Home / Best apps to learn a language / Finnish
Prices and language coverage checked in September 2026.
Finnish has about 5 million speakers by Wikipedia’s count, 4.7 million of them in Finland, where it is the first language of 83.5% of residents (Statistics Finland, 2025), and almost 470,000 people in Sweden speak or understand Finnish or Meänkieli. It is Uralic, not Indo-European, so it shares no core vocabulary with English, and it comes in two registers: the written standard every app teaches, and the spoken Finnish of the street.
The app market is thin. Babbel, Busuu, Rosetta Stone, Speak and Lingopie have no Finnish; Duolingo’s course is early A1 by an unofficial tracker’s label, with no Stories; Pimsleur sells one Level of 30 lessons. The best Finnish-only material is free: Yle’s easy news and its Supisuomea course, and Uusi kielemme, a grammar site with 650+ articles. So the apps below are compared on whether they explain the 15 cases, where they stop, what is free on day 30, whether you hear spoken Finnish, and whether a person corrects you.
The US Foreign Service Institute puts Finnish in category III (of I to IV), about 1,100 class hours for an English speaker to reach professional working proficiency.
Every app and textbook teaches kirjakieli, the written standard: minä, me olemme, ei ole, yksi, kaksi. On the street you hear puhekieli: mä, me ollaan, ei oo, yks, kaks, with se and ne for people where the standard has hän and he, per Wikipedia’s article on colloquial Finnish. Duolingo and Pimsleur name no register; Suomen mestari 4 teaches both forms, Uusi kielemme has a spoken-language grammar, and Finnished’s videos are natural speech with subtitles. Learn the written standard first, and from A2 spend part of every week on the spoken form.
Finnish has 15 noun cases, no gender, no articles and no future tense, per Wikipedia’s grammar article; the 6 locative cases do the work of English prepositions, the partitive does part of the work of “a” and “the”, and consonant gradation changes the stem before some endings. Duolingo, Pimsleur, Mango and Clozemaster drill the endings without explaining them. Uusi kielemme explains every case free, Suomen mestari and Oma suomi do it in a textbook, and Wiktionary shows the full table of any noun. Learn the cases from a source that explains them, and check every ending in a table.
The easy part is the sound: Finnish spelling is phonemic to a great extent and the main stress always falls on the first syllable, per Wikipedia. The hard part is the vocabulary. Finnish is Uralic, so the words it shares with English are loans, not cousins: kuningas came from Proto-Germanic and sauna went the other way, per Wiktionary, and Estonian, its closest relative, is not mutually intelligible with it, per Wikipedia. Budget more time for words than for sounds: a frequency-ranked drill, reading with audio and a place to keep every word you meet.
Duolingo’s Finnish is early A1 by an unofficial tracker’s label, and Finnish was not among the 9 courses Duolingo took to B2 in April 2026. Pimsleur has one Level of 30 lessons, Mango prints no size or level, and Yle’s Supisuomea runs A1 to B1 by Metropolia’s list; the Suomen mestari textbooks reach B1 in 4 volumes, and volume 4 “can help advance to the B2 level”, per Finn Lectura. Finland ranks 12th of 123 in EF’s 2025 English index, so past A2 plan on a tutor, the easy news and books, and ask people to stay in Finnish.
The YKI, Finland’s national language test, has 3 levels, basic (A1 and A2), intermediate (B1 and B2) and advanced (C1 and C2), at €165, €190 and €216 in 2026, per Opetushallitus. Citizenship needs the intermediate test in Finnish or Swedish with grade 3 (B1) in two subtests; permanent residence has needed B1, 6 years of residence and 2 years of work since 8 January 2026. Amendments approved on 16 June 2026 add a citizenship test from 1 January 2027, with the language level unchanged. Book the intermediate test, and work from the official demonstration tasks.
Best free daily course
The Finnish course is “CEFR early A1” by an unofficial tracker’s label, with 35 units and 563 lessons in its July 2025 count, and it has no Stories; Finnish was not among the 9 courses Duolingo took to B2 in April 2026. It builds a daily habit for the first months, then you need everything else.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A free daily Finnish habit from zero for the first months; on a laptop, without the Energy cap.
