Built by a Tutor,
for Students

Who Built This Calculator?

I’m Sarah Chen, and I built this factoring calculator in 2026 after spending six years tutoring high school algebra students.

The problem wasn’t that they couldn’t learn factoring. It was that they needed immediate feedback to know if they were on the right track. Waiting until the next tutoring session to find out they’d been practicing the wrong method for a week meant they’d built bad habits that were hard to break.

So I built this calculator. Not to replace learning — but to give students the instant feedback they needed to practice correctly.

My Background

I have a degree in Mathematics from UC Berkeley (graduated 2017) and spent six years as a private math tutor in the San Francisco Bay Area, working with about 150 students from 8th grade through college algebra.

Before tutoring, I worked as a software engineer for three years — that’s where I learned to build web applications. That combination of math teaching experience and coding skills is exactly what made this calculator possible.

I’m not a professor or curriculum expert. I’m someone who sat across the table from hundreds of confused students and saw exactly where they got stuck. This calculator addresses those specific sticking points.

Why Another Factoring Calculator?

When my students searched for factoring calculators online, they found tools that either:

• 1
  Showed answers but hid the steps behind a $10/month paywall
  (Symbolab, Mathway — my students couldn’t afford subscriptions)
• 2
  Showed steps but were painfully slow
  (Taking 5–10 seconds per problem made practice frustrating)
• 3
  Only handled specific types of factoring
  (Great for trinomials, useless for difference of cubes)
• 4
  Had confusing interfaces that required choosing the method first
  (But students didn’t know which method to use — that was the whole problem!)

I wanted something that:

• ✓ Showed complete steps for free
• ✓ Worked in under a second
• ✓ Handled all factoring types
• ✓ Automatically picked the right method
• ✓ Worked perfectly on phones (because that’s what students actually use)

That calculator didn’t exist, so I built it.

Who Reviews the Content?

All written content on this site is created by me and reviewed by my colleague Marcus Rodriguez, who holds a Master’s in Mathematics Education from Stanford and teaches Algebra 1 and 2 at a public high school in Oakland.

Marcus reviews every article for mathematical accuracy and makes sure the explanations actually make sense to students. If something is confusing or uses jargon a high schooler wouldn’t understand, he calls me out on it.

Two People. No Investors. No Fluff.

That’s it. We’re a two person operation. No investors, no corporate owners, no marketing department. Just two people who care about math education and have the skills to build something useful.

Our Mission (The Real One)

Most “About Us” pages say something generic like “we’re passionate about helping students succeed.” That’s true but meaningless.

Here’s what we actually care about:

What Makes This Calculator Different

Most factoring calculators are built by developers who understand algorithms but have never taught algebra. They’re technically correct but pedagogically weak.

This calculator is built by someone who has:

• Explained the AC method at least 300 times to confused students
• Watched students forget the difference of cubes formula weekly
• Seen students factor x² − 4 as (x − 2)² and not understand why it’s wrong
• Spent entire sessions helping students remember when to use which method

Every design decision comes from teaching experience:

• Auto-detection of method Students don’t know which method to use. That’s literally the problem they’re trying to solve. Making them choose the method first is backwards.
• Step-by-step explanation of WHY Not just “the answer is (x + 3)(x + 4)” but “we need two numbers that multiply to 12 and add to 7, which are 3 and 4.”
• Verification by multiplication The calculator shows how to multiply the factors back out. This teaches students how to check their own work.
• Clear error messages If you enter something that can’t be factored, the calculator explains WHY instead of just saying “error.”

Our Promise

• 🔒
  Free forever All features remain free. No bait and switch where we lock things behind paywalls later.
• 🙈
  No data collection We don’t track individual users. We see aggregate stats (like how many people use the site) but nothing personal.
• 🚀
  Continuous improvement We add new features based on user feedback. If you email us suggesting something, we actually read it and often implement it.
• 🎯
  Honest about limitations This calculator can’t solve every math problem. It’s specifically built for factoring polynomials. If you need calculus help or statistics, we’ll point you to better resources rather than pretending we can help.

Get in Touch

Have questions? Found an error? Want to suggest a feature?