Auto-McGraw vs Silent Student
Auto-McGraw is free and open source. If your McGraw Hill work is SmartBook and you are happy to load an extension by hand and keep a ChatGPT, Gemini or DeepSeek tab open, it costs nothing. Silent Student is a paid desktop app that also works Connect homework and ALEKS from your Canvas course and turns them in. McGraw Hill’s Terms of Use bar both.
Disclosure: this comparison is published by the maker of Silent Student. We did not run Auto-McGraw. Its details come from its GitHub repository (README, code, releases and issues), read on 19 October 2026; check the latest there.
Side by side.
| Feature | Silent Student | Auto-McGraw |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Desktop app for Mac and Windows, with its own browser | Chrome extension, loaded unpacked from GitHub |
| Price | $11.99, $24.99 or $49.99 a month. No free plan. First-assignment money-back guarantee | Free. You also need a ChatGPT, Gemini or DeepSeek account open in another tab |
| Source code | Not published | Public on GitHub, MIT licence |
| Install | Installer from the download page after checkout. Public beta: the Mac build is self-signed and the Windows build unsigned, so your system warns you once | Download the zip, turn on Developer mode in chrome://extensions, Load unpacked. Not on the Chrome Web Store; its README calls copies there fraudulent |
| Which AI answers | Silent Student’s hosted AI, so you need no AI account of your own. Plans differ in usage and in access to an advanced pro model | The chat site you choose (ChatGPT, Gemini or DeepSeek), driven in a browser tab |
| SmartBook | Dedicated solver: multiple choice, multiple select, fill-in-the-blank, dropdown, drag-to-order and matching. Follows the reading detours until the concept counter is full | Multiple choice, true/false, select all that apply, fill-in-the-blank and matching; pauses for you when a match isn’t reliable. Moves through forced learning sections |
| Connect homework and ALEKS | Connect homework and worksheet grids, and ALEKS Learning Mode, on a general screen-reading agent, which is less predictable | README covers SmartBook. v3.0 also runs on ezto pages for multiple choice, true/false and fill-in-the-blank. ALEKS is an open request |
| How a run starts | You queue the assignment from your Canvas course; the app follows the Canvas link | You open the SmartBook assignment yourself and click “Ask [AI]” in its header |
| Turning it in | Presses the platform’s own submit control, looks for the receipt, and says when it couldn’t confirm one | Fills each answer and moves on. Pause Before Submit waits for you on every question |
| Confidence rating | Always High | High unless you turn on Randomize Confidence |
| Beyond McGraw Hill | Canvas quizzes, essays, discussions and uploads, plus WebAssign, MindTap, MyLab, Achieve and others | No. McGraw Hill only |
| Last update | Updates arrive inside the app | v3.0, 30 September 2026 |
| Published accuracy | A Connect replica we built: 102 of 109 graded parts in one scored run on 22 September 2026 (method). No SmartBook figure | None published |
Where Auto-McGraw is better.
What it does better
- It’s free. No subscription. The only possible cost is the AI chat account you bring, and ChatGPT, Gemini and DeepSeek each have free tiers.
- You can read every line. The code is public under the MIT licence. Its v3.0 manifest asks for three Chrome permissions (tabs, scripting, storage) and site access to McGraw Hill’s learning and ezto pages, the three chat sites, and GitHub’s API, which it uses to check for new releases.
- Nothing new to install. It runs inside the Chrome you already use. There is no separate app to install.
- You pick the AI. Switch between ChatGPT, Gemini and DeepSeek in its settings.
- It’s maintained in the open. 14 releases since February 2025. The v3.0 release notes credit ten people for code, reports and ideas, and anyone can file an issue or send a fix.
- You can check every answer. Pause Before Submit fills an answer, then waits for you.
Where Silent Student differs
- It costs money. $11.99, $24.99 or $49.99 a month, no free plan. If it can’t complete the first assignment you run on a paid plan, you can ask for that first payment back within 30 days (Terms, section 4).
- It starts from Canvas. You queue the McGraw Hill assignment from your Canvas course and the app follows the link. It does not ask for your Connect password.