Best live tutors
Preply lists 63 Finnish tutors at US$10 to US$72 an hour, with a 25 or 50 minute trial and two more tutors free if the first is not a match. Below B1, pick a teacher who explains the cases in your language; from B1, book a weekly lesson with one who stays in Finnish and corrects you.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Anyone from A1 who needs a person to talk to in Finnish, and the only route past B1 with a human in this list.
Best free grammar reference
Uusi kielemme explains Finnish grammar in English in more than 650 free articles, from verb conjugation and noun inflection to spoken-language grammar. Its author, Inge, is a non-native speaker, holds a master’s degree in Finnish from the University of Tampere and has run the site since 2007. It is a reference with exercises, not a course in order.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Anyone from A1 who wants the cases, the verb types and spoken Finnish explained in plain English, at no cost, beside a course.
Best free video course
Yle’s basic course in Finnish language and culture for immigrants and foreign students: 9 web parts from the pronouns to Finnish culture, a 12 episode TV series, dialogues, exercises and glossaries in 7 languages. It runs A1 to B1 by Metropolia University’s resource list (A1 to A2 by Uusi kielemme’s), and it has not been updated since June 2016.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A1 to B1 learners who want a free course with video from Finland’s public broadcaster, after or beside Duolingo.
Best for reading real books
Lingo7 puts a translation in your own language under every sentence of a Finnish book (49 languages), reads it aloud and drills saved words in 12 kinds of exercise. Its 100 Finnish books are all C1 by our estimate, so A2 to B2 readers start with the Stories. It is our app, and it has no course.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: C1 readers who want Kivi, Aho and Canth with their own language under the text, A2 to B2 learners starting with the Stories, and anyone with their own EPUBs.
Best for speaking from lesson one
Pimsleur’s Finnish is one Level of 30 audio lessons, 16 hours 23 minutes as Barnes and Noble lists the audiobook, in which you answer out loud and words come back at spaced intervals. Pimsleur publishes no CEFR level for it and sells no Finnish Level 2. A month of Premium covers the 30 lessons at one a day.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A trip in a month, a commute, or anyone who wants to say their first Finnish sentences out loud before they read.
Best free daily input
Yle’s news in easy Finnish, one edition every weekday: the text on the page, the bulletin on TV1 at 16.35 and on Radio Suomi at weekends, and the audio on Yle Areena. It is the daily A2 input the apps lack, in standard Finnish, and it explains nothing: pair it with Uusi kielemme.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A2 learners and up who want a few minutes of real Finnish every weekday, with the text to check.
Best for spoken Finnish on video
A channel of 203 videos in natural spoken Finnish, 15,400 subscribers, on how Finnish works and why learners stall; the latest, on why Duolingo graduates still cannot speak Finnish, came out on 28 September 2026. It is the free place to hear puhekieli at a natural pace, B1 and up by our estimate, and it is input, not a course.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: B1 learners and up who want to hear Finnish as Finns speak it, with subtitles, and to hear why they are stuck.
Best free course with a library card
Lessons built on conversations, in a Finnish course whose size Mango does not state: its Finnish page names the method and prints no unit, lesson or hour count and no level. Thousands of US public libraries, schools and colleges give full access at no cost, per Mango, which makes it a second free start beside Duolingo.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Beginners with a US library card who want a second course at no cost.
Best sentence drill
Fill the blank in a real Finnish sentence, thousands of times: Clozemaster’s Finnish from English runs from a 500 Most Common collection to one of more than 50,000 sentences, built from the open Tatoeba corpus, which holds 154,923 Finnish sentences. It drills the case endings in context at a pace no course matches, and it explains none of them.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Ten minutes a day on the case endings, on top of a course or a book, from A2 upward.
Best for reading with audio
Finnish is a full LingQ language: its Finnish page promises “1000’s of hours of Finnish audio lessons with matching transcripts”, and the importer turns any Finnish article, podcast or YouTube video into a lesson. The library figure is the vendor’s claim, with no lesson count on the page, and the free plan is a demo.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: B1 and up with a Finnish podcast or YouTube habit to turn into study, and the budget for it.
