Home / Best apps to learn a language / Czech
Prices and language coverage checked in September 2026.
Czech has about 10 million native speakers by Wikipedia’s count, and 9.2 million people in Czechia gave it as their mother tongue in the 2021 census; it is the official language of the Czech Republic and one of the EU’s, and 1.2 million Americans claimed Czech ancestry in the 2024 ACS. There is one written standard, and the street speaks another: Common Czech, with dobrej for dobrý. What Czech asks of an app is grammar (seven cases, three genders and verb aspect) and the ř, a sound almost no other language has.
The big apps mostly skip Czech. Babbel, Busuu, Rosetta Stone and Speak have no Czech course, Duolingo’s stops at early A2 by its own labels, Pimsleur sells one level and Mango has 118 lessons. Much of the best Czech material comes from a Czech textbook line, an EU-supported free course and a weekly podcast. So the apps below are compared on whether they explain the cases, where they stop, what is free on day 30, whether you hear standard or Common Czech, and whether a person corrects you.
The US Foreign Service Institute puts Czech in category III (of I to IV), about 1,100 class hours for an English speaker to reach professional working proficiency.
Standard Czech (spisovná čeština) is the language of documents, literature, news and school, codified in the National Revival of the 1830s; Common Czech (obecná čeština) grew from the Prague vernacular and is spoken through most of Bohemia, per Wikipedia. It says malej dům for malý dům, vokno for okno, bysme for bychom and dobrýma lidma in the instrumental. Every course app teaches the standard, which documents, the exams and the newspapers use. Learn the standard, and train your ear on the common: SlowCzech’s advanced episodes, Easy Czech’s street interviews and Czech film.
Czech nouns, adjectives and pronouns change their endings across seven cases, nouns have three genders with masculine split into animate and inanimate, and verbs are perfective or imperfective, per Wikipedia. Czech Step by Step explains this in grammar tables, czechonline.org in a section on verbs, sentence construction and declension, and the Internetová jazyková příručka gives every form of every word for free; Duolingo names its units after the cases and explains them in Super, and Pimsleur and Mango leave them to patterns. Learn every noun with its gender and every verb with its aspect.
Czech has one of the most phonemic orthographies in Europe, 42 graphemes with the háček and the long vowels marked, and every word is stressed on its first syllable, per Wikipedia. On the page, length changes the word: byt and být, rada and ráda are different words, and i and y sound the same. The ř, a sound between r and ž that occurs as a phoneme in only a few other languages, no app scores. Pick apps with native audio beside the text, and say every new word aloud with its length before you write it.
Duolingo’s Czech is early A2 by its own section labels, 88 units whose path has not changed since July 2025, and Czech was not among the 9 courses Duolingo took to B2 in April 2026. Pimsleur has one Czech level of 30 lessons, Mango 118 lessons with no level stated, and czechonline.org stops at A2 by its own labels. Czech Step by Step ends at Česky krok za krokem 2, about B1 by our estimate. Past B1, plan on an ÚJOP course or a tutor, and on the podcasts, Czech television and books.
Permanent residence in Czechia asks for A2 since 1 September 2021, in an exam that costs 3,200 Kč, paid since January 2024, with free model tests on cestina-pro-cizince.cz; citizenship asks for B1 plus a civics test of 30 questions from a public bank of 300, 5,700 Kč for both parts or 3,700 Kč for the language alone. The CCE, Charles University’s certificate, runs from A1 to C1 for 3,200 to 4,900 Kč in 5 Czech cities and 19 abroad, New York among them, with the speaking part as a video call since January 2026. Book the exam your office names.
Best free daily course
The Czech course is 88 units in an Intro section, two A1 sections and an A2 section, early A2 by Duolingo’s labels, per an unofficial tracker. It has no Stories or Video Call, and Czech was not among the 9 courses Duolingo took to B2 in April 2026. It builds a daily habit and first words, then stops.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A free daily Czech habit from zero; on a laptop, without the Energy cap.
