Home / Best apps to learn a language / Catalan
Prices and language coverage checked in September 2026.
Catalan has 4.1 million native speakers and 5.1 million who speak it as a second language, 9.2 million in all, by Ethnologue’s 2022 figures. It is official in Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands, the only official language of Andorra, and spoken in Northern Catalonia in France and Alghero in Sardinia; in September 2026 it is still not an official language of the EU. What Catalan asks of an app is the ear (a neutral vowel, open and closed e and o), the pronouns en and hi, and a plan for the moment people answer you in Spanish.
The big apps are missing here: most course apps have no Catalan, Memrise has only word lists made by users, and Duolingo teaches it from Spanish alone. The strongest course is public and free: Parla.cat, the Generalitat’s own, from A2 to C1. The rest of the best material is a YouTube team, the public broadcaster and free dictionaries. So the apps below are compared on whether an English speaker can use them at all, where they stop, what is free on day 30, and who corrects you.
The US Foreign Service Institute puts Catalan in category I (of I to IV), about 750 class hours for an English speaker to reach professional working proficiency.
Valencia’s 1982 Statute calls it Valencian, and Spain’s Supreme and Constitutional Courts have upheld that it is one language with Catalan; the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC) and the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua (AVL) share a standard with regional forms. You hear the difference: Valencian keeps five unstressed vowels and says parle, central Catalan reduces unstressed a and e to a neutral vowel and says parlo, and Mallorca says jo parl. No app below advertises Valencian, and Lingo7’s one voice is central Catalan; for Valencian, use À Punt, the AVL’s dictionary and Softcatalà’s checker.
Catalan shares 87% of its vocabulary with Italian and 85% with Spanish and Portuguese, by Ethnologue’s figures, so a Romance speaker follows much of a written page early. The new work is elsewhere: the weak pronouns en and hi, a past tense built with anar (vaig anar, I went), and false friends: cama is the leg and llevar to lift (bed and carry in Spanish), constipat a head cold and embarassada pregnant (not constipated and embarrassed), by the Gran Diccionari. Use your Spanish or Italian for reading, and give the pronouns and the past tense a course of their own.
Catalan spelling is regular, but its rules are not Spanish ones. In central Catalan an unstressed a or e becomes a neutral vowel and an unstressed o sounds like u; stressed e and o come open or closed (sec against sé); l·l is a long l, and a final r is usually silent, where Valencian says it. A 2019 study of 17 languages in Science Advances timed Catalan at about 7 syllables a second, near the average, by our computation from its data. Pick apps with native audio beside the text, and hear every new word before you say it.
Babbel, Busuu, Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, Mango, Speak, Lingopie and Language Transfer have no Catalan course, by their language lists in September 2026, and Memrise has only word lists made by users. Duolingo’s course is from Spanish alone, with no CEFR label, about A2 by our estimate. Parla.cat runs from A2 to C1 by the Generalitat’s labels and Glossika’s sentences from A1 to C1 by its own; in Catalonia the CPNL, the public language consortium, teaches in person to C2. Past B1, plan on Parla.cat’s upper courses, 3Cat, the news and a tutor.
The Generalitat certifies A1 to C2; its 2026 exams for A2 to C2 ran from 11 April to 30 May, at €23.90 for A2 to B2 and €57.45 for C1 and C2, in Catalonia and Perpinyà. Abroad, the Institut Ramon Llull tests A2 to C2 for €30 to €60 (its English page still says €40 for C1 and C2), with its second 2026 round on 7, 14 and 21 November in 9 cities, none in the US. Most graduate public posts in Catalonia ask for the C1, per press and exam-prep reports. Book the level your job or course names.
Best free official course
The Generalitat’s own online course, made with the Institut Ramon Llull and the Consorci per a la Normalització Lingüística: 4 levels, Bàsic (A2) to Suficiència (C1), each in 3 courses of about 45 hours, free in self-study, used by over 400,000 people per the Generalitat. It is the only full online syllabus for Catalan we found, in a browser.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A2 to C1 learners who want a real syllabus to C1 at no cost, and will work in a browser.
Best for everyday spoken Catalan
Sílvia interviews people in the street with Catalan and English subtitles, in 288 videos for 42,100 subscribers, and Super Easy Catalan is the beginner series; the weekly podcast with Sílvia and Andreu reached episode 232 on about 25 September 2026. It is input, not a course: no order to learn in and no feedback on your own Catalan.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A1 learners and up who want to hear how Catalan speakers talk in the street, with subtitles in both languages.