Best for video input
Finnish 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 any Finnish video that has subtitles, Finnished’s and Yle’s included. 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 Finnish YouTube into listening practice.
Duolingo + Uusi kielemme + Supisuomea
Do Duolingo every day for the habit, and take Supisuomea beside it: Yle’s free course goes further than Duolingo’s early A1 path. Read the Uusi kielemme article on every case and verb type as you meet it, and learn each noun with its endings. Pimsleur is the paid choice if you want to speak before you read; with a US library card, Mango Languages is a second free course.
Yle Uutiset selkosuomeksi + Clozemaster + Preply
Keep a course going to B1: Supisuomea runs there by Metropolia’s list, or Suomen mestari 1 to 4 on paper. Read Yle Uutiset selkosuomeksi every weekday with the audio, drill the endings in Clozemaster’s free 30 sentences a day, watch KatChats Finnish for slow, clear listening, and book a Preply tutor once a week who keeps the lesson in Finnish. Start reading with Lingo7’s Stories at A2, then a selkokirja; its shelf of classics starts at C1 in practice, by our estimate.
Lingo7 + Language Reactor + Preply
Courses thin out here. Read the classics on Lingo7’s shelf or your own books, watch Finnished and Yle’s channels with Language Reactor, move from the easy news to Yle Areena’s news and factual programmes, which stream worldwide, and talk about all of it with your tutor. With a YKI date, work the official demonstration tasks and book a tutor who has taught the test.
| App | Role | Levels | Coverage for Finnish | Free | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duolingo | Best free daily course | A0 to A1 | One Finnish course, from English; “CEFR early A1” by an unofficial tracker; 35 units and 563 lessons by that tracker (July 2025), 29 units by another (September 2026); no Stories | Every lesson; Energy cap on a phone | US$13 to 17 a month, US$7 to 10 a month yearly |
| Preply | Best live tutors | A1 to C2 | 63 Finnish tutors; US$32 an hour on average by the page’s own figure | None | US$10 to 72 an hour, subscription only |
| Uusi kielemme | Best free grammar reference | A1 to C1 | Grammar and vocabulary in English, 650+ articles; beginner, intermediate and advanced tiers; spoken-language grammar; exercises free since 2025 | All of it | Free |
| Supisuomea | Best free video course | A1 to B1 | 9 web parts and 12 TV episodes; glossaries in 7 languages; A1 to B1 by Metropolia University’s list, A1 to A2 by Uusi kielemme’s; last updated June 2016 | All of it | Free |
| Lingo7 | Best for reading real books | A2 to C1 | 100 public domain books, all C1 by our estimate; 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 Finland 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 16 hours; no vendor CEFR claim; no Level 2 at any retailer | 7 day trial | About US$20 a month, or US$120 once |
| Yle Uutiset selkosuomeksi | Best free daily input | A2 to B1 | One edition every weekday, text plus TV and radio audio; A2 and up by Uusi kielemme’s links page; open worldwide on Yle Areena | All of it | Free |
| Finnished | Best for spoken Finnish on video | B1 to C1 | 203 videos, 15,400 subscribers; natural spoken Finnish with subtitles; uploads on 26, 27 and 28 September 2026 | All of it | Free |
| Mango Languages | Best free course with a library card | From A0 | A Finnish course with no unit, lesson or level stated by Mango; free with many US library cards | Free through many US libraries | Free via many libraries; US$10 a month yearly |
| Clozemaster | Best sentence drill | A2 to C1 | Finnish from English; collections from 500 Most Common to more than 50,000 sentences; 30 sentences a day free | 30 sentences a day | US$13 a month, US$7 a month yearly |
| LingQ | Best for reading with audio | B1 to C1 | Full Finnish library, “1000’s of hours” by LingQ’s own claim, no lesson count; importer for anything on the web | 20 saved words | US$15 a month, US$10 a month yearly |
| Language Reactor | Best for video input | B1 to C2 | Any Finnish 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 |
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 Finnish books you can open in the app, and short Finnish 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 Finnish course has 35 units and 563 lessons by an unofficial tracker’s July 2025 count. On its own it is not enough: the tracker labels it “CEFR early A1”, Finnish was not among the 9 courses Duolingo took to B2 in April 2026, there are no Stories, the cases are drilled by pattern and never explained, 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 Uusi kielemme for the grammar, Yle’s easy news for daily input, and a person to talk to once you can put a few sentences together.
