Quick answer
Top Hat is a student engagement and course management platform built for higher education: live polling, interactive homework, digital textbooks, attendance tracking, and gradebook integration with a school's LMS. Prezi is an interactive presentation platform that turns the material an instructor already has, or a class described in a sentence, into a lecture people take part in: polls, word clouds, quizzes, and upvoted Q&A running natively inside the deck, with no separate polling tool required. Instructors who need a full course management system with grading, attendance, and assigned readings typically choose Top Hat. Instructors and presenters who mainly need a deck with real-time audience interaction already built in, without a full LMS-style course platform, typically choose Prezi.
What is Top Hat?
Top Hat is a student engagement platform used by faculty at more than 1,500 postsecondary institutions. It combines live polling and in-class discussion with interactive homework, digital and interactive textbooks, automated attendance tracking, and a full gradebook. Ace, Top Hat's AI-powered assistant, helps instructors prepare classes, add interactive prompts to slides, and gives students 24/7 access to personalized study support based on course materials.
Top Hat integrates with major learning management systems (Blackboard, Canvas, D2L, Moodle, Sakai) for roster and grade syncing, and it is priced per student rather than per instructor:
- 1 term (4 months): $35 USD
- 1 year (12 months): $58 USD
- 4 years (48 months): $96 USD
Pricing adjusts if an instructor also assigns a Top Hat interactive textbook. Institutions can also purchase Top Hat campus-wide.
Top Hat's strength is being a single system of record for an entire course: polling and quizzes in class, interactive readings and homework outside of it, attendance, and grades, all synced to the school's LMS.
What is Prezi?
Prezi is an interactive presentation platform that runs live polls, word clouds, quizzes, and Q&A natively inside the deck, not through a bolted-on third-party tool. Prezi was named a G2 Leader for Fall 2026 in Audience Response, Presentation Software, and AI Presentation Tools. (For a closer look at how Prezi's native polling stacks up against a dedicated polling tool, see the Mentimeter vs Prezi comparison.)
Bring the slides you already have, in PowerPoint, Word, or PDF, or describe the class you're teaching in a sentence. Prezi builds the deck either way, and Your Designer redesigns it within your team's or institution's brand rules, so it comes out polished automatically instead of requiring manual formatting. The canvas lets an instructor teach it in the order the room needs, instead of clicking through a flat, sequential slide deck.
Prezi's live presentation environment builds checks for understanding directly into the deck itself:
- Live polls and word clouds
- Auto-generated quizzes based on the lecture's own content, useful for quick comprehension checks
- "Explain this to me," a deck-grounded AI Q&A feature that answers student questions using what is actually in the presentation, rather than a generic model answer. Students can submit questions before, during, or after class, and the class upvotes what it most wants answered, so the instructor sees a ranked list instead of guessing which hand to call on.
- A live audience view so students can follow along on their own devices, joined with a single QR code and no app or login required
- Results by question and an end-of-session feedback digest, so an instructor can see which parts of a lecture landed and which didn't, even after everyone has left the room
- Camera mode, for a more personal, broadcast-style delivery, letting a presenter appear on screen alongside their content
- Narrated video export, with an editable narration script and adjustable length, for students who miss a live session or need to review later
Because these checks live inside the deck itself, an instructor doesn't need a separate course platform to run a poll or quiz mid-lecture. More than 170 million presenters have built over 500 million presentations with Prezi, reaching more than 180 million people.