- It goes past SmartBook. Connect homework, including accounting worksheet grids filled cell by cell, and ALEKS Learning Mode. Those run on a general screen-reading agent, which our pricing page calls less predictable.
- No chat tab to keep open. It brings its own hosted AI, so you don’t need a chat account, and a chat site changing its page doesn’t affect it.
- It reads back and reports. It checks each answer registered, presses the platform’s own submit control and calls a run confirmed only when it sees the receipt.
- It needs a supported computer. A Mac with Apple Silicon or Windows 10 or later. No Chromebook or iPad.
Is Auto-McGraw maintained? The dated record.
An extension like this breaks when McGraw Hill or the chat site changes its page, so the history matters more than the feature list. Here is what its GitHub repository showed on 19 October 2026.
- Created 14 February 2025 by GooglyBlox. MIT licence, copyright 2025.
- Latest release v3.0 on 30 September 2026, a rewrite. The day before, on 29 September, commits added support for ChatGPT’s new message box and reply markup.
- Breakage, then a fix. Four issues opened between 21 and 28 May 2026 report automation stopping after a few questions (“doesn’t automate anymore”, “STOPS ON QUESTION 4”). All four were closed on 30 September 2026, when v3.0 shipped with “fix: automation stalling after a few questions”.
- Open on 19 October: #51 “No Ask AI Button” (opened 1 October), a request for Connect accounting graphs (#48), a request for ALEKS and non-SmartBook assignments (#34), and two pull requests: an optional direct API provider (#45) and Firefox support with a ChatGPT message-box fix (#54, opened 13 October).
- Connect support: a pull request adding Connect support for ezto and newconnect pages (#35) was closed without merging on 9 September 2026.
- Reach: 79 stars and 25 forks. GitHub counts 4,437 downloads of the v3.0 zip and 32,417 across all releases. Downloads aren’t users, and stars aren’t ratings.
Silent Student updates arrive inside the app. It is a public beta, and our benchmark page says when each result was measured and on which engine.
Worked example: one semester
Say you keep a tool for four months, about one semester. Silent Student bills monthly, so the cost is the plan price times four. Auto-McGraw’s cost is whatever you pay for the chat account it drives, which can be nothing on a free tier.
| Option | Arithmetic | Four months |
|---|---|---|
| Auto-McGraw | $0 for the extension + your AI chat plan | $0 + your plan |
| Silent Student Base | 4 × $11.99 | $47.96 |
| Silent Student Plus | 4 × $24.99 | $99.96 |
| Silent Student Pro | 4 × $49.99 | $199.96 |
On price alone Auto-McGraw wins for SmartBook. The four-month Base total of $47.96 buys the other things in the table: Connect homework and ALEKS, a start from Canvas, and a run that reports whether the platform confirmed the submission. If SmartBook is all you have, those may not matter to you.
Auto-McGraw or Silent Student?
It depends on what your course uses and what you want to pay.
Pick Auto-McGraw if your McGraw Hill work is SmartBook, you want it free, you’re comfortable loading an unpacked extension, and you’ll keep a ChatGPT, Gemini or DeepSeek tab open while it runs. Download it only from its GitHub releases page.
Pick Silent Student if your McGraw Hill assignments open from Canvas and include Connect homework or ALEKS, you want them queued and turned in from a Mac or Windows computer, and you’re fine paying for that. Read how it handles your data.
What McGraw Hill says
McGraw Hill’s Terms of Use
The Terms of Use, last updated 16 October 2026, list things users may not do. One is to use any “agent, robot, spider, or other automatic device or program” to access the service. Another is to use, install, permit or enable “any third party software, AI agent, AI-enabled browser, browser extension, or other automated or AI-powered software, website, tool, or mechanism” to act within the service on anyone’s behalf, including “to view, complete, answer, or submit any assessment, assignment, or other activity”, unless McGraw Hill authorizes it in writing. A third bars using McGraw Hill content or its output “in any external AI or machine learning technologies, algorithms, or models”. The Terms say McGraw Hill may suspend or terminate an account it has reason to believe was used in violation of them. They changed on 16 October 2026, the day we checked, so read the current version.
