Drop in a syllabus and the whole term appears: classes, due dates, marks, textbook chapters.
Bento clears the administrative clutter that eats ADHD attention, so your energy goes toward showing up, taking notes, and actually learning.
An app that takes you from “yay! new class, fresh start” to a fully mapped-out semester in about a minute. So you don’t get bogged down in the overwhelm and can focus on just the next thing in front of you. That’s what Bento is.
Drop a syllabus PDF onto a class and Bento reads the whole thing: instructor, office hours, the grading scheme, every class meeting. Then it fills your calendar through exam week, and tasks drag from the tray onto open time.
Hold your classroom and textbook notes in one place, and build study guides from what you wrote. The better your notes, the better the guides.
When it’s time to work, pick a task and start the timer. If pomodoro and minimizing distractions work for you, it’s built in.
Honest feedback on your practice questions: got it, partially got it, or revisit. Load a marked assignment back in and Bento tells you where your marks went and why. You really should go talk to your prof though, they aren’t that scary.
You’ve got a coach in your corner helping you strategize your semester. Every grade you earn lands in the points bar, and those forgotten 5% assignments get tracked and accounted for. You’ve got this.
Bento is a desktop app, not a website with your data on it. Your planner lives on your machine, with tiered backups, one-click restore, and a plain-text export you can read in any editor. AI runs only when asked, and Bento keeps your material separate from what the AI adds.
The planner is free. AI is the part you pay for, and there are two ways to have it.
The whole planner, no AI. Download it and start putting the week together.
AI included, nothing to set up. Solo is one student; Duo and Trio cover two or three, each with their own license and their own allowance.
Bring your own AI key. Add a key from Anthropic or OpenAI and pay them directly for what you use; for typical use that often runs a few dollars a month.
Prices are in Canadian dollars, tax included. The getting-started guide covers what comes next: installing, first launch, and the pop-ups your computer will show.
No. It won’t write essays or assignment answers. It builds study guides from your own notes, generates practice questions, grades your attempts, and explains where marks were lost on returned work. Read How Bento uses AI for exactly where the line is.
The planner: calendar, tray, classes, notes, marks, backups, restore, and the export. It is the same app the paid versions run, with the AI features off until a subscription or a License turns them on. No account, no card, no expiry.
The AI features pause until the month resets. The planner, notes, marks, and everything already generated keep working. The allowance is sized so that almost nobody meets it; the exact number is in the terms.
Beyond the $50, you create an API key with your AI provider (Bento works with the Anthropic and OpenAI APIs) and pay them directly for usage. For typical use that often runs a few dollars a month, depending on your provider and how much you use it; there’s no subscription to us at all. If “create an API key” sounds like homework, a subscription is the one to pick.
Bento is built around executive function, the part of school ADHD taxes hardest: a to-do goes in the tray the second it pops into your head, “I should study” becomes real blocks on a real calendar, and the organizing that used to eat an afternoon happens on its own.
And it isn’t only ADHD. Maybe you never really had to study before, and you’re arriving at university without a note-taking habit because until now showing up was enough. Bento teaches you that as you go: study guides show where your notes look thin, and that’s how you learn what’s worth capturing next time.
Yes: a license activates on up to three computers, Mac or Windows in any mix. One thing to know first: Bento is local-first, so each computer keeps its own data. Nothing syncs by itself, and that’s the design. Your planner isn’t sitting on a server somewhere. To work across two computers, keep the Bento Data folder in iCloud Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox and point both at it (Bento asks where to save on first launch, and the getting-started guide covers it), then use one computer at a time and let the folder sync in between. Editing on both at once isn’t supported.
Both. The same app, the same license, on either. It needs a Mac running macOS 11 or later (Apple silicon or Intel) or a 64-bit Windows 10 or 11 PC. There is no phone or tablet version and no web version: your planner is a file on your computer, not a page on ours.
Cancelling never takes your data: your notes, marks, and schedule live on your computer and export freely to files you can read anywhere. When the paid period ends the AI features stop, but the app itself keeps working: cancelling never locks you out of your own planner. If you’d rather own the AI side outright, a License is always available and your data carries over as-is. Refunds are handled per our refund policy.