Educational apps can be considered a dominant medium for providing educational content to children. Parents are major stakeholders and mediators in the selection of apps (Dias & Brito, 2021). It is critical to know how they choose apps for their children and understand what indicates a quality educational app, as well-designed apps can support and enhance children's learning process. An online study with parents was conducted to identify parents' most dominant needs while selecting apps for their children. Parents' app selection behaviour was investigated leveraging Uses and Gratifications theory. Parents viewed 10 mock math apps that replicated the App Store presentation format. Five apps included educational benchmarks (eg, feedback) and five contained educational buzzwords (eg, interactive). Immediately following each app, parents provided value judgements of the app by stating whether they would download the app or not, rating it on a 5-point-scale, stating how much they would be willing to pay, and explaining why they chose to download the app or not. Results from paired-samples t-tests, and repeated-measures ANOVAs indicated that parents value educational benchmarks over buzzwords suggesting that parents are primarily seeking apps that meet their children's educational needs. Parents' app needs seem to align with some of the research on what makes a good educational app.