Home / Best apps to learn a language / Russian
Prices and language coverage checked in September 2026.
Russian has 210 million speakers, 133 million of them native, by Ethnologue’s 2026 count; it is official in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and about 1 million people speak it at home in the US. There is one standard, and no app teaches a regional variety. What Russian asks of an app is a new alphabet of 33 letters, a stress the spelling does not show, and grammar: six cases, verbs in aspect pairs and verbs of motion.
The big apps give Russian less than they give Spanish or German. Duolingo’s course ends at early A2, Babbel’s at A2 per a May 2026 review, and Speak and Language Transfer have no Russian at all; Busuu goes to B2. Much of the best free teaching is on YouTube and in podcasts made by Russian teachers. So the apps below are compared on how they teach reading and stress, whether they explain the cases, where they stop, what is left free on day 30 and how much Russian you hear.
The US Foreign Service Institute puts Russian in category III (of I to IV), about 1,100 class hours for an English speaker to reach professional working proficiency.
The alphabet has 33 letters: Busuu has a side course on them, Pimsleur about 100 reading lessons and Russian For Free a free “How to read Russian” course, while Clozemaster, LingQ and Language Reactor assume you can already read. The harder part is stress. It is often unpredictable and not normally marked in writing, and an unstressed o is reduced, so a word can sound unlike its spelling. OpenRussian, Wiktionary and the stress-marked Russian Core 5000 deck shared on AnkiWeb mark it. Learn every word with its stress, and check it in OpenRussian.
Russian nouns, adjectives and pronouns change their endings across six cases, most verbs come in imperfective and perfective pairs, and verbs of motion follow rules of their own. Be Fluent in Russian and OpenRussian’s 54 grammar articles explain this in English, and RussianLessons.net covers all six cases for free; Duolingo, Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone leave it to patterns. For drills, Clozemaster has Russian sets for aspect, verbs of motion and participles. Learn every noun with its gender and every verb with its aspect partner.
Duolingo’s Russian path ends at early A2 by its own section labels, and Russian is not among the 9 courses it took to B2 in April 2026. Babbel stops at A2, per a May 2026 review. Busuu’s course page says A1 to B2, and Mango maps its course to A1 to B1. Pimsleur names no level and calls Level 5 intermediate. Speak and Language Transfer, which other guides in this series recommend, have no Russian course. Plan on a tutor and podcasts from A2, and on books, native video and a tutor past B2.
Duolingo, Busuu, Babbel, Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone all still sell Russian in September 2026. Preply has blocked tutors located in Russia since March 2022, and its price table lists tutors from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Moldova; italki still lists many tutors who live in Russia. Visa said in March 2022 that cards issued outside Russia would no longer work within it, and Mastercard did the same. Sites hosted in Russia may be slow or unreachable from the US. Pay vendors based outside Russia.
The TORFL (ТРКИ) has six levels, A1 to C2. US candidates take it online, remotely proctored by St Petersburg University through torflrussian.com, at US$164 for each session it lists for 28 and 29 October and 9 and 10 December 2026; we found no campus sitting in the US. There is no AP Russian: high school students take NEWL Russian, an online exam modelled on the AP exams. The ACTFL OPI is offered in Russian. Book the exam your school or employer names.
Best free daily course
The Russian course from English is 95 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 Russian is 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 Russian habit from zero; on a laptop, without the Energy cap.
Best structured course
Busuu has the deepest Russian course of the big apps: 245+ lessons, A1 to B2 on the course page, with a side course on the 33 letters of the alphabet and one for travel. Speakers in the community correct your written and spoken answers. It is the course we would pick for most learners.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A1 to B2 learners who want a syllabus from the alphabet up and a speaker checking their answers.
