App reviews, September 2026

Best apps to learn a language in 2026: reviews by level and by language

By language Your level A0 to A1A2 to B1B2 and upAny level How not to choose Refunds All 23 at a glance How we judged FAQ

Start from your level, not from the app store chart

Level What an app must give you here Our picks
A0 to A1 Complete beginner: you need a course A designed order: sounds, the first 500 words, sentence patterns, and a reason to come back tomorrow. Pimsleur, Language Transfer, Babbel
A2 to B1 The plateau: the course runs out, input begins Text and audio you understand about 90 percent of, at volume, and a first speaking partner that answers back. Clozemaster, Readle, Lingo7
B2 and up Upper intermediate and beyond: native content and a human Native books, news and unscripted talk, a fast lookup, and people who correct you. Lingopie, Readlang, Language Reactor
Any level Tools that work at every level: tutors, cards, free AI A human who corrects you, a place to keep the words you met, and cheap speaking minutes. italki, Preply, Anki

Not sure where you are? The CEFR test takes five minutes. The short version: A1 means you can order coffee, A2 means you can tell someone about your day, B1 means you can follow a slow conversation and a simple book, B2 means you can read the news and argue back.

A0 to A1

Complete beginner: you need a course

At zero the app’s job is to give you sounds, the first few hundred words and a handful of sentence patterns, in an order somebody thought about. Input apps cannot do this yet, because there is nothing you can read. Take one course, add audio in the car if you commute, and give it about two months before you judge it.

Pimsleur

Audio course A0 to A2

Thirty minutes of audio a day, and you speak from the first lesson. The best first month in a new language, and a poor second year.

Good

  • Every lesson is spoken recall on a spaced schedule, so you produce sentences out loud from day one instead of tapping tiles.
  • 150 half hour lessons in the big languages (five levels of 30), each level adding 300 to 500 words, and it runs in CarPlay and Android Auto.

Not so good

  • By Pimsleur’s own numbers a full five level course covers roughly 1,500 to 2,500 words, which is A2 territory, and the vendor publishes no CEFR mapping.
  • No reading, no grammar explanations, and the AI conversation coach exists only for Latin American Spanish and French on the All Access plan.
  • Free: A 7 day trial and one free lesson, then a 30 day money back guarantee.
  • Price: US$19.99 a month for one language, US$20.99 a month for all of them, US$131.99 to US$164.99 a year for All Access (about US$11 to US$14 a month), US App Store. Lifetime course purchases exist, but the price is not on the vendor pages.
  • Languages: 51 for English speakers, 15 versions of English for other bases
  • Platforms: iOS, Android, web, CarPlay, Android Auto

Best for: A trip in two months, a commute, or anyone who wants to speak before they read.

Language Transfer

Audio course A0 to A2

Free audio in which a teacher walks one real student through the logic of the language, and you think along. The best grammar teaching in this list costs nothing.

Good

  • No price, no ads, no sign up and no data collection; the audio is also on SoundCloud and YouTube and downloads as MP3.
  • It explains why the language works the way it does, so what you learn transfers to sentences the course never showed you.

Not so good

  • Nine courses in total, and two of the shipped ones, German and Turkish, carry the vendor’s own “unfinished” label.
  • You hear the teacher and a learner, almost never native speakers; there are no exercises, no review and no progress tracking, and the iOS app has not been updated since October 2022.
  • Free: Everything. Donations and Patreon fund it.
  • Price: US$0.
  • Languages: Spanish, Greek and Swahili (complete); German and Turkish (unfinished); Arabic, Italian and French (introductions); English for Spanish speakers
  • Platforms: iOS, Android, web, SoundCloud, YouTube, MP3

Best for: The first fifteen hours in Spanish, Greek or Swahili, before or alongside any other app.

Babbel

Structured course A1 to B2

The closest thing to a textbook course on a phone: dialogues, explicit grammar, a syllabus that ends somewhere. Where it ends depends heavily on the language.

Good

  • Publishes a CEFR ceiling per language, and it is high for the big ones: European Spanish to C1, French to B2/C1, German to B2 with topics into C1.
  • Ad free, with grammar explained inside the lesson, and a 12 month plan under US$9 a month.

Not so good

  • Six of the 13 languages for English speakers stop at A2 or below, and Russian stops at A1.
  • The free tier is the first lesson of each course, the grammar reference covers only German, Spanish and French at A1/A2, and Babbel Live group classes have vanished from the site without an announcement.
  • Free: The first lesson of every course.
  • Price: US$8.95 a month on the 12 month plan (US$107.40, from a US$183 list price that is almost always struck through), about US$15.25 a month for 3 months, lifetime US$299.99 (US$199 on promo), babbel.com. The App Store price could not be checked; it is normally higher.
  • Languages: 13 for English speakers, plus English from other display languages
  • Platforms: iOS, Android, web

Best for: A1 to B1 in Spanish, French, German or Italian, with a defined syllabus and no games.

