Home / Best apps to learn a language / Greek
Prices and language coverage checked in September 2026.
Greek has about 13.5 million native speakers by Wikipedia’s 2015 figure, is official in Greece and Cyprus and is one of the EU’s 24 official languages, and it is a small-app language: Babbel, Busuu and Speak have no Greek course, Pimsleur sells 2 levels where the big languages get 5, and Duolingo’s course is A2 by an unofficial tracker’s label. What Greek asks of an app is an alphabet taught from the first lesson, 3 genders and 4 cases explained rather than left to patterns, and native audio for γ and χ, two sounds English does not have.
The strongest Greek material is free and made for Greek alone: Language Transfer’s Complete Greek in 120 tracks, Easy Greek’s videos and 2 podcasts, and the Centre for the Greek Language’s sample papers and the Triantafyllidis dictionary on its portal; its Klik sta Ellinika textbooks cost €14 to €54. So the apps below are compared on where their course stops, what is left free on day 30, whether the grammar is explained, and how much Greek you hear from Greeks.
The US Foreign Service Institute puts Greek in category III (of I to IV), about 1,100 class hours for an English speaker to reach professional working proficiency.
Every app teaches Standard Modern Greek, which is also the school and formal variety in Cyprus. About 700,000 people in Cyprus speak Cypriot Greek, which doubles its consonants, keeps older verb forms and borrows from Old French, Italian and English, per Wikipedia. None of the apps below teaches it: Preply lists tutors from Cyprus at US$33 an hour on average, and The Online Greek Tutor’s videos cover Cypriot Greek. Learn the standard, and add a Cypriot tutor if Cyprus is where you are heading.
The alphabet has 24 letters, and since 1982 the monotonic system puts one stress mark on every word of more than one syllable, so reading aloud is regular once you know the digraphs (αι, ου, μπ, ντ, γκ). Writing is the hard side: the i sound has 6 spellings (ι, η, υ, ει, οι, υι). Duolingo teaches the alphabet with a tracing tool and Omilo gives a free alphabet e-book; Pimsleur and Language Transfer are audio. Learn the letters in the first week, and check every new word’s spelling in the Triantafyllidis dictionary.
Greek nouns take 3 genders and 4 cases (nominative, genitive, accusative, vocative), the article inflects with them and goes with names too, verbs have 2 stems for aspect, and there is no infinitive: θέλω να πάω, “I want that I go”. Language Transfer explains all of it in 120 free tracks and the Klik sta Ellinika textbooks follow the Centre’s syllabus; Duolingo leaves grammar unexplained on mobile, per a 2022 duoplanet review, and Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone teach by pattern. Get the cases explained early, then drill them in sentences.
Demotic became the official language in 1976 and the monotonic spelling came in 1982, per Wikipedia. Before that, formal prose was katharevousa, with ancient grammar (the dative, extra tenses) and long sentences, and print used the polytonic accents and breathings until 1982. US colleges enrol 11,433 students in ancient Greek against 757 in modern (MLA, Fall 2021). The free classics on Project Gutenberg and Lingo7’s shelf keep the old word forms and, often, the old register, with the accents mostly made monotonic. Learn modern Greek from modern material, and treat the classics as a C1 project.
The Centre for the Greek Language’s Certificate of Attainment in Greek tests A1 to Γ2 (C2) once a year in mid May at centres worldwide, 21 of them in the USA, for €90 (A1 to B1) or €100 (B2 to Γ2); the next full sitting is 11 to 13 May 2027, registration 1 February to 14 March 2027. Greek naturalisation asks for B1 plus a citizenship test; Cyprus asks for B1 too, and the Golden Visa asks for no Greek. Book the level your application names.
Best free daily course
The Greek course is A2 by an unofficial tracker’s label, with 95 units and 1,678 lessons, and Greek was not among the 9 courses Duolingo took to B2 in April 2026. It has no Stories, but its alphabet tool traces the letters with their sounds. It builds a daily habit for the first months, then you need more.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A free daily Greek habit from zero to A2 that starts with the alphabet; on a laptop, without the Energy cap.
