Mathway - cheating or learning?

All depends on how it's used.  It solves math problems, and provided basic canned explanations.  Just depends if he reads the explanations and understands what he's read.  Those things never worked for me. 

I also agree that it depends on how it is used, but it definitely can be used to cheat as the paid Mathway service allows all of the steps of the math problem to be revealed. This means that Mathway does more than just give you the answer. Without a paid subscription Mathway would only show the final answer. This means that if a teacher says "show your work" you can get that by paying for Mathway. Essentially, your kid would likely not have to do any actual work to complete homework assignments since they paid for Mathway.

That said, I used Mathway in my own college course (I had to take a math course to get my degree - and math isn't my forte!) and I found the ability to view the steps extremely helpful in learning how to come to the correct answer.

Ultimately you will be able to tell if your child is using Mathway in a way that enhances learning, rather than just for cheating, by their scores on their in-class math quizzes. If your kid does well on the in-class assignments where they can't use Mathway, that to me would suggest they are using the website constructively. If they are doing poorly on the in-class work, that could mean they are just using Mathway's "view steps" feature as more of a way to cheat on homework than as a tool for learning. 

Hope this helps!