In our reading, that reaches the extensions, bots and agents on this page, ours included. The external-AI clause also reads on its face as covering a chat assistant you paste questions into. It applies whether or not anything is detected. We are not lawyers. Read the Terms yourself before you decide.
We checked the Terms again on 19 October 2026 for this page, and the last-updated date was still 16 October 2026. That wording first appeared in our McGraw Hill Connect comparison.
Your school
Your school and your instructor set their own academic-integrity rules, which can be stricter than McGraw Hill’s. Silent Student’s Terms (section 5) make you responsible for those rules and for the terms of every platform the app automates.
What SmartBook records
McGraw Hill’s SmartBook reports guide describes assignment progress, time spent and the confidence level a student chose, High, Medium or Low. Auto-McGraw clicks High unless you turn on its Randomize Confidence setting. Silent Student rates every answer High, as our SmartBook page says, and does not hide or fake activity data.
Questions people ask
Is Auto-McGraw free?
Yes. The code is free to download from its GitHub releases page under the MIT licence. It does not include an AI of its own: you sign in to ChatGPT, Gemini or DeepSeek in another tab, and it uses that chat. Those services have their own free and paid tiers.
Is Auto-McGraw on the Chrome Web Store?
No. Its README says it is not published there, that copies on the Chrome Web Store are fraudulent and not affiliated with the project, and that its GitHub releases page is the only official download. You install it by turning on Developer mode in chrome://extensions and choosing Load unpacked.
Does Auto-McGraw work on Connect homework or ALEKS?
Its README describes SmartBook only. The v3.0 code also loads on McGraw Hill’s ezto pages for multiple-choice, true/false and fill-in-the-blank questions, which the maintainer called beta quiz support in March 2026, adding that they only have SmartBook to test against. A pull request adding wider Connect support was closed without merging on 9 September 2026, and a request for ALEKS is still open.
Does Auto-McGraw still work in October 2026?
We did not run it, so we can’t say. Version 3.0 shipped on 30 September 2026 and fixed stalls reported in May. On 19 October an issue titled “No Ask AI Button” was open; on a duplicate, the maintainer said the button can sit behind the settings popup. Check the issues page before you rely on it.
Does Auto-McGraw submit the SmartBook assignment for me?
Once you start it, it fills in each answer and moves to the next question. A Pause Before Submit setting makes it wait for you on each question instead. When it can’t apply an answer, it shows the AI’s answer and waits for you to answer that question yourself.
Does McGraw Hill allow either one?
No. McGraw Hill’s Terms of Use, last updated 16 October 2026, say you may not use any “agent, robot, spider, or other automatic device or program” to access the service. They also bar you from using or enabling a third-party “browser extension” or “AI agent” to act within it, including “to view, complete, answer, or submit any assessment, assignment, or other activity”, unless McGraw Hill authorizes it in writing. McGraw Hill says it may suspend or terminate an account it has reason to believe was used in violation. Your school’s academic-integrity policy is separate and may be stricter.
Is Silent Student open source?
No. Its source code is not published, and it costs $11.99, $24.99 or $49.99 a month with no free plan. If you want code you can read line by line, Auto-McGraw is the one that offers that.
Sources
Everything about Auto-McGraw on this page comes from its own repository. GitHub numbers change daily.
- GooglyBlox/auto-mcgraw: README, stars, forks, licence · read 19 October 2026
- Release v3.0 notes and download count · read 19 October 2026
- v3.0 manifest: permissions and the pages it runs on · read 19 October 2026
- Issue tracker, open and closed · read 19 October 2026
- Issue #17: maintainer on beta quiz support (14 March 2026) · read 19 October 2026
- Issue #34: ALEKS request; maintainer has SmartBook only (5 May 2026) · read 19 October 2026
- McGraw Hill Terms of Use (last updated 16 October 2026) · read 19 October 2026
- SmartBook reports in Connect (PDF) · read 16 October 2026
- Silent Student: pricing, Terms, SmartBook, Connect, benchmark, security · read 19 October 2026
If you want to see what a run looks like from start to submit, here is how Silent Student works.