QuizUp Shut Down. Here's What to Look for in an Alternative.

What made QuizUp special?

QuizUp launched in November 2013 and grew fast: over 20 million users within its first six months, playing across 197 countries. It was acquired by Glu Mobile in December 2016 for roughly $7.5 million, ran for about five years under that ownership, and was discontinued: pulled from app stores on January 20, 2021, with servers taken fully offline on March 24, 2021. Glu Mobile's own stated reason was that maintaining an 80-million-user base wasn't profitable enough to continue.

What made it stand out wasn't just "trivia": plenty of quiz apps existed before and after it. It was the combination of live, real-time 1v1 matches against another actual person, a very large topic library, and a genuine social layer: topic-based communities, in-app chat, and rivalries that formed between regular opponents. Most trivia apps had one or two of these. QuizUp had all three at once, which is a large part of why the shutdown still gets searched for years later.

Wait, is QuizUp actually back?

Sort of, and it's worth being precise about which app is which. Electronic Arts holds the QuizUp trademark today (via its 2021 acquisition of Glu Mobile), and the original app has not returned. But in January 2026, Thor Fridriksson, QuizUp's original creator, launched a new trivia app called Sway through his studio Rocky Road, built with several other people from the original QuizUp team. It's a spiritual successor from the actual people who made QuizUp, not an official use of the QuizUp name or trademark.

Separately, several unrelated apps using "QuizUp" in their store listing (from developers with no connection to the original team, such as "QuizUp - The Game" and others) have appeared on the App Store and Google Play. These aren't revivals in any meaningful sense, just apps borrowing a recognisable name, so finding one in a store search isn't the same as QuizUp returning.

If what you specifically want is the closest thing to the original team's new work, Sway is that. This guide covers it fairly alongside the other options below, since it's the most directly relevant answer to "is QuizUp back."

What are people actually looking for in a QuizUp alternative?

Based on what made the original work, a genuine alternative needs to deliver on most of these, not just call itself "trivia":

• Live, real-time 1v1 matches against another person, not a solo quiz bank or an async-only format
• A large, varied topic library so most interests are covered
• A social layer: communities, chat, or persistent rivalries, not just anonymous one-off matches
• Short rounds that finish in a few minutes
• Some form of progression, like rank, streak, or stats, so winning has a record attached to it

Which current apps actually provide that?

No single app is a perfect clone of QuizUp: the original combination of scale, live matchmaking and community was unusual, and most successors emphasize some of that mix over the rest. Here's how the main options people search for actually compare, feature by feature. Where a feature couldn't be independently confirmed, it's marked "Not verified" rather than assumed.

Where does Quelo fit?

Quelo is a live 1v1 trivia app built around the same core loop QuizUp had: real-time matches (seven questions, ten seconds each) against another person, across a large topic library spanning fandoms (Harry Potter, Marvel, anime), sport (cricket, football), and knowledge categories (science, geography). It also has the social features in the table above: communities to join, in-app chat, direct friend challenges, private rooms for group sessions, and asynchronous duels for when a live match isn't possible. Every match feeds a profile with win rate, streaks and match history.

It's not the only option, and it isn't automatically the right one for everyone. If what you specifically want is new work from QuizUp's actual creators, that's Sway, not Quelo; they're unrelated apps. If you want a hosted classroom tool, Kahoot fits that better; if it's music-specific trivia, SongPop is more focused on that. What Quelo offers is the same underlying mechanic, live 1v1 trivia matches plus a social layer, built independently rather than as anyone's successor. It's free to start on iOS and Android if you want to judge the fit yourself.

The fastest way to check the fit: can you actually play a live match against a real opponent right now, not a bot or a async-only queue? That single test rules out most apps that market themselves as "trivia" but aren't built like QuizUp was.