Best free audio course
Complete Greek is 120 free audio tracks in which Mihalis Eleftheriou builds sentences with a student while you pause and answer out loud, explaining the cases, the 2 verb stems and να instead of drilling phrases. It carries no level label; by our estimate it reaches about A2 with B1 grammar explained. It is the free course to start with.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Anyone from zero who wants Greek grammar explained by ear, free, before or beside any other app.
Best for speaking from lesson one
Pimsleur’s Modern Greek is 2 levels of 30 half-hour audio lessons, in which you answer out loud and words come back at spaced intervals. Pimsleur publishes no CEFR level, and Greek stops at Level 2 where the big languages get 5, A1 to A2 by our estimate. A month of Greek Premium covers a level at a lesson a day.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A trip in two months, a commute, or anyone who wants to say their first Greek sentences out loud before they read.
Best live tutors
Preply lists 617 Greek tutors, averaging US$27 an hour on its page, US$28 for tutors from Greece and US$33 from Cyprus, so you can book the Greek you will hear. Below B1, pick a teacher who can explain the cases in your language; from B1 on, a weekly lesson keeps you in Greek with a person who corrects you.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Anyone from A1 who needs a person to talk to in Greek, from Greece or from Cyprus.
Best for reading real books
Lingo7 puts a translation in your own language under every sentence of a Greek book (49 languages), reads it aloud and drills saved words in 12 kinds of exercise. All 72 books are C1 by our estimate, often in katharevousa, so A2 and B1 readers start with the Stories. It is our app, and it has no course.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: C1 readers who want Karkavitsas, Kondylakis and Roidis in the language of their time with their own language under the text, A2 and B1 learners starting with the Stories, and anyone with their own EPUBs.
Best for everyday spoken Greek
Street interviews in Athens with Greek and English subtitles on a channel of 106,000 subscribers and 578 videos, plus 2 podcasts by Dimitris Hall and Marilena Salamanou: the main one at episode 292, and Super Easy Greek for Beginners at episode 98. It is input, not a course: no order to learn in and no feedback on your own Greek.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A2 learners and up who want to hear how Athenians talk, with subtitles in both languages; the beginners’ podcast from A1.
Best free course with a library card
Mango’s Greek (Modern) course comes with native audio and grammar and culture notes, per its Greek page, which gives no lesson count and no level. Many US public libraries give it free with a library card, which makes it a second free course beside Duolingo, with the grammar noted where Duolingo leaves it out.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A0 to A2 learners with a US library card who want a course with grammar notes at no cost.
Best for video input
Greek 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 Greek YouTube video that has subtitles, Easy Greek’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 Greek YouTube into listening practice.
Best for reading with audio
LingQ has a Greek library of lessons with audio and matching transcripts, its Mini Stories course among them, and turns any Greek article, ebook or YouTube video into a lesson with lookups. LingQ does not publish the size of the Greek library, and the free tier is a demo.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A2 and up, reading and listening with lookups, from the Mini Stories to whatever you import, with the budget for it.
Best sentence drill
Clozemaster drills Greek from English in gap-fill sentences drawn from Tatoeba, whose Greek corpus holds 42,780 sentences, from a 100 Most Common collection upward. Clozemaster itself says it is not meant for the complete beginner: know the alphabet, the pronunciation and some basic grammar first. Add it from A2, not before.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Ten minutes a day from A2, drilling the cases and verb forms in real sentences.
Best tutors without a subscription
italki lists 161 Greek tutors, sold lesson by lesson with no subscription, with trial lessons from US$5 to US$25 and hourly rates we saw up to US$40 on its Greek page. It is the pay as you go alternative to Preply for a lesson now and then; Preply has about 4 times the tutors.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A lesson now and then, paid one at a time, from A1 to exam preparation.
Best vocabulary trainer
Free spaced repetition for the words you meet and their spelling: reading is regular, but the i sound has 6 spellings, and a word’s gender and stress have to be learned with it. It teaches nothing on its own, so plan on making your own cards or checking a shared deck before you rely on it.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Keeping the words you met in videos, books and lessons, with their gender and spelling, at any level.
