Lazarus vs. Brightwheel
Brightwheel is great for childcare.Lazarus is built for K-12 schools.
Brightwheel is one of the best-known tools for preschools and childcare centers, with daily reports, check-in, and billing designed around that world. If you run a school with grade levels, application seasons, and a tuition year, you want software designed around that instead. Here's how they differ.
Details checked October 2026, from each company's own pages.
Brightwheel's own site speaks to early childhood programs: preschools, childcare centers, in-home care, Montessori schools, camps, and afterschool. It covers billing, enrollment and admissions tracking, daily reports, attendance and check-in, staff scheduling, payroll, and curriculum. Pricing isn't published; the site says it varies and points you to a demo.
Pick Brightwheel if
- You run a childcare center, preschool, or camp.
- You need daily reports, check-in, ratios, and staff scheduling.
- You track childcare subsidies or issue dependent-care tax statements.
Pick Lazarus if
- You run a K-12 private, charter, faith-based, or microschool.
- Your year runs on applications, re-enrollment, tuition plans, and sibling discounts.
- You want one application per household and prices you can read before you call.
Side by side
Lazarus and Brightwheel, line by line
| Feature | Lazarus | Brightwheel |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Private, charter, and faith-based K-12 schools, co-ops, and microschools. | Preschools, childcare centers, in-home care, camps, and afterschool programs. |
| Online enrollment applications | Yes. Free to use. One application per household, with review workflows. | Yes: prospects, tours, and applications in one dashboard. |
| Tuition billing and payment plans | Yes, from the Basic plan. Tuition plans, sibling discounts, autopay, refunds. | Yes: recurring tuition charges, invoices, reminders, card and ACH. |
| Daily reports, check-in, and staff scheduling | No. Not what a K-12 school's front office needs. | Yes. |
| Childcare subsidy tracking and tax statements | Not our focus. | Yes: subsidy tracking and year-end dependent-care statements. |
| Event registration | Yes. Free events on every plan. | Not listed on their homepage. |
| Published pricing | Yes. Free, $3, and $6 per active student per month. | No. Pricing varies; request a demo. |
| Cancel any time | Yes. You're never locked in. | Not published. |
Brightwheel doesn't publish prices, and its help center says Premium is priced by your program's enrollment capacity, so we can't put a number next to theirs. Lazarus is free to collect applications and $3 per active student per month for billing.
Where Brightwheel wins
Everything that happens inside a childcare room: daily reports, check-in, ratios, staff scheduling, subsidies. If that's your day, Brightwheel was built for it and we weren't.
Where we pull ahead
School-year billing and enrollment. Application seasons, household applications, re-enrollment, sibling discounts, and a tuition plan each family can pay from one link are the whole job for us, not a feature on a childcare platform.
Why Lazarus
A small team with a lot of road behind it
We're small by choice. It's why we move the way we do, and why you get a partner who's done this kind of thing before instead of a vendor with a queue.
Systems, not features
Anyone can bolt on a button. We design how applications, households, billing, and events work together, so a family's information is entered once and every part of your school uses it.
Nimble on purpose
No committee and no quarterly roadmap to wait for. Dozens of changes ship every month, and when a school tells us what's missing, it gets built instead of logged.
Experience from outside the industry
We've spent our careers building products in fintech and search at scale, and running service businesses. We brought that know-how to an underserved industry to make software that's beautiful, functional, affordable, and intentional.
For the teacher who became a founder
Starting a school means wearing hats you've never worn: admissions director, billing clerk, webmaster. We know that feeling, and we built Lazarus so the move from teacher to school leader is as smooth and rewarding as it can be.
Need grades or attendance? Much of what the bigger systems offer is on our roadmap, and being small means we can build it fast, alongside the schools that need it first. Tell us what matters most.
Your questions, answered
Get quick answers to the most common questions about our platform and services.
See all questionsIs Lazarus an alternative to Brightwheel?
For schools, yes. Brightwheel is designed for childcare and preschool programs. Lazarus is designed for private, charter, and faith-based K-12 schools, with household enrollment applications, tuition plans, and event registration. If you need daily reports and check-in for young children, Brightwheel fits better.
How much does Brightwheel cost compared to Lazarus?
Brightwheel doesn't publish pricing; it says pricing varies and directs you to a demo. Lazarus publishes its prices: applications are free, billing and events start at $3 per active student per month, and a website plus the Lazzie AI assistant is $6.
Can a preschool use Lazarus?
If your preschool is part of a school that bills tuition and takes applications, yes. If you run a standalone childcare center that needs daily reports, check-in, and subsidy tracking, Brightwheel or Procare is a closer match.
Sources, checked October 2026
We make Lazarus, so weigh this accordingly. If something here is out of date, tell us and we'll fix it.
Also compare: Lazarus vs. FACTS, Lazarus vs. Blackbaud, Lazarus vs. Sycamore, Lazarus vs. Procare, Lazarus vs. Spark, or see how we compare feature by feature.
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