Best live tutors
Preply lists 77 Catalan tutors, rated 4.91 on average by 784 customers, a small pool next to its big languages but the largest we found. With no Pimsleur, Speak or Busuu for Catalan, a person is the only speaking practice: below B1, pick a tutor who explains in your language; from B1 on, a weekly lesson keeps you in Catalan.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Anyone from A1 who needs a person to talk to in Catalan, since no app gives you speaking practice for it.
Best free daily course
Duolingo teaches Catalan from Spanish only, with no course for English speakers, so the interface and every translation are in Spanish. The course has 1.12 million learners, 64 skills and 2,205 lessons by an unofficial tracker, no CEFR label, and is about A2 by our estimate. If you read Spanish it builds a daily habit; if not, it is closed.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A free daily Catalan habit from zero to about A2, for anyone who reads Spanish; on a laptop, without the Energy cap.
Best tutors without a subscription
italki lists 69 Catalan tutors at US$10 to US$40 an hour, paid per lesson in US dollars with no subscription, so a lesson a fortnight or a single hour before a trip costs only that hour. Fewer tutors than Preply, but no 28 day cycle and no lessons that expire; nothing on the platform makes you book the next one.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Anyone from A1 who wants a Catalan speaker once a week or once a month without a plan, and can find one at their price.
Best for reading real books
Lingo7 puts a translation in your own language under every sentence of a Catalan book (49 languages), reads it aloud and drills saved words in 12 kinds of exercise. By our estimate 4 of its 48 books are B2 and 44 C1; A2 and B1 readers start with the Stories. It is our app, and it has no course.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: B2 and C1 readers who want Rusiñol, Oller and Guimerà with their own language under the text, A2 and B1 learners starting with the Stories, and anyone with their own EPUBs.
Best for shadowing sentences
Glossika gives Catalan away: it is one of 9 languages whose course content is free, 5,000+ words and sentences with native audio, A1 to C1 by Glossika’s label, which you hear and repeat aloud. Nothing is explained, so it is the drill beside Parla.cat, not a course, and the one mass sentence drill for Catalan at no cost.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A1 learners and up who want to hear and repeat thousands of Catalan sentences at no cost.
Best learner podcast
Laura’s podcast, Learn Catalan with Couch Polyglot, runs 6 minute episodes for people with “some basic knowledge of Catalan”, in her words; episode 170 came out on 9 September 2026. Her YouTube channel has 388 videos for 47,900 subscribers, across several languages. It is the step between Easy Catalan’s beginner series and the radio.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A2 and B1 learners who want a few minutes of Catalan a day between courses.
Best sentence drill
Clozemaster has Catalan from English: fill the missing word in a real sentence, in the Fast Track collections Level 1 to 3 and a Random collection, with 30 sentences a day free. It publishes no Catalan sentence count and no grammar sets for Catalan, where German has them, and nothing is explained.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Ten minutes a day from A2 on top of Parla.cat, with English as the base language.
Best vocabulary trainer
Free spaced repetition with shared Catalan decks on AnkiWeb: Top 5000 Catalan words for English speakers (5,000 notes, rated 7 of 7, updated 15 March 2025), a 1,000 word Catalan-English deck and verb conjugation decks. It is the cheapest way to keep the words you meet in videos and books, and it teaches nothing on its own.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Keeping the words you met in videos, books and lessons, at any level.
Best for video input
Catalan subtitles and a translation into your language side by side on YouTube, with free lookups on click. The vendor lists no learning languages and names no Catalan support, so test it on a subtitled Catalan video before paying. The Netflix side broke in June 2026 and in September works with known bugs.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: B1 and up with a laptop, turning Catalan YouTube into listening practice.
Easy Catalan + Glossika + Duolingo
Parla.cat starts at A2, so the first weeks are input and repetition. Watch Super Easy Catalan, the beginner series on Easy Catalan, every day, and repeat Glossika’s free sentences after their audio. If you read Spanish, do Duolingo’s Catalan course beside them for the habit; if not, the Lazy Linguist podcast explains the basics in English. In Catalonia, the CPNL’s Inicial course at A1 is free.
