Why BingWow exists
In 2020, I tried to host a bingo night over video chat. Everyone was stuck at home, nobody could visit anyone, and our weekly happy-hour Zoom had started to feel like another meeting. Bingo seemed perfect — parallel play, low stakes, loud reactions, nobody has to run the show.
Finding a tool was harder than hosting the night. Every free option capped the room at five players, locked printing behind a paywall, or wanted an email address before it would even show me a card. Teachers I knew had the same story. They'd been told that the game their grandmothers played in church basements for free now cost $20 a month — and only worked on laptops half their students didn't have.
Bingo was invented in 1530. Nobody should be renting it back to you.
So I built BingWow. The rules I set on day one are the ones the site still runs on:
- Free for a classroom of 30. Free for a 200-person all-hands. Free for a living-room watch party. Free forever — no trial, no “premium” tier quietly introduced later.
- No signup required to play. Type a topic, share a link, go. If you never sign in, nothing is worse.
- Works on anything with a browser — teacher Chromebook, hand-me-down tablet, parent's phone, grandma's iPad, a remote team's twelve different laptops.
- One game, everyone together. One host, one link, up to twenty players, each with a unique board. It should feel like sitting in the same room even when you're across six time zones.
That's the whole product. Cards you generate from any topic. Real-time multiplayer that runs alongside Zoom, Slack, or Teams. Print-ready PDFs for in-person events. A library of more than a thousand cards other people have made. Nothing gated.
If you're a teacher using this in your classroom tomorrow — thank you, and please tell me what's missing. If you're running a remote all-hands, a baby shower, a trivia night, or a family watch-along for the finale of the show everyone has opinions about — same thing. Email me at hello@bingwow.com. I read everything.
— Forrest, founder
Recognition
2 Papers on SSRN
Our EdTech and HR research reports are published on SSRN, Elsevier's scholarly research platform.
ISTE EdTech Index
BingWow is listed in the ISTE EdTech Index, a curated directory of classroom technology tools.
Cited in Wikipedia
Our original research data is cited in 3 Wikipedia articles on gamification and EdTech.
What you can do
- Create custom bingo cards with AI or from scratch
- Play real-time multiplayer bingo in the browser
- Browse 1,000+ community-created cards
- Print or email PDF boards for in-person events
- No signup required — just pick a card and play
How it works
Pick a card (or create your own), share the room code with friends, and play. Everyone gets the same clues in a different layout on their board. First to complete a row wins!
Built for everyone
BingWow works on any device with a browser — phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops.
Questions or feedback? Get in touch.