Best structured course
Lída Holá and Pavla Bořilová’s Čeština expres 1 to 4 and Česky krok za krokem 1 and 2 are a textbook line for Czech as a foreign language: grammar tables in every lesson, appendices in 6 languages, free exercises on the publisher’s site. It is a book and a website, not an app, ending at Česky krok za krokem 2.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A0 to B1 learners who want the grammar in order from the textbook line for Czech as a foreign language, with free exercises beside it.
Best free course with grammar
The free course that lived at mluvtecesky.net as Mluvte česky now sits at czechonline.org, with EU support: everyday Czech from A1 to A2 by its own labels, modules of medical, business and legal Czech, and a grammar section on verbs, sentence construction and declension. It needs a free account, its course thumbnails carry 2023 dates, and it stops at A2.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A0 to A2 learners who want a free course with the grammar explained, in a browser.
Best live tutors
Preply lists 111 Czech tutors, rated 4.95 on average by 1,279 customers, and prints averages of US$27 an hour for native Czech tutors and US$28 for non-native ones. With few apps for Czech, a tutor matters sooner: below B1, pick a trained teacher who can explain the cases in your language; from B1 on, a weekly lesson corrects your endings.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Anyone from A1 who needs a person to talk to and to explain the cases.
Best free course with a library card
A course built on conversations, but a short one for Czech: 4 units, 20 chapters and 118 lessons in a June 2026 count, with colour-coded grammar notes and voice comparison, and Mango states no level for Czech. Many US public libraries give it free with a library card, which makes it a second free start beside Duolingo.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A0 to A2 learners with a US library card who want a guided start at no cost.
Best for reading real books
Lingo7 puts a translation in your own language under every sentence of a Czech book (49 languages), reads it aloud and drills saved words in 12 kinds of exercise. Its Czech shelf is 1 book, C1 by our estimate, so read its Stories, then classics you import free from Czech Wikisource. It is our app, and it has no course.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A2 and B1 learners reading the Stories, and B2 and up readers who import Čapek or Němcová from Czech Wikisource and want their own language under the text.
Best for speaking from lesson one
Pimsleur’s Czech is one level of 30 audio lessons, about 15 hours, in what Pimsleur calls “the most widely-spoken Bohemian dialect”: you answer out loud, and words come back at spaced intervals. Pimsleur publishes no CEFR level and sells no Czech Level 2. A month at one lesson a day covers the whole course.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A trip in a month, a commute, or anyone who wants to say their first Czech sentences out loud before they read.
Best learner podcast
A free weekly podcast in three levels, total beginner, intermediate and advanced, from SlowCzech, an online school with 23+ tutors, and still running: episode 350 came out on 17 September 2026. Transcripts are for members of its Lab at 500 Kč a month. It is the free listening we would add from the first month.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Learners from A1 who want free Czech listening at three levels, and spoken Czech in the advanced episodes.
Best for everyday spoken Czech
Street interviews in Czech with Czech and English subtitles, the Easy Languages format, on a channel with its own site, and still running: Super Easy Czech 62 came out on 27 September 2026 and Easy Czech 56 on 23 August. It is input, not a course: no order to learn in and no feedback on your own Czech.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A1 learners and up who want to hear how Czechs talk, with subtitles in both languages.
Best sentence drill
Clozemaster’s Czech is fill the blank in real sentences drawn from Tatoeba, which holds 89,964 Czech sentences, in frequency collections from the 100 most common words to past 50,000. It has no CEFR-labelled and no grammar sets for Czech, where German has CEFR sets and Swedish grammar sets, so you choose by frequency. Add it from A2, not before.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Ten minutes a day on the case endings from A2 upward, beside a course or a book.
Best for video input
Czech subtitles and a translation into your language side by side on YouTube, with a dictionary on click, and the subtitles and lookups cost nothing. It works on Easy Czech, CzechClass101’s daily videos and ČT :D’s YouTube channel alike. 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 Czech YouTube into listening practice.
Best for reading with audio
LingQ offers Czech as a full language, not beta, and turns any article, ebook or YouTube video into a lesson with a dictionary on each word. Its Czech page promises “1000’s of hours” of audio lessons with transcripts, a count we could not check without an account, and the free tier is a demo.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: B1 and up readers who import Czech podcasts, news and books, with the budget for it.