Parla.cat + Couch Polyglot + Preply
Start Parla.cat at Bàsic (A2) and work through Elemental (B1), 3 courses of about 45 hours each, free in self-study. Listen to Couch Polyglot’s 6 minute episodes, keep Easy Catalan’s interviews going, and book a Preply or italki tutor once a week who keeps the lesson in Catalan. Start reading with Lingo7’s Stories at A2, then graded readers you import; its shelf of classics starts at B2 in practice, by our estimate.
Lingo7 + Language Reactor + Preply
Courses thin out here. Parla.cat’s Intermedi and Suficiència courses are the exception, so finish them. Read the classics on Lingo7’s shelf or your own books, watch Catalan YouTube with Language Reactor, move from InfoK to the Telenotícies on 3Cat, and talk about all of it with your tutor. With a certificate date, book a tutor who has taught that exam.
| App | Role | Levels | Coverage for Catalan | Free | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parla.cat | Best free official course | A2 to C1 | A2 to C1 by the Generalitat’s labels, 4 levels of 3 courses of about 45 hours; self-study free, tutored mode paid; 400,000+ learners | All of it, in self-study | Free self-study; tutored mode paid |
| Easy Catalan | Best for everyday spoken Catalan | A1 to B2 | 288 videos with Catalan and English subtitles, 42,100 subscribers; Super Easy Catalan for beginners; weekly podcast, episode 232 on about 25 September 2026; transcripts for members | Videos and podcast audio | Free; membership price not shown |
| Preply | Best live tutors | A1 to C2 | 77 Catalan tutors, 4.91 from 784 customers; average US$29 an hour per the Catalan page | None | Average US$29 an hour, subscription only |
| Duolingo | Best free daily course | A0 to A2 | From Spanish only, no English course; no CEFR label, about A2 by our estimate; 64 skills and 2,205 lessons by an unofficial tracker, 1.12 million learners | Every lesson; Energy cap on a phone | US$13 to 17 a month, US$7 to 10 a month yearly |
| italki | Best tutors without a subscription | A1 to C2 | 69 Catalan tutors; US$10 to US$40 an hour; paid per lesson, no subscription | None | US$10 to 40 an hour |
| Lingo7 | Best for reading real books | A2 to C1 | 48 public domain books, by our estimate 4 at B2 and 44 at C1, more than half in the spelling before Fabra; Stories in two versions, adapted for A1 to A2 and original for B1 to B2; your own books in 7 formats (EPUB, PDF, FB2, DOCX, TXT, Markdown, HTML); native audio in a Catalonia accent; translation into 49 languages | First page of each book | US$5 a month, US$2.50 a month yearly |
| Glossika | Best for shadowing sentences | A1 to C1 | Catalan free, one of 9 free languages; 5,000+ words and sentences, A1 to C1 by Glossika’s label; variety not stated | The whole Catalan course | Free for Catalan; Basic US$17 a month |
| Couch Polyglot | Best learner podcast | A2 to B1 | 6 minute episodes, number 170 on 9 September 2026; A2 to B1 by the host; 388 YouTube videos across several languages | Episodes and videos | Free |
| Clozemaster | Best sentence drill | A2 to B2 | Catalan from English; Fast Track Levels 1 to 3 and a Random collection; sentence count not published, Tatoeba holds 10,966 Catalan sentences | 30 sentences a day | US$13 a month, US$7 a month yearly |
| Anki | Best vocabulary trainer | A1 to C1 | Shared Catalan decks: Top 5000 Catalan words (5,000 notes), a 1,000 word Catalan-English deck, conjugation and barbarismes decks | All of it (iOS US$24.99) | Free; iOS US$25 once |
| Language Reactor | Best for video input | B1 to C2 | Any Catalan YouTube video with subtitles; Catalan support not confirmed by the vendor; 3Cat’s own player untested; Netflix working with known bugs in September 2026 | Most of it | US$6 a month, US$3.33 a month yearly |
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.
Free on this site: public domain Catalan books you can open in the app, and short Catalan texts at A1, A2 and B1 with a translation.
We have no affiliate deals with any app named here, and none of the links pay us. Prices and coverage come from the vendor’s own help or pricing pages or its US store listing, checked in September 2026, and every other figure names its source in the text; 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.
