You may think that only the body can be maintained to be fit and healthy through exercise. You may not realize that your brain, made up of muscles and all, can also be exercised and trained just like the rest of your body.

Just like the body, the brain can experience wear and tear with each passing time. With this in mind, it is important to give your brain its well-deserved mental exercise and training which should not be limited to your usual stuff as playing games, be it the good ol’ parlors or the more technologically diverse video games. But rather, subjecting your mental capacity to new challenges by constantly stretching your mind to work harder than its normal capacity.

You might be familiar with some of the most common brain exercises out there ranging from using your non-dominant hands while eating, brushing your teeth, or even writing; doing the math in your head, and even switching places in the dining table. They may sound a bit odd but studies have shown that to some degree they do really work.

So if you can do these things without spending a dime and without the complications of technology that older people tend to avoid, why is there a need to try out Lumosity?

Lumosity.com was launched in 2007, the biggest selling point of which is that the training plan is designed or custom-made to fit the needs of their every subscriber. It basically works by telling them what you want or needs to work on, then they create the training plan based on the information you have supplied.

If it has a price tag attached, then it must be really good. So the question is how much does Lumosity cost?

Average Cost of Lumosity

Their basic membership is available for free but you would only get limited games and features. Like most basic software and applications, you only get to do so much. In other words, you may not get the full effectiveness of the program unless you pay for it. Which means, to be able to have full access and features, you need to subscribe to their paid plans.

The average Lumosity price appears to have not been changed in a few years and remained at $14.95 per month, $6.95 per month if you subscribed for a whole year for a total of $83.40; $4.99 per month if you opted for the two-year commitment or a total of $119.76; and $299.95 for the lifetime subscription. That is up to 2015 so those who subscribed ahead could just scratch their head.

That is because we have researched an update that the latest their pricing has lowered to $11.99 for one month and $59.99 for the one-year subscription which means you pay only $5 instead of the previous $6.95 per month for a one-year commitment.

What are Included

You may want to just test the water first and sign up for free before actually taking the plunge. With the free membership, you get to play three games each day as part of the training session. It is said that these games rotate daily so would get the feel of having a new challenge every time.

With the Lumosity price tag, you would be able to access all available training curricula for as long as the duration of your subscription which could be per month, year, two years, or a lifetime. It also includes the various games and the progress monitoring tools for you to be able to keep track of your improvement over time.

The progress monitoring tool shows your Brain Performance Index or BPI which is the measure of your cognitive performance, and the five key areas that you can choose to focus on that include the speed, memory, attention, flexibility, and problem-solving. It also includes your Lumosity points or the measurement of how much and how well you have trained, as well as your training history.

And what could be more engaging than having a little competition? That is in the form of statistics that Lumosity shows. Here, you would be ranked in each of the key areas based on your age group.

And here’s some piece of good news. Subscriptions made online through their website can have a 30-day, 100% money-back guarantee for all the plans excluding the monthly subscriptions. Unfortunately, this guarantee does not extend to subscriptions made through Apple iTunes or the iPhone and iPad subscriptions as they consider the sale final.

Additional Costs

How much does Lumosity cost if you want to share it with your loved ones? Lumosity also offers family plans where you can add up to five individuals for the price of $24.99 per month for the monthly subscription and $8.33 each month if subscribed to a two-year deal via one-time payment.

Please note that this pricing was as of 2012 and there has been a significant drop in price for the individual subscriptions in 2016. So we are expecting the same with the family package but we could not find any updated price on the Internet yet for this package. Although we managed to search someone reportedly paying close to $100 for a year’s subscription in 2016 so we assume there was no price change for the family package.

If you are being generous, you can also purchase a subscription that can be given as a surprise gift during special occasions like birthdays or Christmas and can be a nice alternative to the traditional gift-wrapped presents.

Shopping for Lumosity

To subscribe to the free version, you need to sign up at their website. You can also download their app to your iPhone, iPads and Android devices.

Factors Affecting Lumosity Cost

The Lumosity price is usually deemed expensive by a lot of users. Some even questioned its effectiveness in helping the brain to be smarter. Lumosity, like any other similar programs or applications, actually gets mixed reviews which led us to believe that the effectiveness of these is mostly subjective.

The pricing scheme of Lumosity is very basic. You get the standard price that does not change regardless of whether you subscribed it directly from them or you clicked on some affiliate links. The only factors that would affect its cost are for how long do you want to get the services and some promotional codes offered over the Internet. Nothing else.

Additional Information

Some of the popular games in Lumosity that you would have full access of through paid subscriptions are the following:

• Speed – Speed Match, Spatial Speed Match, Penguin Pursuit, Rotation Matrix, Speed Pack, Speed Match, Spatial Speed Match, Speed Match Overdrive, Splitting Seeds, River Ranger
• Memory – Monster Garden, Memory Match, Moneycomb, Memory Matrix, Familiar Faces, Memory Match Overload, Rhyme Workout, Face Memory Workout, Memory Lane, Pinball Recall, Follow That Frog, Memory Matrix, Tidal Treasures
• Attention – Lost in Migration, Birdwatching, Top Chimp, Space Junk, Playing Koi, Eagle Eye, Observation Tower, Lost in Migration, Train of Thought, Star Search, Trouble Brewing, Rhythm Revolution 
• Flexibility – Word Bubbles, Color Match, Disillusion, Brain Shift, Brain Shift Overdrive, Route To Sprout, Disconnection, Word Bubbles Rising, Brain Shift, Color Match, Ebb and Flow, Brain Shift Overdrive, Robot Factory 
• Problem Solving – Chalkboard Challenge, Raindrops, By the Rules, Addition Storm, Word Sort, Subtraction Storm, Division Storm, Multiplication Storm, Chalkboard Challenge, Pet Detective
• Hidden Games – Dual-N-Back, Are You Smarter Than A Chimp?