Duolingo + czechonline.org + Czech Step by Step
Pick one course and do it every day: Duolingo if the game keeps you going, czechonline.org if you want the grammar explained for free. Beside it, work through Čeština expres 1 or Česky krok za krokem 1 with the free exercises on czechstepbystep.cz, and learn every noun with its gender. Put SlowCzech’s beginner episodes in your ears. Pimsleur is the paid choice if you want to speak before you read; with a US library card, Mango Languages is a second free start.
Czech Step by Step + Clozemaster + Preply
Keep your course going to B1: Duolingo stops at early A2 and czechonline.org at A2, so move on to Česky krok za krokem 2. Drill the case endings with Clozemaster, 30 sentences a day for free, listen to SlowCzech’s intermediate episodes and Easy Czech, and book a Preply tutor once a week. Start reading with Lingo7’s Stories at A2, then short classics you import, since its Czech shelf is 1 book.
Lingo7 + Language Reactor + Preply
Courses thin out here. Read Čapek, Neruda or Němcová in Lingo7 from free Czech Wikisource EPUBs or your own books, watch Czech YouTube with Language Reactor, move from Zprávičky to ČT24 and mujRozhlas, and talk about all of it with your tutor. With a CCE date, book a tutor who has taught that exam.
| App | Role | Levels | Coverage for Czech | Free | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duolingo | Best free daily course | A0 to A2 | Standard Czech, from English only; early A2 by Duolingo’s section labels; 88 units and 1,592 lessons, no Stories, by an unofficial tracker | Every lesson; Energy cap on a phone | US$13 to 17 a month, US$7 to 10 a month yearly |
| Czech Step by Step | Best structured course | A0 to B1 | Standard Czech; Čeština expres 1 to 4 and Česky krok za krokem 1 and 2, the top of the line about B1 by our estimate; free online exercises for 51 lessons | Online exercises for 51 lessons | 374 to 722 Kč a book; exercises free |
| czechonline.org | Best free course with grammar | A0 to A2 | Everyday Czech A1 to A2 by its own labels; medical, business and legal Czech; a grammar section; EU-supported, free | All of it, after sign-up | Free |
| Preply | Best live tutors | A1 to C2 | 111 Czech tutors in 9 countries; averages of US$27 to US$28 an hour, per the Czech page | None | Average US$27 an hour, subscription only |
| Mango Languages | Best free course with a library card | A0 to A2 | 4 units, 20 chapters, 118 lessons (June 2026 count); no level stated by Mango, about A0 to A2 by our estimate | Free through many US libraries | Free via many libraries; US$10 a month yearly |
| Lingo7 | Best for reading real books | A2 to C1 | 1 public domain book, by our estimate C1; 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 Czechia accent; translation into 49 languages | First page of each book | US$5 a month, US$2.50 a month yearly |
| Pimsleur | Best for speaking from lesson one | A0 to A1 | Level 1 only: 30 lessons, about 15 hours; “the most widely-spoken Bohemian dialect”, per Pimsleur; no vendor CEFR claim | 7 day trial | US$150 once; All Access US$21 a month |
| SlowCzech | Best learner podcast | A1 to B2 | Three levels, total beginner to advanced; weekly, episode 350 on 17 September 2026; transcripts in the paid Lab; A1 to B2 by our estimate | All episodes | Free podcast; Lab 500 Kč a month |
| Easy Czech | Best for everyday spoken Czech | A1 to B1 | Street interviews with Czech and English subtitles; 62 Super Easy Czech and 56 Easy Czech episodes by the numbering, the latest on 27 September 2026 | All videos | Free |
| Clozemaster | Best sentence drill | A2 to C1 | Frequency collections from 100 to 50,000+ words; no CEFR or grammar sets; sentences from Tatoeba, which holds 89,964 in Czech | 30 sentences a day | US$13 a month, US$7 a month yearly |
| Language Reactor | Best for video input | B1 to C2 | Any Czech YouTube video with subtitles; Netflix working with known bugs in September 2026 | Most of it | US$6 a month, US$3.33 a month yearly |
| LingQ | Best for reading with audio | B1 to C1 | Czech fully supported; own library size not counted (“1000’s of hours”, per the vendor); imports any text | 20 saved words | US$15 a month, US$10 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 Czech books you can open in the app, and short Czech 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 Czech course has 88 units and 1,592 lessons by an unofficial tracker’s count, with units named after the cases. On its own it is not enough: the course is early A2 by Duolingo’s own labels and its path has not changed since July 2025, Czech was not among the 9 courses taken to B2 in April 2026, there are no Stories and no Video Call for Czech, 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 Czech Step by Step or czechonline.org for the grammar, SlowCzech for listening, and a tutor for the cases.