Duolingo + Language Transfer + Pimsleur
Learn the alphabet in the first week with Duolingo’s tracing tool, then do one lesson a day; with a US library card, Mango Languages is a second free course. Listen to Language Transfer’s Complete Greek beside it, a track a day, for the cases and the verb explained. Pimsleur is the paid choice if you want to speak before you read.
Easy Greek + Clozemaster + Preply
Keep your course going to A2: Duolingo stops there by the tracker’s label and Pimsleur after Level 2, so the grammar past that comes from Language Transfer and the Klik sta Ellinika textbooks. Watch Easy Greek and listen to its beginners’ podcast, drill the cases in Clozemaster’s sentences, and book a Preply tutor once a week who keeps the lesson in Greek. Start reading with Lingo7’s Stories at A2, then graded readers you import; its shelf of classics starts at C1 in practice, by our estimate.
Lingo7 + Language Reactor + Preply
Courses thin out here. Read your own books in Lingo7 and, from C1, the Karkavitsas, Kondylakis and Roidis on its shelf in the language of their time, watch Greek YouTube with Language Reactor, move from Easy Greek to ERTflix and the news, and talk about all of it with your tutor. With a Certificate of Attainment date, work through the Centre’s sample papers with a tutor who has taught the exam.
| App | Role | Levels | Coverage for Greek | Free | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duolingo | Best free daily course | A0 to A2 | One course, Standard Modern Greek; A2 by an unofficial tracker’s label; 95 units, 1,678 lessons and 3,195 words by that tracker, no Stories | Every lesson; Energy cap on a phone | US$13 to 17 a month, US$7 to 10 a month yearly |
| Language Transfer | Best free audio course | A0 to A2 | Complete Greek, 120 audio tracks; no CEFR claim, about A2 with B1 grammar by our estimate; labelled complete, not unfinished | All of it | Free |
| Pimsleur | Best for speaking from lesson one | A0 to A2 | Modern Greek; 2 levels, 60 half-hour lessons; no vendor CEFR claim, A1 to A2 by our estimate | 7 day trial | About US$20 a month, or from US$150 a level |
| Preply | Best live tutors | A1 to C2 | 617 Greek tutors; averages by tutor country on the page, Greece US$28 an hour and Cyprus US$33 | None | Average US$27 an hour, subscription only |
| Lingo7 | Best for reading real books | A2 to C1 | 72 public domain books, by our estimate all at C1, 48 Greek originals, 23 translations and 1 Ancient Greek school reader, in the spelling and often the katharevousa of their time, with monotonic accents except the Ancient Greek reader; 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 Greece accent; translation into 49 languages | First page of each book | US$5 a month, US$2.50 a month yearly |
| Easy Greek | Best for everyday spoken Greek | A1 to C1 | Street interviews in Athens with Greek and English subtitles; 578 videos, 106,000 YouTube subscribers; podcast at episode 292 (24 September 2026), Super Easy Greek for Beginners at episode 98 (27 September 2026) | Videos and podcast audio | Free; Patreon from €6 a month |
| Mango Languages | Best free course with a library card | A0 to A2 | Greek (Modern) course with grammar and culture notes; no lesson count or level published | Free through many US libraries | Free via many libraries; US$10 a month yearly |
| Language Reactor | Best for video input | B1 to C2 | Any Greek 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 | A2 to C1 | Greek library with audio and transcripts, size not published; Mini Stories; imports of any text or YouTube video | 20 saved words | US$15 a month, US$10 a month yearly |
| Clozemaster | Best sentence drill | A2 to C1 | Greek from English; collections from the 100 Most Common words upward; sentences from Tatoeba, 42,780 in Greek | 30 sentences a day | US$13 a month, US$7 a month yearly |
| italki | Best tutors without a subscription | A1 to C2 | 161 Greek tutors; trial lessons US$5 to US$25; pay as you go | None | Trials US$5 to 25; up to US$40 an hour |
| Anki | Best vocabulary trainer | A1 to C1 | Your own decks for gender, stress and spelling; shared Greek decks not checked | All of it (iOS US$24.99) | Free; iOS US$24.99 once |
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 Greek books you can open in the app, and short Greek 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 Greek course has 95 units and 1,678 lessons by an unofficial tracker’s count, with an alphabet tool that traces the letters. On its own it is not enough: the tracker labels the course A2, Greek was not among the 9 courses Duolingo took to B2 in April 2026, there are no Stories, grammar goes unexplained on mobile per a 2022 duoplanet review, 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 Language Transfer for the grammar, Easy Greek for listening, and a person to talk to once you can put a few sentences together.
