OpenMacro Economics
How money actually works
Free · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
OpenMacro teaches macroeconomics the way a language app teaches vocabulary: five minutes a day, one idea at a time, with something to do on every screen.
Most people leave school without ever being told where money comes from. Not the metaphor — the mechanism. OpenMacro starts there and builds up: what a fiduciary currency actually is, how a commercial bank creates a deposit out of a loan, what a central bank is really doing when it changes a rate, and why a bank run is a coordination problem rather than a morality tale.
Seventeen modules, 108 lessons, 384 challenges. Among them:
• Banking and Money — the beginner lessons, with Khan Academy's videos
• Start Here — the on-ramp, if none of this is familiar yet
• Foundations of Fiduciary Currency
• The Commercial–Central Bank Interface
• The Fed & ECB Levers
• Crisis Architecture & The Global Dollar
• Reading the Fed's and the ECB's balance sheets
• The Treasury Yield Curve
• Breaking a Peg: September 1992
• African Central Banks and the CFA Franc
• Euribor, and what actually moves a mortgage
• Scrutinising CBDCs: Project Mariana
You do not read about a balance sheet — you balance one, and it has to balance. You do not read that raising rates cools an economy — you move the rate and watch the readouts respond. Every simulation is the real arithmetic, not a cartoon of it, and where a model is a simplification the lesson says so out loud.
In English and European Portuguese, course and interface alike.
No account is required. The whole course works offline, from the first lesson to the last, and nothing is behind a paywall or a sign-up wall. Signing in with Google is optional and syncs exactly two things across your devices: your XP and your day streak.
No ads. No tracking. No in-app purchases. OpenMacro is free and open source under the MIT licence, and the lessons themselves are public — anyone can read them, correct them, or translate them.
Built for teenagers, students, and any adult who has nodded along to a news bulletin about interest rates and quietly wished someone would start from the beginning.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
A new home: Today shows your next lesson, Course is the full map, Profile is you. The course has grown to 33 modules and 180 lessons. Sound effects now play the instant you tap, there is optional background music (Korobeiniki; switch it off in Profile), and buttons and text are clearer, with better VoiceOver support. And for October, a Halloween look, with a spider you can tap.
The developer, Care To Beauty, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Linked to You
The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:
- Contact Info
- Identifiers
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- CARE TO BEAUTY, LDA (ZONA FRANCA DA MADEIRA)
- Size
- 48.3 MB
- Category
- Education
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 16.4 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 16.4 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 16.4 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 12.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English and Portuguese
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2026 OpenMacro contributors