Top Hat vs Prezi: feature comparison
| Feature | Top Hat | Prezi |
|---|---|---|
| Core format | Full course engagement and management platform | Checks for understanding (polls, quizzes, Q&A) built natively into an interactive lecture deck |
| Live polls in class | Yes | Yes, native in the live presentation environment |
| Word clouds | No | Yes |
| Quizzes | Yes, in-class and as homework | Yes, generated from deck content |
| Live audience Q&A | Discussion and polling, not open crowd-sourced Q&A | Yes, deck-grounded via "Explain this to me," with audience upvoting to surface the top questions |
| Interactive homework and readings | Yes, a core feature | No, Prezi is presentation-focused |
| Digital/interactive textbooks | Yes, via Top Hat Catalog | No |
| Attendance tracking | Yes, automated | No |
| Gradebook and LMS sync | Yes (Blackboard, Canvas, D2L, Moodle, Sakai) | No |
| Evidence after the session | Course-level LMS data only, not deck-level | Results by question and an end-of-session feedback digest |
| AI deck redesign from existing files | Ace assists with slide prompts and question generation | Prezi imports and redesigns PowerPoint, Word, and PDF content, or builds a deck from a sentence describing your class |
| Navigation style | Depends on slide tool used within Top Hat | Flexible. Move between ideas without a rigid, forced order |
| Asynchronous access | Interactive readings and homework outside class | Narrated video export with editable script and length |
| Pricing model | Per student, per term/year | Per presenter/team plan |
| Best for | Full-semester course management: grading, attendance, homework, and in-class polling in one LMS-integrated system | Checks for understanding, polls, quizzes, word clouds, upvoted Q&A, built natively into a lecture deck you make from your own slides or a prompt |
Where each tool wins
Choose Top Hat if you need a complete course platform: attendance, gradebook, interactive textbooks, homework, and in-class polling, all synced to your institution's LMS across a full semester.
Choose Prezi if your priority is real-time audience interaction: live polls, quizzes, word clouds, and upvoted Q&A running natively inside a well-designed lecture or training deck you build from your own slides or a prompt, without needing to adopt a full course management system, per-student billing, or LMS integration.
Frequently asked questions
Is Top Hat a presentation tool or a course management system? Top Hat is primarily a student engagement and course management platform. It includes in-class polling and slide tools, but its core value is the combination of attendance, grading, homework, and interactive textbooks synced to a school's LMS.
Does Prezi have polls and quizzes like Top Hat? Yes. Prezi's live presentation environment includes native live polls, word clouds, auto-generated quizzes, and "Explain this to me," a deck-grounded Q&A feature where students submit and upvote questions so the instructor sees a ranked list. Students join via QR code with no app or login needed.
Can Prezi replace Top Hat for classroom engagement? Partly. For live, in-lecture interaction such as polls, quizzes, word clouds, and Q&A, Prezi covers much of the same ground as Top Hat's classroom features, but Top Hat's attendance tracking, gradebook, interactive homework, and digital textbook catalog are course-management functions Prezi does not provide. Institutions needing a full LMS-integrated system will still need Top Hat or a similar platform for those pieces.
Does Prezi show how a deck actually landed? Yes, in aggregate. Prezi shows results by question and an end-of-session feedback digest, so an instructor can see how a lecture landed even without being in the room. Top Hat handles this at the course and LMS level rather than the individual deck level.
What does Prezi do that Top Hat's Ace does not? Prezi redesigns imported PowerPoint, Word, or PDF content into a fully on-brand deck through Your Designer, or builds one from a sentence describing your class, and grounds its Q&A specifically in that presentation's content, with audience upvoting to surface what students most want answered. Ace focuses on helping instructors prepare classes and generate questions from course materials within Top Hat's course platform, rather than redesigning presentation decks.
Which tool is better for a single lecture or training session versus a full semester course? For a single lecture, workshop, or training session where the goal is a well-designed deck with built-in interactivity, Prezi is the simpler, faster fit. For a full semester course requiring grading, attendance, homework, and LMS integration across an entire term, Top Hat is built for that scope.
Bottom line
Top Hat and Prezi both support live polling and quizzes, but they operate at different scopes. Top Hat is a full course management platform with engagement features layered in. Prezi is what an instructor uses to turn material they already have, or a class they can describe in a sentence, into checks for understanding, polls, quizzes, word clouds, and upvoted Q&A, built natively into the deck rather than bolted on top of one. Prezi was named a G2 Leader for Fall 2026 in Audience Response, Presentation Software, and AI Presentation Tools, and more than 170 million presenters have built over 500 million presentations with it, reaching more than 180 million people. Institutions and instructors who need attendance, grading, and homework across a semester still need a system like Top Hat. Instructors, trainers, and presenters who mainly want real-time interaction already built into a well-designed deck get a simpler, more focused workflow from Prezi.