The written standard first: every app, textbook and exam uses it, and the spoken form is built on it. Then the spoken form, from A2, because it is what you will hear: minä becomes mä, me olemme becomes me ollaan, ei ole becomes ei oo, yksi and kaksi lose their last vowel, and hän and he give way to se and ne, per Wikipedia’s article on colloquial Finnish. Suomen mestari 4 teaches both forms, per Finn Lectura; Uusi kielemme has a spoken-language grammar; Finnished’s videos are natural speech with subtitles; and the books Uusi kielemme names for spoken Finnish are Kato hei and Suomea paremmin. A Preply tutor can hold a lesson in either.
None of them is a YKI course, so start with the official material: the University of Jyväskylä’s demonstration tasks, linked from Opetushallitus, and Yle’s YKI-treenit for listening and reading, then a tutor who has taught the test. Citizenship needs the intermediate YKI in Finnish or Swedish with grade 3 (B1) in two subtests; the intermediate test costs €190 in 2026, takes 5 hours and is sat in Finland, where the remaining autumn 2026 intermediate dates are 2 October and 7 November. Permanent residence has asked for B1, 6 years of residence and 2 years of work since 8 January 2026, and a citizenship test on Finnish society starts on 1 January 2027, for applications from 1 March 2027.
Reading builds the vocabulary the cases sit on, and Finnish spelling shows almost every sound, but speech drops what the page keeps (yksi becomes yks, ei ole becomes ei oo), so read with audio. Lingo7, our app, puts a translation under each sentence of a Finnish book, reads it aloud in a Finland accent and drills the words you save in 12 kinds of exercise, for US$5 a month or US$30 a year. Its Finnish shelf starts at C1 in practice, all 100 books by our estimate, most of them 19th and early 20th century Finnish, so begin with its Stories or a selkokirja such as Avain’s easy Seitsemän veljestä, and come to Kivi’s original on the shelf at C1.
For a course, Duolingo (every lesson free, early A1 by an unofficial tracker, with Energy capping study on a phone) and Yle’s Supisuomea, A1 to B1 by Metropolia’s list; with a US library card, Mango Languages. For grammar, Uusi kielemme, whose 650+ articles and exercises are free. For input, Yle Uutiset selkosuomeksi every weekday and Selkosanomat, both with audio, KatChats Finnish and Finnished on YouTube, and Yle Areena’s news worldwide. For drilling, Clozemaster’s 30 free sentences a day. For a tutor you pay: Preply from US$10 an hour on a subscription, or italki per lesson with none.
Hard, not hardest. The US State Department’s Foreign Service Institute puts Finnish in its Category III, “hard languages”, the same band as Russian, Polish, Greek, Hungarian and Estonian, and gives it half the class time of the Category IV languages, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. What makes it hard is the vocabulary, which is Uralic and shares almost nothing with English, and the 15 cases with consonant gradation; what makes it easier than its reputation is a spelling that is phonemic to a great extent, stress always on the first syllable, no gender and no articles, per Wikipedia. B1, the level Finland asks for citizenship, is the YKI’s intermediate level.
Finnish, unless you are moving to the Swedish-speaking coast: 83.5% of residents have Finnish as their first language and 5% Swedish (Statistics Finland, 2025). Swedish is Finland’s second national language, it counts for citizenship and permanent residence (the intermediate YKI can be taken in Finnish or Swedish, per Opetushallitus), and it is far easier for an English speaker, in the FSI’s Category I. Outside the coast it will not carry daily life. Learn Finnish, and if you already have Swedish, use it for the paperwork while your Finnish catches up.
Read your first page free, in Finnish.