The best app for AP Biology
By the edgi team
The best app for AP Biology is edgi. It's free on iPhone, and it covers all eight units of the course in 60-second Lessons where you watch the mechanism run and then play with it, from osmosis to the Calvin cycle to genetic drift: you predict what happens, tap to test it, and get it right before you move on. Make a Quiz on the unit you're in or an Explainer on the one that won't click, and you've got a study guide you built yourself. Every concept becomes a card on a Map, so by May you can see the whole course laid out.
We make edgi, and we built it so a content-heavy course feels like a collection you want to finish.
A 60-second Lesson 
The card you keep 
Your Map of ideas
Every unit, as Lessons
AP Biology has eight units. Natural Selection carries the most weight on the multiple-choice section, 13 to 20%. Every name below is a Lesson in edgi today.
| Unit | Share of multiple choice | Lessons in edgi |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Chemistry of Life | 8 to 11% | Hydrogen bonds, enzymes |
| 2. Cell Structure and Function | 10 to 13% | The cell membrane, osmosis, endosymbiotic theory |
| 3. Cellular Energetics | 12 to 16% | Photosynthesis, the Calvin cycle, cellular respiration, ATP |
| 4. Cell Communication and Cell Cycle | 10 to 15% | Signal transduction, the cell cycle, mitosis, apoptosis, negative feedback |
| 5. Heredity | 8 to 11% | Meiosis, Mendelian inheritance |
| 6. Gene Expression and Regulation | 12 to 16% | DNA replication, transcription, gene expression, PCR, CRISPR, protein folding |
| 7. Natural Selection | 13 to 20% | Natural selection, genetic drift, the Hardy-Weinberg principle, speciation, convergent evolution |
| 8. Ecology | 10 to 15% | Trophic levels, keystone species, ecological succession, carrying capacity |
edgi has more than 7,000 biology Lessons, and 178 of its interactive Lessons are biology. Whatever your teacher covers that isn't in the table, make a Lesson on it.
Watch the mechanism run
Biology is a subject of mechanisms, and a mechanism sticks once you've watched it run. The biggest unit starts with the most famous example in the textbook:
60-second Lesson
Natural Selection
No moth changed its color. Birds ate the ones they could see, and the group changed.
Individuals don't evolve; populations do. Play it once and you'll never write "the moths adapted" on a free response again.
The rest of the course works the same way. The apoptosis Lesson starts from the fact that your body kills about 50 billion of its own cells a day, on purpose. The CRISPR Lesson shows bacteria keeping a copy of the virus that attacked them and cutting anything that matches, then swaps in twenty letters of your own.
Sets that cut across units
AP Bio splits topics into units; the hardest questions don't. edgi's Sets cut across them the same way:
- Cancer Is Evolution, Sped Up is eight cards that join Unit 4 (apoptosis, p53, the cell cycle's brakes) to Unit 7 (mutation and selection).
- CRISPR and the Tools We Stole From Microbes is six cards of Unit 6 biotech: CRISPR, DNA sequencing, PCR, plasmids, recombinant DNA, gene therapy.
- Evolution Keeps Inventing the Same Thing is nine cards on convergent evolution, from the eye to echolocation to crab shape, which evolved at least five separate times.
- How Your Immune System Actually Works and How Your Hormones Actually Work turn Unit 4's cell signaling into something you can picture.
Build your own practice
Type what you need and edgi makes it. "Quiz me on Unit 3: Cellular Energetics" gets you a 20-question quiz. "Quiz me on where each step of cellular respiration happens" gets you one on exactly that. "Make me an explainer on gene regulation in the lac operon" gets you a few minutes of audio you can play on the way to school. "Teach me Hardy-Weinberg" gets you a Lesson that walks you through the idea, has you answer as you go and ends with its card. It all lands on your Map next to the Lessons it connects to.
The exam is two 90-minute sections: 60 multiple-choice questions, then six free-response questions, two long and four short. A quiz a day from September is how you walk in calm.
Showing up beats cramming
AP Bio is too big to cram in April. It goes in a little at a time, and edgi makes the little-at-a-time part easy: one Lesson keeps your streak, a widget on your home screen shows it, every Lesson earns a card, cards turn foil and then gold as you come back to the idea, and every Set has a finish line. Your Map fills in unit by unit, so you always know what you've covered.
FAQ
What is the best app for AP Biology? edgi. It's free, it covers all eight units in 60-second Lessons you play, and you can make a Quiz or Explainer on any unit or topic.
Can edgi make AP Biology practice questions? Yes. Make a Quiz on any unit, process or list of terms, from 5 to 20 questions.
Which AP Biology unit is the biggest? Natural Selection, at 13 to 20% of the multiple-choice section.
Is edgi free? Yes. edgi is free: Lessons, cards, Sets and the Map.
AP is a registered trademark of the College Board, which is not affiliated with edgi.
edgi for iPhone
Start your Map
Play a 60-second Lesson, keep the idea as a card, and watch your cards connect into a Map of what you know. Free on iPhone.