Duolingo

Gamified course A0 to B2 (nine languages)

The habit machine. Everything is free, the path is endless, and in nine big languages it now runs to B2. It teaches you to keep going more than it teaches you to talk.

Good

  • All course content is free with ads; only about 9 percent of monthly users pay, which tells you the free tier is real.
  • Over 250 courses, and since April 2026 English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean and Chinese go through B2 for most learners.

Not so good

  • Outside those nine languages the course stops well short of B2, and for non English speakers the choice collapses: 39 courses from English, 10 from Spanish, one each from Hindi, Korean, Polish or Czech.
  • Speaking is speech recognition on short scripted lines, grammar explanations sit behind the Max tier, and free lessons are now rate limited by Energy, which replaced Hearts in July 2025.
  • Free: All lessons, with an ad after each one and an Energy meter that refills over time or by watching ads.
  • Price: Super is listed at US$9.99 and US$12.99 with yearly tiers from US$83.99 to US$119.99 in the US App Store; Apple does not label which is monthly, yearly or family. Max, the AI tier, is not on the store list at all.
  • Languages: 39 for English speakers (the stores say 40+), far fewer from other bases
  • Platforms: iOS, Android, web

Best for: A daily habit at zero cost in a big language; the first two months, before you add anything else.

Busuu

Structured course A1 to B2

A Babbel shaped course with two things Babbel dropped: native speakers correcting your writing, and C1 content in four languages. The AI conversations are locked to the top tier.

Good

  • Community Corrections still works: you submit a written or spoken exercise and speakers of the language send back edits, on the free plan too.
  • English, French, German and Spanish run A1 to C1 per the help centre, and the whole course is usable free with an ad before each lesson.

Not so good

  • Korean stops at A2 and nine of the 14 languages stop at B2, while the marketing page says C1 is “only for English” and the help centre says four languages; the vendor contradicts itself.
  • Busuu Conversations, the AI speaking feature, covers five courses and needs Premium Plus, and the site and App Store prices do not match.
  • Free: All lessons with an ad before each, checkpoints you cannot skip, a limited number of correction submissions.
  • Price: Premium US$12.49 a month or US$72.99 a year (US$6.08 a month), Premium Plus US$14.90 a month or US$87.90 a year (US$7.33 a month) on busuu.com during the running promotion; the US App Store lists US$9.99 a month, US$79.99 a year and US$139.99 a year for Premium Plus.
  • Languages: 14
  • Platforms: iOS, Android, web

Best for: A1 to B2 with human feedback on your writing, in one of the four big European languages or English.

Memrise

Vocabulary trainer A0 to A2

Phrase drilling with clips of real people saying the phrase, which is more than any other course app gives you for pronunciation. The rest was cut.

Good

  • Every official course uses native speaker video, not synthetic voices, and the yearly plan is US$5.17 a month, the same on the site and in the App Store.
  • Spaced repetition on phrases rather than single words, plus MemBot, a GPT based chat partner, for trying them out.

Not so good

  • The user made courses that once made Memrise useful for rare languages were pulled from the app in March 2024; about 800 came back in 2026 as plain word lists.
  • No grammar teaching and no CEFR mapping; the monthly price is US$24.99, about five times the yearly rate, sold against a US$299.88 list price nobody pays.
  • Free: Limited vocabulary lessons, limited videos and conversations, with ads.
  • Price: US$24.99 a month, US$61.99 a year (US$5.17 a month), lifetime US$329.99 usually discounted to US$99; memrise.com and the US App Store agree.
  • Languages: 149 listed, most of them phrasebooks; full courses far fewer
  • Platforms: iOS, Android, web (settings do not sync between them)

Best for: The first few hundred phrases with real voices, at the yearly price.

Also on the shelf

  • Rosetta Stone. US$19.99 a month or US$159 a year for all 25 languages, pictures and audio with no translation and no grammar explanation, by design. The consumer product publishes no CEFR level at all, the 2026 move to the Sapphire app reset some users’ progress per Google Play reviews, and the tutoring add on runs through Wyzant on top of the subscription.
  • Mondly. Pearson owned, 41 languages taught from 33 base languages, so a Ukrainian or Thai speaker gets a full course tree, which no other app here offers. Its own FAQ caps it at B2. A permanent free tier (the daily lesson and the Hello unit), then about EUR 4 a month yearly on the site or US$15.90 a month in the App Store.

Skip at this level: Parallel readers, language exchange apps and anything that assumes you can already read. A tutor at zero works if money is no object; most people get more from a US$10 course now and a tutor at A2.

