Desmos on the ACT, Starting December 2025
Big news for ACT testers: as of the December 13 administration, students who take the ACT online will now have access to the Desmos graphing calculator, which replaces the basic scientific calculator that was previously built into the testing client. This means that ACT students will no longer be forced to spend test day doing painstaking calculations on their Texas Instruments abaci, all while their SAT-taking friends flaunt the incomparable graphing power of Desmos!
In all seriousness, though, this is a nice quality-of-life upgrade for students taking the online ACT—but it's not quite the game-changer that Desmos has been on the Digital SAT. The SAT's heavy focus on the intersection of algebra and coordinate geometry plays directly to Desmos's strengths. The ACT math section, by contrast, is more varied in its content. When we analyzed a recent ACT, we found that Desmos would be helpful on roughly 15% of questions—but for most of those, it offers only a modest improvement over a standard graphing calculator. There are exceptions, like systems of equations problems, where Desmos can make things significantly easier, but those question types are relatively uncommon.
Still, if you're planning to take the test on a computer, you'll want to get familiar with Desmos if you aren't already.
A couple of open questions remain. First, will the ACT adjust its scoring scale to account for Desmos access? Remember: paper testers don't have Desmos, and neither did digital testers prior to December. Second (and we expect to hear this one from a lot of families) does this mean students should take the test on the computer? Not necessarily. Testing center availability is more limited for the digital version, and reading a screen for two hours is harder for many students than reading on paper. The addition of Desmos doesn't automatically swing things in favor of the digital test; it may just even the playing field. As always, the best approach is to try both formats in practice and see which one suits you best.