiz editor to get a shareable link and list it in the public gallery for others to discover.

Yes, that's the point of publishing one — anyone signed in can clone a public quiz into their own account and edit their copy. Your original is untouched, and only quizzes you've made public can be cloned.

Yes — turn the same toggle off and it leaves the gallery and stops being cloneable. Copies people already made stay in their accounts. A quiz that has been public can no longer be sent as a self-paced quiz, because its answers may already be known.

The gallery lists quizzes other hosts have published. Search by keyword, filter by category, language and length, and sort by newest or most played. Play one as it is, or clone it and make it yours.

Yes. When a game ends, the host's screen offers Save podium as image, and each player's phone offers Save my result as image. On devices that can share pictures, a Share button sends the image straight to another app.

The interface is available in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Arabic — switch anytime from the menu in the top corner. Players can pick their own language independently of the host.

Yes — question and answer text is yours to write, in any language you like, and changing the interface language never rewrites quiz content. When drafting with AI, describe your topic in the language you want the questions in, and edit anything that doesn't come back the way you wanted.

Only for quiz content. When you generate a quiz, the topic you type is sent to Anthropic's API, which returns draft questions. Regenerating one question also sends the quiz's other questions, so the new one is different. When an AI-drafted quiz is saved, or that step is retried from the editor, its title, description, language, questions and answers (not poll options) are sent again, with tags already used on public quizzes, to suggest tags, a description and a category. No account or player data is sent, and games themselves never call a model.

Yes — always read them before you play. AI drafts are a starting point and can get facts wrong or word things awkwardly, which is why every question stays editable and nothing is published automatically.

Your account details, the quizzes you create, and the games you host with their players' chosen names, avatars and scores (and, in a self-paced quiz, the class, team or department they gave). Full detail is in the privacy policy, and you can export or delete all of it from Account settings.

No. Data is shared only with the providers needed to run the service, and never sold. Ponko does show ads on its public pages: Google asks for your consent in its own dialog before anything is stored for advertising, and your account, quiz and game content is never given to advertisers.

Players give a display name and pick an avatar — that's it, no email and no sign-up. In a self-paced quiz the host can also ask for their class, team or department. That name, their answers and their score are stored with the game so the host can see the results.

Only on Ponko's public content pages — the home page, the gallery, individual quiz pages, the blog and this FAQ. Never anywhere in a game: not in the lobby, not during a question, and not on a player's answer screen. They're absent from your dashboard and account pages too.

Check it against the host screen — codes are six characters and case doesn't matter. A code only works while its game is running, so an old code from a finished game won't let anyone in; start a new game to get a fresh one.

Three things cover almost every case: the game has finished (start a new one), the name is already taken by another player (pick a different one), or the game has reached its 190-player limit.

Move the phone closer or wait for the screen to stop dimming — projectors and low brightness are the usual culprits. Failing that, players can always type the game code by hand instead.

Try once more first — generation occasionally fails and a retry usually works. If you're told you've hit a limit, wait for the window shown on the page to reset. A short, specific topic ('the French Revolution for a Year 9 class') also works better than a very long one.

Check your spam folder, and check the address you typed matches the one on the account. Links are single-use, so if you've already opened one, request a fresh email rather than reusing it.

If you pasted a URL, open it in a new tab — some sites block their images from being shown elsewhere. Uploading the file to Ponko instead avoids the problem entirely.

After many wrong game codes from the same network in a short time, Ponko pauses code checks from that network for a few minutes, so nobody can guess their way into a game. Wait a few minutes, check the code on the host's screen, and try again. Joining the right game never counts towards this.

Email contact@playponko.com and we'll take a look. Telling us the game code and roughly when it happened makes it much faster to track down.