A2 to B1

The plateau: the course runs out, input begins

Somewhere around A2 every course starts to feel easy and your understanding of real speech stops improving. The fix is volume: text and audio you understand about nine tenths of, an hour a day if you can, plus the first speaking with something that answers back. This is where reading apps, sentence drills and AI tutors earn their place, and where the course becomes the side dish.

Clozemaster

Sentence drill A2 to C1

Fill the blank in a real sentence, thousands of times. Vocabulary in context at a pace no course matches, and no explanation of anything.

Good

  • The core game is free indefinitely, per the vendor FAQ, across 170+ language pairs built from the open Tatoeba corpus.
  • Sentences come ranked by word frequency, so the gradient is real, and misses come back on a spaced schedule.

Not so good

  • The free tier is capped at 30 sentences a day per language, and has been since 2022.
  • Nothing is taught: no grammar, no lessons, no audio you can follow, and reviewers agree it is a bad first app.
  • Free: Core play, 30 sentences a day per language.
  • Price: Pro US$12.99 a month or US$79.99 a year (US$6.67 a month); clozemaster.com and Google Play agree, the App Store still shows older bands from US$8.99.
  • Languages: 50+, in 170+ pairs
  • Platforms: iOS, Android, web

Best for: Ten minutes a day on top of a course or a book, from A2 upward, in almost any language pair.

Readle

Graded reader A1 to B2

Short stories and news written to a CEFR level, with sentence audio and grammar notes in the margin. The most teacherly reading app here, in six languages only.

Good

  • Every text is labelled A1 to C1 (JLPT and HSK for Japanese and Chinese), with tap translation, native audio per sentence and inline grammar notes.
  • 2,000+ texts per the vendor, a yearly plan that works out to US$5.83 a month, and 4.7 ratings on both stores.

Not so good

  • Six languages, English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese, and no imports, so you read what Readle wrote.
  • An independent review found the C1 label mostly means B2 with some German, quiz questions that reference words the story never used, and no offline mode.
  • Free: A 7 day full trial, then a rotating handful of free stories.
  • Price: US$12.99 to US$14.99 a month, US$69.99 a year (US$5.83 a month), lifetime US$199.99 to US$249.99, US App Store; Google Play matches.
  • Languages: 6
  • Platforms: iOS, Android, web

Best for: A1 to B1 in German, Spanish or French, when you want reading with a grammar note attached.

Lingo7

Parallel reader A2 to C1

Read a real book with a translation in your own language under every sentence, tap a word for its dictionary form, IPA and the meaning in this sentence, and drill saved words on a 7 level schedule in 12 kinds of exercise. Our app, and the catalogue is thinner than the language count suggests.

Good

  • Any book: 1,228 public domain classics on its shelves plus your own EPUB, PDF, FB2, DOCX, TXT, Markdown or HTML, with a translation in your own language under every sentence (49 languages) and native audio at 8 speeds for shadowing.
  • US$5 a month or US$30 a year, the same on both stores, and the Stories section has short texts in two versions, adapted for A1 to A2 and original for B1 to B2, with audio, in the app and on the website, which is the graded on ramp the books lack.

Not so good

  • iOS and Android only for books; the site reads the short Stories in the browser, and its book pages only deep link into the app.
  • The free shelves are Project Gutenberg, so only 25 of the 49 languages have one at all and three of those hold a single book; the books’ levels are our own estimate rather than a publisher’s CEFR label, and there is no grammar and no speaking practice beyond the AI chat.
  • Free: The first page of any book or story in the app; the short Stories can also be read in full on the website.
  • Price: US$5 a month or US$30 a year (US$2.50 a month), identical in the App Store and Google Play. No lifetime.
  • Languages: 49
  • Platforms: iOS, Android

Best for: A2 to B1 readers who want to start a real book before they can read one unaided, and B2 readers with their own EPUBs. Our app. Judged on the same fields as the others, see how we judged.

Beelinguapp

Parallel reader A2 to B1

Short bilingual texts with karaoke style audio in 23 languages, with ads. Pleasant, shallow, and the Google Play reviews are worth reading first.

Good

  • 23 languages with parallel text and synced native audio, downloadable for offline, 5 million plus Android installs and a Play Editors’ Choice badge.
  • Cheap: monthly from about US$6.49 and yearly from US$18.49 in the US App Store.

Not so good

  • A fixed library of folk tales, excerpts, news and songs, no imports and no grammar, and the vendor’s own blog confirms some stories are AI generated.
  • The Google Play listing carries ads and sits at 4.1 from 81,600 reviews, well under its App Store 4.4; recent reviews complain of vocabulary game bugs.
  • Free: A limited set of stories with ads between them; you cannot switch language pairs without paying.
  • Price: Monthly US$6.49 to US$7.99, yearly US$18.49 to US$49.90 depending on the promo band, US App Store.
  • Languages: 23
  • Platforms: iOS, Android

Best for: A2 readers who want ten minutes of bilingual text with audio on the bus and are not fussy about the catalogue.