Every app teaches standard Czech (spisovná čeština), the written and formal language, and so do the exams; on the street in Bohemia people speak Common Czech (obecná čeština): dobrej for dobrý, vokno for okno, bysme for bychom, dobrýma lidma in the instrumental, per Czech Wikipedia, and media have carried these forms into other regions, where they still sound foreign. Pimsleur says its Czech is “the most widely-spoken Bohemian dialect”, its wording for the Czech of Bohemia. Learn the standard, which writing, the newspapers and every course use, and train your ear on the common: SlowCzech’s advanced episodes, Easy Czech’s street interviews and Czech film on iVysílání where the licence allows.
None is an exam course, so start with the free official practice. Permanent residence needs A2 since 1 September 2021, in an exam that costs 3,200 Kč, paid since January 2024, with free model tests on cestina-pro-cizince.cz. Citizenship needs B1 plus a civics test of 30 questions from a public bank of 300, 5,700 Kč for both parts or 3,700 Kč for the language alone, with free model exams online. The CCE, Charles University’s certificate, runs from A1 to C1 for 3,200 to 4,900 Kč, in 5 Czech cities and 19 abroad including New York, with free model variants on ujop.cuni.cz; since January 2026 the speaking part is a video call.
Reading shows you the case endings, and Czech spelling tells you how a word sounds, but the page does not teach you to follow speech. Read with audio. Lingo7, our app, puts a translation under each sentence of a Czech book, reads it aloud in a Czechia accent and drills the words you save in 12 kinds of exercise, for US$5 a month or US$30 a year. Its Czech shelf is 1 book, a 19th century school reader at C1 by our estimate, so begin with its Stories, then import Lída Holá’s adapted Povídky malostranské (ePub on akropolis.info) or the classics free as EPUB from Czech Wikisource, such as Čapek’s Povídky z jedné kapsy or Poláček’s Bylo nás pět.
For a course, Duolingo, with every lesson free and Energy capping study on a phone, to early A2 by its labels, or czechonline.org, free to A2 with the grammar explained; with a US library card, Mango Languages. For the grammar, Czech Step by Step’s free online exercises beside the book and the Internetová jazyková příručka for every word form. For listening, SlowCzech, Easy Czech and CzechClass101’s daily YouTube videos; for the case endings, Clozemaster’s 30 free sentences a day and the Ultimate Czech Deck for Anki, 2,500+ cards labelled A1 to B1 by its maker. For a tutor you pay: Preply at an average of US$27 an hour on a subscription, or italki with none.
Most varieties of Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible and form a dialect continuum through Moravia, per Wikipedia, and Czech and Slovak shared radio and television in equal ratios in the Czechoslovak era, which ended on 1 January 1993. The standards are easily told apart by spelling, endings and vocabulary: Slovak has no ř and writes ô, ä and ľ. Learn one; from B1, Slovak media are a bonus, not a substitute, and Slovaks are the second largest foreign group in Czechia, 125,280 at the end of 2025. Polish is only partially and asymmetrically intelligible with Czech, per Wikipedia, so Polish resources do not transfer.
No phone app both explains and drills them for free; two websites come close. Czech Step by Step explains the seven cases in grammar tables with appendices in 6 languages, and its site gives free exercises for every lesson; czechonline.org has a free declension section; the Internetová jazyková příručka shows every form of every word for free, and Because Czech Is Cool has free videos on the cases. Duolingo names its units after the cases but explains them in Super, and Pimsleur and Mango leave them to patterns. For drills, Clozemaster gives 30 real sentences a day. A Preply tutor, US$27 an hour on average, corrects the endings you get wrong.
Read your first page free, in Czech.