Refund rules, the traps to avoid and the same apps compared by level for every language are on the best apps to learn a language page.
For a start, yes, and it is free: the Catalan course has 64 skills and 2,205 lessons by an unofficial tracker and 1.12 million learners, but it exists only for Spanish speakers, per Duolingo’s course list, so an English speaker needs Spanish first. On its own it is not enough: it carries no CEFR label and is about A2 by our estimate, everything is explained in Spanish, and on a phone Energy runs out after about 2 to 3 lessons a day, by a third-party count (the web version runs on hearts). Add Parla.cat for the syllabus from A2 to C1, Easy Catalan for the ear, and a person to talk to once you can put a few sentences together.
Either works: they are one language with two official names, and Spain’s Supreme and Constitutional Courts have upheld that. What changes is the sound and a few forms: Valencian keeps five unstressed vowels and pronounces the final r, says parle where central Catalan says parlo and este where it says aquest, while Mallorca says jo parl and uses the article es and sa. The apps give you no choice: no app in this guide advertises a Valencian option, and Lingo7’s one voice is central Catalan. For Valencian, use À Punt, the Valencian broadcaster, the AVL’s free Diccionari Normatiu Valencià, Softcatalà’s checker set to Valencian forms, and the JQCV exams, A2 to C2, which you apply for online.
None of them is an exam course. Parla.cat uses the same level names as the Generalitat’s certificates, Bàsic (A2) to Suficiència (C1), so it is the free syllabus to follow, with the Generalitat’s preparation guides and marked samples for the C1 and a Preply or italki tutor for the oral. The Generalitat’s exams cost €23.90 for A2 to B2 and €57.45 for C1 and C2, sat in Catalonia and Perpinyà; the Institut Ramon Llull’s, for people living outside the Catalan-speaking area, cost €30 to €60, with the second 2026 round on 7, 14 and 21 November in 9 cities, none in the US.
Reading grows your vocabulary, and a Spanish, French or Italian speaker reads Catalan early, but the page does not show you the neutral vowel or the silent final r. Read with audio. Lingo7, our app, puts a translation under each sentence of a Catalan book, reads it aloud in a Catalonia accent and drills the words you save in 12 kinds of exercise, for US$5 a month or US$30 a year. Its Catalan shelf starts at B2 in practice and 44 of its 48 books are C1, both by our estimate, more than half in the spelling before 1913, so begin with its Stories or Eumo’s Català fàcil readers, and move to Rusiñol’s L’auca del senyor Esteve around B2.
Parla.cat: the whole course from A2 to C1 is free in self-study, from the Generalitat itself. Beside it, Easy Catalan’s 288 subtitled videos and weekly podcast, Glossika, whose 5,000+ Catalan sentences with native audio are free, Duolingo from Spanish if you read it, Clozemaster’s 30 sentences a day, Anki’s Top 5000 Catalan words deck, Catalunya Ràdio and 3Cat’s site, open from any country. For the words, Optimot, DIEC2 and Diccionari.cat cost nothing. For a tutor you pay: Preply at an average of US$29 an hour on a subscription, or italki at US$10 to US$40 an hour with none.
Easier to read than to hear. Catalan shares 87% of its vocabulary with Italian and 85% with Spanish and Portuguese, by Ethnologue’s figures, so the page opens fast; the ear takes longer, because central Catalan turns every unstressed a and e into a neutral vowel and drops most final r sounds, and the pronouns en and hi and the past with anar (vaig anar) have no Spanish model. For the hours, Parla.cat’s own structure is the best guide: 3 courses of about 45 hours per level, about 135 hours of material for each of A2, B1, B2 and C1, and the CPNL sells each level from A2 to C1 as 120 hours of class.
Expect it: 70.4% of Catalans who start a conversation in Catalan switch to Spanish when answered in Spanish, by the Generalitat’s 2023 language use survey, and InformeCAT 2026 found that only 17.4% keep Catalan. Ask people to stay in Catalan, and get your speaking hours where the switch cannot happen: a Preply or italki tutor who keeps the lesson in Catalan, Easy Catalan’s live classes, and in Catalonia Voluntariat per la llengua’s conversation pairs and the CPNL’s conversation groups (20 hours for €39.50). No Pimsleur, Speak or Busuu has Catalan, so the speaking has to come from people.
Read your first page free, in Catalan.