LingQ

Reading and listening A2 to C1

The original input app: text plus matched audio, and words you mark move from blue to known. Nineteen years of lessons, an importer for anything on the web, and a free tier designed to make you pay.

Good

  • 50,000+ lessons with audio, and an importer extension that turns any YouTube video, article or ebook into a lesson with a click.
  • The known words counter is the most honest progress metric in this list, and imports mean there is no ceiling.

Not so good

  • Free means 20 saved words and 5 imports, ever, which is a demo rather than a tier.
  • Premium is US$14.99 a month, and the speaking and writing tools sit in Premium Plus at twice that; LingQ’s own blog says beginners can start, an independent reviewer says do not.
  • Free: 20 saved words and 5 imported lessons, hard caps.
  • Price: Premium US$14.99 a month, US$119.99 a year (US$10 a month), US$215.76 for two years (US$8.99 a month); Premium Plus US$29.99 a month or US$269.99 a year; lingq.com and the App Store agree.
  • Languages: 40+ (the signup page) or 50+ (the App Store), some in beta
  • Platforms: iOS, Android, web, browser extension

Best for: B1 and up with a podcast or YouTube habit you want to turn into study, and the budget for it.

Speak

AI speaking tutor A1 to B1

Scripted speaking drills scored by speech recognition, then an AI roleplay. Excellent for opening your mouth in the first three months, and it grades on a curve.

Good

  • Voice first from the first minute: a recorded teacher explains the phrase, you drill it aloud, then improvise in a roleplay on the same scenario.
  • A written refund policy, full refund within 7 days on Google Play and web purchases, and 4.8 across 61,000 US App Store ratings.

Not so good

  • Six target languages if your native language is English (Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Mandarin), and none at all if it is not; the help centre states this plainly.
  • The scoring is lenient: an independent tester mispronounced words and reversed word order and still got full marks, current App Store reviews say the same, and Speak’s own Mandarin launch post says the course covers “beginner through intermediate (B1)”.
  • Free: A 7 day trial that auto charges.
  • Price: Premium US$17.99 a month or US$83.99 a year (US$7 a month), Premium Plus US$39.99 a month or US$164.99 a year (US$13.75 a month), US App Store.
  • Languages: 6 for English speakers; English only for everyone else
  • Platforms: iOS, Android

Best for: A1 to A2 English speakers learning Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, Italian or Mandarin, who freeze when spoken to.

Praktika

AI speaking tutor A1 to B1

Conversation with a lip synced avatar that has a name and an accent. It gets you talking at zero cost, and it agrees with you too much.

Good

  • A permanent free tier the help centre documents: three avatars, limited practice, basic feedback, no card.
  • Fast enough to feel like talking (the vendor publishes speech to text latency under 300 milliseconds), with 4.75 across 164,000 US App Store ratings.

Not so good

  • Correction is unreliable: an independent review found it misses grammar and word order mistakes unless they break the meaning, and one star reviews say it agrees with everything.
  • Trustpilot sits at 3.7 from 1,191 reviews with 19 percent one star, mostly about billing; the terms say fees are non refundable, and the yearly price is US$119.99 or US$139.99 depending on which funnel you land in.
  • Free: Three avatars, limited practice, basic feedback, indefinitely.
  • Price: US$9.99 a month, US$49.99 a quarter, US$119.99 or US$139.99 a year (US$10 to US$11.67 a month), plus promo SKUs down to US$6.99, US App Store.
  • Languages: 12 per the App Store, 9 per the vendor’s own engineering write up
  • Platforms: iOS, Android

Best for: Free daily speaking minutes at A1 to B1, with the corrections checked elsewhere.

Babbel and Busuu run to B1 or B2 in their big languages; keep one going while it still teaches you something. This is also the level where a human tutor stops being expensive per word learned, see the last section.

Skip at this level: Anything that only drills isolated words, and native TV without a subtitle tool. Netflix at A2 is background noise.

B2 and up

Upper intermediate and beyond: native content and a human

From B2 the material is native: unabridged books, the news, podcasts, TV, unscripted conversation. What you need from an app shrinks to a fast lookup, a place to keep the words you met and people who correct you. Most of the tools here are cheap or free because the content is not theirs; the one that licenses its own catalogue charges for it.

Lingopie

Video with subtitles B1 to C1

Licensed TV with clickable dual subtitles and flashcards from what you clicked. Real shows from real broadcasters, no free tier, and two different price lists.

