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.
Buy it once with your own AI key, or subscribe with AI included · Your planner stays on your computer
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. Checking one off actually feels like progress, with a few easter eggs thrown in for good fun.
Pick a task, start a timer. If pomodoro and minimizing distractions work for you, we’ve got that built in.
From the moment your syllabus goes in, you’ve got a coach in your corner helping you strategize your semester. Every grade you earn is calculated into the points bar across the top of the page, so it’s easy to track and set your sights on the grade you deserve. Watch the points add up as those forgotten 5% assignments get tracked and accounted for. You’ve got this.
Hold all of your classroom notes and textbook chapter notes in one place, and build study guides from what you wrote. Missed something in class because the prof covered it too quickly? Bento flags concepts you might have missed so you can go back and review your textbook. It will even hand you a few questions before you read a chapter, so you can go in looking for the answers. The better your notes, the better the guides. Study as often as you want.
Get honest feedback on your practice questions so you know where you stand. Bento will tell you if you got it, partially got it, or need to revisit a concept, and you can run as many practice questions as you like. Once you have a marked assignment back, load it into the app and Bento will tell you where your marks went and why, so you can learn from your work. You really should go talk to your prof though, they aren’t that scary.
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. No Bento account, no cloud-stored planner, no telemetry. AI runs only when asked, and Bento keeps your material separate from what the AI adds.
Same app, two ways in: buy it once and bring your own AI key, or subscribe and never think about any of that.
Prices are in Canadian dollars; sales tax is added at checkout where it applies. Either way, the getting-started guide covers what comes after the download: installing, first launch, and the pop-ups your computer will show.
For the technically comfortable. Buy it once, add your own API key from Anthropic or OpenAI, and it’s yours, no subscription to Bento ever. AI usage is billed by your provider directly; for typical use it often runs a few dollars a month.
Everything included: the app and the AI, nothing to set up.
Already have a license key? Install the app and paste the key when it asks on first launch. Bento keeps itself up to date after that.
Mac (macOS 11 or later, Apple silicon or Intel) · Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit · The getting-started guide covers the install on both.
The data promise: your planner lives on your computer. On the buy-once plan, AI requests go directly to your chosen provider. On Plus, they pass through our server only long enough to reach the AI, and we never keep them. Either way, there’s no student account and very little else held by us beyond that. Details in the privacy policy.
The homework promise: Bento won’t write your assignments. It organizes your material, builds study guides from your own notes, quizzes you, explains mistakes, and helps you decide what to study next. Showing up and writing things down is what the app rewards. The full approach is in How Bento uses AI.
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 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 $49, 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, that’s exactly who Plus is for.
Bento is built around executive function, the part of school ADHD taxes hardest. Every piece of the app carries some of that load:
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 or a sense of what’s worth writing down, because until now showing up was enough. Bento teaches you that as you go: study guides show where your notes look thin and flag concepts you might have missed, 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 app outright, the buy-once version is always available and your data carries over as-is. Refunds are handled per our refund policy.