For most learners, standard Greek: every app teaches Standard Modern Greek, which is also what schools in Cyprus teach. Cypriot Greek, the everyday variety of about 700,000 people, doubles its consonants, keeps older verb forms and borrows from Old French, Italian and English, per Wikipedia. For Cyprus, add a tutor from the island (Preply’s Greek page lists them at US$33 an hour on average) and The Online Greek Tutor’s videos, which cover Cypriot Greek. Cyprus asks for B1 Greek for naturalisation and accepts the Certificate of Attainment or the University of Cyprus School of Modern Greek exam, per a guide updated in September 2026.
None of them is an exam course, so start with the Centre for the Greek Language’s free sample papers, use the Klik sta Ellinika textbooks (A1 to Γ1, €14 to €54) for the syllabus, and book a Preply tutor who has taught the exam. The Certificate tests A1 to Γ2 once a year in mid May at centres worldwide, 21 of them in the USA, for €90 (A1 to B1) or €100 (B2 to Γ2); the next full sitting is 11 to 13 May 2027, registration 1 February to 14 March 2027. Greek naturalisation asks for B1 plus a citizenship test; the Golden Visa asks for no Greek.
Reading grows your vocabulary, and Greek is regular to read once you know the letters, with a stress mark on every longer word. It will not teach you γ, δ, θ and χ. Read with audio. Lingo7, our app, puts a translation under each sentence of a Greek book, reads it aloud in a Greece accent and drills the words you save in 12 kinds of exercise, for US$5 a month or US$30 a year. Its Greek shelf starts at C1 in practice: all 72 books are C1 by our estimate, many in katharevousa, so begin with its Stories at A2, then an e-book reader you import, such as Omilo’s Lydia, and reach Karkavitsas’ Λόγια της Πλώρης at C1.
For the grammar, Language Transfer’s Complete Greek, 120 tracks with nothing to pay. For a daily course and the alphabet, Duolingo, every lesson free with Energy capping study on a phone; with a US library card, Mango Languages. For listening, Easy Greek’s videos and its beginners’ podcast, and Linguatree’s slow Greek. For words, the Triantafyllidis dictionary on the Greek Language Portal; for review, Clozemaster’s 30 free sentences a day or Anki. Babbel, Busuu and Speak, the courses other guides recommend, have no Greek. For a tutor you pay: Preply, on a subscription, or italki with none.
No. Modern Greek is the demotic that became official in 1976, written since 1982 in the monotonic system; ancient Greek has a dative case, infinitives and the polytonic accents and breathings that modern Greek dropped, though the alphabet and much of the vocabulary carry over. US colleges enrol 11,433 students in ancient Greek against 757 in modern (MLA, Fall 2021), so check that a course, a tutor or a textbook says Modern. Ancient Greek helps you read the katharevousa of the free classics, not order a coffee; if you want to speak, learn modern Greek from modern material, and come to Plato’s Απολογία in a katharevousa translation on Lingo7’s shelf at C1, by our estimate.
Yes, first: 24 letters, and since 1982 a written stress mark on every word of more than one syllable, so reading aloud is regular once you know the digraphs. The hard part comes later, in writing: the i sound has 6 spellings (ι, η, υ, ει, οι, υι). Duolingo’s tracing tool teaches the letters with their sounds, per a 2022 duoplanet review, Rosetta Stone’s beginner tier starts with the alphabet and Omilo gives a free alphabet e-book; Pimsleur and Language Transfer are audio, so read Language Transfer’s free transcript to see the words you hear. Drop transliteration in the first week.
Read your first page free, in Greek.