Good

  • A licensed catalogue from named partners (RTVE, ZDF and Fuji TV among them), 15 languages on one subscription, and apps for Google TV, Fire TV and Roku.
  • Click any subtitle word for a translation, and it becomes a flashcard with a quiz.

Not so good

  • No free tier; a 7 day trial that takes your card first.
  • The vendor blog quotes US$72 a year while the US App Store lists US$59.99 to US$83.99, so the two price lists do not match; full episodes overwhelm A1 to A2 learners, and the vendor’s own post says so.
  • Free: None; a 7 day trial with a card.
  • Price: US$11.99 to US$13.99 a month or US$59.99 to US$83.99 a year in the US App Store; the vendor blog quotes US$36 a quarter, US$72 a year (US$6 a month) and a US$199 lifetime.
  • Languages: 15
  • Platforms: iOS, Android, web, Google TV, Fire TV, Roku

Best for: B1 and up in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese or Korean, if TV is what you would be watching anyway.

Readlang

Reading tool B1 to C2

Paste in anything, click words, get flashcards. One person’s project since 2013, one of the cheapest paid tiers here, and still no phone app.

Good

  • Unlimited single word translations and flashcards on the free tier, ad free, in 100+ languages, with a Chrome extension that reads any web page in place.
  • Premium is US$4 a month on the yearly plan, among the lowest paid prices in this list.

Not so good

  • No native iOS or Android app in 2026, on the founder’s own record; the web app installs as a PWA and that is it (the “ReadLang” app in the App Store is someone else’s).
  • Free phrase translations and AI explanations stop at 10 a day each, and there is no parallel text, no audio to follow and no grammar.
  • Free: Unlimited word translations and flashcards, 10 phrase translations and 10 AI explanations a day.
  • Price: Premium US$6 a month or US$48 a year (US$4 a month), Premium Plus US$15 a month or US$120 a year, readlang.com.
  • Languages: 119
  • Platforms: Web, Chrome extension

Best for: Desktop readers at B1 and up who bring their own texts and want a lookup that gets out of the way.

Language Reactor

Browser extension B1 to C2

Dual subtitles on YouTube with a click dictionary, free for the part that matters. The Netflix side has been broken since about June 2026 and the vendor has not said when it returns. Desktop only, and only single words are clickable.

Good

  • Dual subtitles, dictionary lookups and the basic AI explainer are free, and 2 million people have it installed in Chrome.
  • Pro is US$39.95 a year (US$3.33 a month), and saved words stay viewable and exportable to Anki after the subscription ends, per the vendor FAQ.

Not so good

  • Chrome and Edge on a desktop, nothing on a phone; the “Language Reactor” app in the App Store is someone else’s.
  • Multi word phrases cannot be clicked, Netflix support has been down since about June 2026, and no language count is published.
  • Free: Dual subtitles, lookups, basic AI explanations.
  • Price: Pro US$5.95 a month, US$13.95 a quarter, US$39.95 a year (US$3.33 a month), languagereactor.com.
  • Languages: Whatever YouTube carries (Netflix broken since about June 2026); no vendor count
  • Platforms: Chrome, Edge (desktop)

Best for: B1 and up with a laptop and YouTube, especially for listening.

Kindle with a bilingual dictionary

Not an app B1 to C2

Buy the book, long press a word. The dictionaries are free, the catalogue is every book ever sold, and nothing here was designed for learners.

Good

  • Bilingual dictionaries (Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese to English among others) install free per book, and Instant Translation handles a selected passage.
  • The lookup costs nothing beyond the book, and it works on the e-reader, the phone apps and a tablet.

Not so good

  • Word Wise, the feature that glosses hard words inline, works only in English books, per Amazon’s own help page.
  • No graded library, no learner audio sync and no review deck without a separate tool; since February 2025 purchased books can no longer be downloaded over USB, so they stay inside Amazon’s devices and apps.
  • Free: The dictionaries and the lookups; the books cost what books cost.
  • Price: The apps are free. Kindle Unlimited is about US$11.99 a month per third party sources; Amazon’s own page does not render the price to a plain fetch.
  • Languages: Any with a bilingual dictionary; the full list is not published
  • Platforms: Kindle e-readers, iOS, Android, desktop

Best for: B2 readers who want the book they were going to read anyway, with a dictionary a thumb away.

HelloTalk

Language exchange A2 to C1

Chat with native speakers who correct you inline, with unlimited free calls. The language part works; the social part is a public feed with the problems public feeds have.

Good

  • Unlimited chats, voice and video calls and inline corrections on the free plan, across 260+ languages and a very large user base.
  • 4.6 across 44,000 US App Store ratings, and community guidelines that ban dating outright.

