Pilas Bloques review

Pilas Bloques is a free app for learning to program with blocks. Program.AR, an initiative of Argentina’s Fundación Sadosky, develops it for classroom use. Students drag blocks to guide a character through a challenge, such as collecting vegetables or drawing lines, and the app runs their program so they can see where it goes wrong. It runs in the browser and as a desktop app, and its code is open source under the AGPL licence.

Who it’s for

Pilas Bloques is built for primary school teachers in Argentina who teach computer science, and for secondary students who have never programmed. Its challenges come from Program.AR’s teacher manuals, so a teacher following “Ciencias de la Computación para el aula” for the first cycle of primary school will find the matching challenges in the app.

It also suits schools with unreliable internet. The desktop version installs on the computer lab’s machines and runs offline, which helps a rural school or a lab where the connection drops every time 25 students log in at once. Teachers who want more free tools for class can look at our list of the best free apps for teachers.

What it does well

The progression is clear. Challenges sit in three levels. The beginner level uses the challenges from the first cycle primary manual, the intermediate level uses the activity book “Actividades para aprender a Program.AR” for the second cycle of primary school onward, and an advanced level adds harder problems. Along the way students work with repetition, conditionals and procedures, the same ideas the manuals teach on paper.

The characters are local. Lita the mulita, Yvoty the yaguareté, Mañic the ñandú and Chuy the Magellanic penguin come from Argentine wildlife, and each has a short profile with its region and interests.

A suggestions button gives feedback on the program itself, not only on whether it worked. It tells a student who stacked ten identical blocks to use repetition, warns when the main program is too long to read and suggests splitting it into procedures, and flags a procedure that nothing calls. That is the kind of comment a teacher would make walking round the room, available to every student at once.

The challenge creator lets teachers and students build their own tasks. They pick a character, the size of the scenario, the obstacles, the commands available and the goal, then save the challenge as a file that others can import. A teacher can write a challenge on Sunday night and hand it to the class on Monday. Program.AR also publishes a teaching sequence for using the creator in class.

For lessons without screens, Pilas Bloques Desenchufado is a printable version of the game with an instruction manual and a teacher booklet. The project is under active development. Version 3.0.3 came out on GitHub on 23 October 2026, with installers for Windows and Linux and a package for the web version, and earlier 3.0 releases included a macOS build.

Where it falls short

There is no class management. Teachers can’t create a class, see which challenges each student has finished or collect their programs. If you want evidence of progress, students have to show their screen or export their solution files.

Accounts are awkward for schools. Students can use the app without one, but an account for a minor needs a parent or guardian’s full name and DNI number. Teachers rarely have that at hand, so most classes will work without accounts or on the offline version.

There is no phone or tablet app. Program.AR tested an Android version, but the repository describes it as a proof of concept. The app covers block programming only, so students who are ready for typed code will need another tool. Help and teaching material are in Spanish, though the code includes English and Brazilian Portuguese translations of the interface.

Pricing

Pilas Bloques is free, and the terms of use say access is free of charge. There is no paid plan.

Privacy and data

The terms of use, version 1.0 dated March 2021, name Fundación Sadosky as the administrator of the data. Without an account, the site logs navigation data such as IP address, visit times, operating system and pages viewed, and uses cookies to count visitors. With an account, it asks for a name or nickname, province, type of school, age, gender and whether the student is doing schoolwork, with email optional. Minors need parental consent, and parents can email the foundation to see or correct their child’s data, citing Argentina’s data law, Ley 25.326.

The terms say Fundación Sadosky shares data with third parties only in anonymised form for scientific research, and the project’s backend includes an analytics service that logs usage for research. The terms don’t say where data is hosted. They don’t mention advertising. Tell families that the app logs usage for research, and see our student data privacy checklist for the rest.

Verdict

Pilas Bloques is one of the best ways to start programming in an Argentine primary school. It is free, it follows the Program.AR manuals, its hints teach good habits and it runs offline. Teachers who need to track each student’s progress, or who teach on tablets, will need to plan around it or choose a tool with class management. Other options are on our learning apps ranking.

See the best Pilas Bloques alternatives