Best budgeting, learning and food apps for students

Nail student life with these handy apps
John Schnobrich / Unsplash
Amelia Heathman22 September 2020

Whether you’re starting a new school year or a university semester, it’s time to arm yourself with the best tech to get you through your education.

From apps that'll help you eat well to tech to ones that will facilitate your learning and budgeting skills, these are the apps you need for the best year ever.

Best food apps

BBC Good Food

Many students arrive at university without knowing how to cook and it can make you feel like you’re thrown in at the deep end. But, with a little bit of creativity and some willingness to learn, you'll be cooking up a storm in no time.

The BBC Good Food app is a great place to start. Whether starting from scratch and looking for inspiration, or you have a particular ingredient you want to make a dish with, there are hundreds of recipes ready to choose from.

Save your favourites in one place and create collections ranging from cheap eats to big group recipes.

There’s no excuse to reach for the baked beans anymore.

Get the BBC Good Food app on App Store and Google Play

Too Good To Go

The food waste revolution is perfect for students. Apps like Too Good To Go match hungry people with restaurants ready to throw away their delicious unsold food at the end of the day.

Using the app, you can 'rescue meals' that would otherwise go to waste from places like Yo! Sushi, Paul and thousands more. Over 2 million meals have been saved in the UK alone.

Simply log in, select a store and pay a small amount of money for the dish, before going to pick it up from the location. Get tasty food for cheap, reduce food waste and save the environment. Easy.

Find food outlets in your area and subscribe for updates on when to rescue meals that otherwise would have been thrown away
Too Good To Go

Get Too Good To Go on App Store and Google Play

Best interior apps

Measure

You have your interiors inspo and a new DIY project to work on, but you don’t have a ruler or a tape measure. Stuck? Not anymore, thanks to Apple’s AR app Measure.

The app uses augmented reality technology to measure the items you point it at – whether that’s a book on the table or the width and length of your floor, so you’re never stumped without a tape measure again.

Get the Measure app on iOS

Pinterest

It may be a cliché, but Pinterest is hands-down the best interior inspiration app out there.

For tips on how to decorate your room to DIY how-tos, Pinterest is the best way to cover up those horrid yellow coloured walls in halls of residence.

Pinterest

Get Pinterest on App Store and Google Play

Best learning apps

Lingvist

Want to learn a new language? Maybe you have an Erasmus semester coming up and need to brush up on your skills? Language learning app Lingvist uses machine learning to make it faster and more efficient for people to learn new languages.

Last year, the company introduced a new customisable course creation too, using AI and machine learning so you can create the right vocabulary course for you based on hobbies, interests or careers. Called Course Wizard, you can learn about the parts of the language that are necessary for you.

Speaking about the new learning course, Mait Müntel, Lingvist Co-Founder & CEO, said: "We hope that Course Wizard will motivate people to learn languages again whilst giving them the freedom to learn them exactly how they want to, meaning they can fully integrate themselves into another country’s culture."

With the recent declines in people studying languages in the UK, there is a growing need for people with good language skills.

Lingvist uses machine learning to help you learn languages better and faster
Lingvist

Get Lingvist on the App Store and Google Play

Float

Facing a major essay deadline and feeling overwhelmed with that 3,000+ word count? That's where an app like Float comes in handy. Create a task on the app, set the word limit and deadline date and the app works out a sizeable goal in order to complete the task in hand.

Created by a London-based start-up, the idea is to make managing deadlines easy and accessible wherever they are. As well, by breaking the word count down into smaller chunks, it minimises that pre-deadline stress, helping to improve a student's overall sense of achievement and wellbeing at university.

Get Float on the App Store and Google Play

Best money and work apps

Stint

No time for to fit in a 12-hour part-time job during the week but want to earn some cash? Stint, started by two brothers, is the platform designed to helps students access work shifts around their studies. Sign up to the app and put in your free time between lectures and seminars. Then the app will match you up with retailers and businesses looking for someone to come in for a three-hour shift, or stint.

So far, over 40,000 stints have been carried out on the platform and with the app launching in cities such as Durham, Leeds and Sheffield, expect that number to grow.

L-R: Sol Schlagman and Sam Schlagman set up Stint during their time at UCL
Stint

Get Stint on App Store and Google Play

Yolt

Managing money is one of the hardest lessons you learn as a student. That influx of student loan at the start of the semester seems exciting until you realise you have to stretch it over a 12-week period minimum.

Yolt is a great app for this. You can link all your different bank accounts into one app, see your spending clearly and take advantage of its easy budgeting tools.

It’s smart too. If you’re looking to save money on things like your energy bills, Yolt can suggest ways to help you do this. When you’re a student, every single penny counts.

Get Yolt on App Store and Google Play

Best revision apps

Hold

Hold has a simple premise: the app challenges you to not look at your phone when you should be studying and rewards you with gifts like free cinema tickets and coffee.

You win points for every 20 minutes you don’t use your phone between the hours of 7am and 11pm and then you can exchange them using the app’s marketplace at companies like Vue cinemas, Amazon, and Caffe Nero.

Hold app was started by three students at Copenhagen Business School (Hold )
Hold

Get Hold on App Store and Google Play

Studytracks

Strictly for GCSE students only, Studytracks is one of the most genius revision apps out there. The app sets the GCSE curriculum to music to make it easier to learn about anything from key moments in Romeo & Juliet to the history of the atom.

And, it was created by award-winning songwriter George Hammond-Hagan so you know the music is going to be good.

There is a free version and premium edition, which gives you more features. With 300,000+ downloads already, this is one of the best ways to learn and remember everything for your GCSEs.

Get Studytracks on App Store and Google Play

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