Not so good

  • Free translation is capped at 10 a day and one learning language, so beginners lean on the translation button and stop working the language out.
  • Trustpilot sits at 2.7 from 38 reviews, two thirds of them one star, and moderation is the recurring complaint there.
  • Free: Unlimited chat, calls and corrections; 10 translations a day, one learning language, 10 new contacts a day.
  • Price: VIP US$12.99 a month or US$79.99 a year (US$6.67 a month), US App Store; a lifetime tier exists at an unpublished price.
  • Languages: 260+
  • Platforms: iOS, Android, web

Best for: B1 and up with something to say and the patience to filter partners.

Tandem

Language exchange B1 to C1

HelloTalk’s tidier rival: a curated feed, a manual approval gate, group Language Parties. Free is tight, and the inbox floods the day you join.

Good

  • 300+ languages including 12 sign languages, a 16+ age rating with under 18s kept out of Language Parties, and a guideline that states plainly it is not a dating app.
  • Pro Intro at US$39.99 for a year (US$3.33 a month) is cheap if you use it daily.

Not so good

  • Free means 3 translations a day, 10 conversations started a day, one profile language, an hour of Language Parties and ads; the whole AI toolkit is Pro only.
  • Reviewers report 50+ unsolicited messages a day on signup, not all of them about language, and Trustpilot stands at 2.7 from 298 reviews; the approval queue can take a week, and paying skips it.
  • Free: 3 translations a day, 10 new conversations a day, one language, 60 minutes of Language Parties, with ads.
  • Price: Pro Intro US$39.99 for 12 months (US$3.33 a month), Pro Plus US$64.99 for 12 months (US$5.42 a month); the other Pro SKUs (US$14.99, US$26.90, US$69.90) carry no duration in the App Store.
  • Languages: 300+
  • Platforms: iOS, Android, web after mobile signup

Best for: B1 and up who prefer a smaller, filtered pool of partners and will pay a little to skip the queue.

LingQ with its importer and Lingo7 with your own EPUBs both keep working here; the parallel translation just gets used less.

Skip at this level: Courses, including the ones marketed as advanced. Their sentences stay controlled while the language you meet does not.

Any level

Tools that work at every level: tutors, cards, free AI

Four things that work at every level and pair with whatever is above: a human tutor paid per lesson, a human tutor on a plan, a flashcard program, and a free AI to talk to.

italki

Tutor marketplace A0 to C2

Pay per lesson, pick from 20,000 teachers, no subscription. The most flexible way to buy human correction, if you keep booking without a schedule pushing you.

Good

  • Genuine pay as you go: credits are 1:1 with US dollars, no booking fee, lessons of 30 to 90 minutes, community tutors from about US$4 and professional teachers from about US$10.
  • 150+ languages, trial lessons 30 to 50 percent off, and 4.8 across 9,800 US App Store ratings.

Not so good

  • Credits are non refundable and expire after 12 months of inactivity, and italki Plus, the AI add on, is a separate US$5.99 a month.
  • Teacher quality varies with price, nothing on the platform makes you book the next lesson, and the commission taken from teachers is not published.
  • Free: No lessons; a level test and the community feed.
  • Price: US$4 to US$20 a lesson for community tutors and US$10 to US$40 for professional teachers per italki’s own blog, US$4 to US$60 an hour per its teacher page. Plus tier US$5.99 a month.
  • Languages: 150+
  • Platforms: iOS, Android, web

Best for: Anyone from A0 who wants a human once a week without a plan, and can find one at their price.

Preply

Tutor marketplace A0 to C2

The same idea on a subscription: a fixed number of lessons every 28 days, two free tutor switches if a tutor does not suit you. The plan keeps you going, and it keeps charging.

Good

  • Two free tutor switches or a full refund if a tutor does not suit you; AI lesson insights, daily exercises and scenario practice shipped in August 2025 at no extra charge.
  • Tutors listed from US$3 to US$50+ an hour, averaging about US$25 an hour for English in the US, with 4.8 across 44,000 US App Store ratings.

Not so good

  • No one off lessons, a four lesson minimum per 28 day cycle, and unscheduled lessons expire at renewal; refunds only if you used none that cycle.
  • Trial lessons pay the tutor nothing (100 percent commission, in Preply’s own words) and later lessons take 18 to 33 percent, which shapes who stays; Trustpilot shows 13 percent one star, mostly about renewals.
  • Free: Nothing instructional.
  • Price: Per tutor, US$3 to US$50+ an hour, billed as four or more lessons every 28 days at the tutor’s rate, preply.com.
  • Languages: 50 to 120+, depending on which Preply page you read
  • Platforms: iOS, Android, web

Best for: People who need the calendar to make them show up, and will use every lesson they pay for.

Anki

Flashcards A0 to C2

The spaced repetition program everything else copies. Free on every platform but iOS, no subscription anywhere, and a learning curve that filters out the casual.

Good

  • Open source, no ads, no gating, free sync; the one paid item is the iOS app at US$24.99 once, with no in app purchases.
  • The effect is measured: a 2023 study of 130 medical students found Anki users scored 6 to 13 points higher across four exams.

Not so good

  • No content: you make or download the decks, and a card written badly is drilled badly.
  • The modern FSRS scheduler is still opt in, so a new user is scheduled by the 1987 SM-2 algorithm unless they find the toggle. Quizlet is the friendlier alternative, but since 2022 its free Learn mode stops after five rounds and its free Test after one.
  • Free: Everything on desktop, Android and the web.
  • Price: US$0, or US$24.99 once for AnkiMobile on iOS. Quizlet Plus is US$9.99 a month or US$44.99 a year.
  • Languages: Any
  • Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, web

Best for: Keeping the words you met in a book, a lesson or a conversation; the review half of any pair of apps.

ChatGPT and Gemini voice

General AI A2 to C2

Free spoken conversation on any topic, with grammar explained on demand. The cheapest speaking partner there is, and one that will not correct you unless you ask.

Good

  • Any topic, any register, roleplay, interruptions mid sentence, no booking; ask why a sentence is wrong and you get an explanation in your own language.
  • Free on both: ChatGPT’s US$0 plan includes limited voice chats, and Gemini Live runs on a free personal Google account in the Android and iOS apps.

Not so good

  • Neither publishes the free cap: OpenAI says “limited”, on a smaller voice model, over a rolling 24 hours; Google says usage limits refresh every five hours until a weekly limit.
  • No curriculum, no progress, no error log, and praise for your accent is inference from a transcript, not measurement; both vendors warn about accuracy.
  • Free: Limited voice minutes on a smaller model (ChatGPT); Gemini Live on a free account in the mobile apps, with unpublished limits.
  • Price: ChatGPT Plus is US$20 a month and buys about 3 hours of voice a day, per OpenAI’s help centre.
  • Languages: Dozens; no published list for voice
  • Platforms: iOS, Android, web (Gemini Live: mobile apps only)

Best for: Twenty minutes of talking a day at A2 and up, between lessons with a human.

How not to choose

Store rating and download count

They measure onboarding and marketing. Reaching B2 takes about eighteen months, and no rating follows anyone that far.

The streak

Two minutes of tapping keeps it alive as well as an hour of reading.

"Learn 5000 words"

That is how many cards the app will show you. The number you keep is far smaller.

The lifetime deal

A bet that the company outlives your interest, placed before you know the method.

A tip for another language

The app everyone names for Spanish may have nothing at all in Czech. Check your language in the card, not in the store blurb.

The AI badge

Every app here added one in the last year. Ask what it does that the app did not do before, and whether it is in the free tier.

Price, refunds and the way out

  • Two prices, one app. In-app and on the app’s own site the price often differs, and a year costs somewhere between half and two thirds of twelve monthly charges. Pay monthly first.
  • App Store refunds. Ask at reportaproblem.apple.com and wait 24 to 48 hours. Apple judges case by case, with no guaranteed window.
  • Google Play refunds. Usually self-service within 48 hours, though Google words it as a may. After that you ask the developer, and the current period is not pro-rated.
  • Cancelling is not a refund. It stops the next charge and leaves the one you already paid where it is. Play keeps access to the end of the paid period; on Apple cancel a day early, the renewal can be charged 24 hours ahead.
  • EU and UK. The 14 day withdrawal right rarely survives here: Play has you waive it at checkout, and Apple’s lapses once the download starts.

All 23 at a glance

App Type Level Free tier Paid Where
Pimsleur Audio course A0 to A2 7 day trial US$20 a month, US$11 to 14 a month yearly iOS, Android, web, CarPlay, Android Auto
Language Transfer Audio course A0 to A2 All of it Free iOS, Android, web, SoundCloud, YouTube, MP3
Babbel Structured course A1 to B2 First lesson per course About US$9 a month yearly, lifetime US$200 to 300 iOS, Android, web
Duolingo Gamified course A0 to B2 (nine languages) All lessons, with ads US$10 to 13 a month, US$7 to 10 a month yearly iOS, Android, web
Busuu Structured course A1 to B2 All lessons, with ads US$10 to 15 a month, US$6 to 12 a month yearly iOS, Android, web
Memrise Vocabulary trainer A0 to A2 Limited, with ads US$25 a month, US$5 a month yearly iOS, Android, web (settings do not sync between them)
Clozemaster Sentence drill A2 to C1 30 sentences a day US$13 a month, US$7 a month yearly iOS, Android, web
Readle Graded reader A1 to B2 7 day trial, then a few stories US$13 a month, US$6 a month yearly iOS, Android, web
Lingo7 Parallel reader A2 to C1 First page of each book US$5 a month, US$2.50 a month yearly iOS, Android
Beelinguapp Parallel reader A2 to B1 Some stories, with ads About US$7 a month, US$18 to 50 a year iOS, Android
LingQ Reading and listening A2 to C1 20 saved words US$15 a month, US$10 a month yearly iOS, Android, web, browser extension
Speak AI speaking tutor A1 to B1 7 day trial US$18 a month, US$7 a month yearly iOS, Android
Praktika AI speaking tutor A1 to B1 Limited, indefinitely US$10 a month, US$10 to 12 a month yearly iOS, Android
Lingopie Video with subtitles B1 to C1 7 day trial, card required US$12 to 14 a month, US$5 to 7 a month yearly iOS, Android, web, Google TV, Fire TV, Roku
Readlang Reading tool B1 to C2 Unlimited words, 10 phrases a day US$6 a month, US$4 a month yearly Web, Chrome extension
Language Reactor Browser extension B1 to C2 Most of it US$6 a month, US$3.33 a month yearly Chrome, Edge (desktop)
Kindle with a bilingual dictionary Not an app B1 to C2 Dictionaries; books cost Books at cover price Kindle e-readers, iOS, Android, desktop
HelloTalk Language exchange A2 to C1 Chat and calls; 10 translations a day US$13 a month, US$7 a month yearly iOS, Android, web
Tandem Language exchange B1 to C1 3 translations a day, ads US$3 to 6 a month yearly iOS, Android, web after mobile signup
italki Tutor marketplace A0 to C2 None US$4 to 40 a lesson iOS, Android, web
Preply Tutor marketplace A0 to C2 None About US$25 an hour, subscription only iOS, Android, web
Anki Flashcards A0 to C2 All of it (iOS US$24.99) Free; iOS US$25 once Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, web
ChatGPT and Gemini voice General AI A2 to C2 Yes, capped Free; paid about US$20 a month iOS, Android, web (Gemini Live: mobile apps only)

Prices are US store or vendor prices as of September 2026, yearly plans shown as the monthly equivalent. The same app often costs less on its own site than in the App Store, and more in Europe than in the US.

How we judged

  1. Where it stops. The vendor’s own CEFR ceiling where one is published; where it is not, the stall point independent reviewers agree on.
  2. What is really free. Not the trial: what you can still do on day 30 without paying.
  3. The real price. US store or vendor prices as of the stamp above, yearly plans as a monthly figure, and a note wherever the vendor’s site and the App Store disagree.
  4. Coverage of your language. Store counts include interface languages and phrasebooks; we counted full courses or real content, and said so when the vendor’s own pages disagree.
  5. What happens on renewal and on the way out, from the help pages and the one star reviews rather than the landing page.
  6. Whether it makes you produce the language, or only recognise it.

The conflict of interest, stated. Lingo7 is our app. It is one card in the A2 to B1 section, with the same fields as every other card, and its "not so good" list was written by us, not softened. We did not test our own app against the others on the criteria above, because we could not do that fairly; the card states what it does and what it does not, and you decide.

We have no affiliate deals with any app named here, and none of the links pay us. Every number comes from the vendor's own help or pricing pages or its US store listing, checked in September 2026; the judgement calls lean on independent reviews, and on the one star reviews for the parts a landing page never shows, like what happens on renewal. Where a vendor's pages contradict each other, the card says so.

Frequently asked questions

Which language learning app is best for a complete beginner?

A course, not an input app. Pimsleur or Language Transfer if you learn by ear, Babbel or Busuu if you want a syllabus with grammar, Duolingo if the habit is the hard part. Add a reader or a tutor at A2, not before.

Is the best app the same for every language?

No. The same app can run a full course to B2 in Spanish and stop at A2, or offer nothing at all, in a smaller language, and the free reading and listening material differs even more. Check the coverage for your language, not the store blurb; the language guides above rank the apps for one language each.

How many language learning apps should I use at once?

Two: one for input or structure, one that reviews what you met. Three turns into app management, and the time goes into switching.

Is Duolingo enough on its own?

Up to about A2 in most languages, and to B2 in the nine Duolingo took there in April 2026. Past that its sentences stay short and controlled while real language does not. Add real input rather than dropping the course.

Can I get my money back if the app turns out to be wrong?

Sometimes. Google Play refunds most purchases self-service within 48 hours; after that you ask the developer. Apple decides case by case at reportaproblem.apple.com. Cancelling only stops the next charge.

Lingo7 is your app. Is this review independent?

No, and we say so on the page. Lingo7 is reviewed on the same fields as the other apps, with its weaknesses written by us, and we have no affiliate deals or paid placements with any app named here.

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Next: reading apps ranked per language · how Lingo7 compares head to head · what comprehensible input means · breaking the intermediate plateau