Best for speaking from lesson one
Pimsleur’s Russian is 150 audio lessons in 5 levels, about 80 hours: you answer out loud, and words come back at spaced intervals. About 100 reading lessons teach Cyrillic beside the audio, and Level 5 adds a short story. Pimsleur publishes no CEFR level and calls Level 5 intermediate.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A trip in two months, a long commute, or anyone who wants to speak Russian before they read it.
Best free grammar videos
A grammar channel of about 465,000 subscribers that explains Russian in English in numbered lessons, the latest on 25 September 2026, with a podcast (episode 243 on 24 September 2026). It is the free grammar teacher we would pair with Duolingo or Busuu.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A1 to B2 learners who want the cases and verbs explained in English, for free, beside a course.
Best learner podcast
Max’s Comprehensible Russian Podcast is Russian you can follow, A2 to B2 by his own label, and it is still running: episode 377 came out on 18 September 2026, and the YouTube channel had new videos on 24 and 26 September. It is the free listening we would add once a course has given you the first few hundred words.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A2 to B2 learners who want free Russian listening they can follow, with a new episode every week or two.
Best dictionary for stress
A free Russian dictionary that marks the stress on every word and every form, with declension and conjugation tables, frequency ranks and CEFR tags. Since 19 August 2026 it has a grammar module of 54 articles and 2,000+ exercises, most articles free. Keep it open beside whatever else you use.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Every learner at every level, checking the stress and the case forms of any word they meet.
Best live tutors
Preply lists 1,209 Russian tutors from 38 countries, from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Moldova among others, and has blocked tutors located in Russia since March 2022. Below B1, pick a trained teacher who can explain the cases in your language; from B1 on, a weekly lesson gives you a person who hears your Russian and corrects it.
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
Mango’s Russian is 528 lessons in 5 units and 41 chapters, by a June 2026 count, built on conversations, and Mango maps its 5 units to A1 to B1. Many US public libraries give it free with a library card, which makes it a second free course beside Duolingo, and one that goes further.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A0 to B1 learners of Russian with a US library card.
Best for reading real books
Lingo7 puts a translation in your own language under every sentence of a Russian book (49 languages), reads it aloud and drills saved words in 12 kinds of exercise. It has no Russian shelf, so you read its Stories, then the classics you import, free as EPUB from Russian Wikisource. It is our app, and it has no course.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A2 learners reading the Stories, and B1 and up readers who import Chekhov or Pushkin from Russian Wikisource and want their own language under the text.
Best for video input
Russian subtitles and a translation into your language side by side on YouTube, with a dictionary on click, free for subtitles and lookups. Russian YouTube for learners runs from Real Russian Club (728,000 subscribers) to Easy Russian’s street interviews. 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 Russian YouTube into listening practice.
Best sentence drill
Clozemaster’s Russian sets drill what courses leave thin (aspect, verbs of motion and the participles), beside frequency lists that run past 50,000 words. Clozemaster itself says it is most useful for intermediate and advanced learners, or once you know the alphabet. Add it from A2, not before.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Ten minutes a day from A2, drilling aspect and verbs of motion in real sentences.
Duolingo + Busuu + Be Fluent in Russian
Learn the 33 letters first, with Busuu’s alphabet course or Pimsleur’s reading lessons, then pick one course and do it every day: Busuu for a syllabus to B2 and a speaker correcting you, Duolingo if the game keeps you going. Watch Be Fluent in Russian’s free lessons for the grammar the apps leave out, and look up the stress of every new word in OpenRussian. Pimsleur is the paid choice if you want to speak before you read; with a US library card, Mango is free.
Russian With Max + Clozemaster + Preply
Keep your course going to B1: Duolingo stops at early A2, so move on to Busuu, or to Mango if your library has it. Listen to Russian With Max every week, drill aspect and verbs of motion in Clozemaster, and book a Preply tutor once a week. Start reading with Lingo7’s Stories at A2, then graded readers or short classics you import, since it has no Russian shelf.
Lingo7 + Language Reactor + Preply
Courses thin out here. Read Chekhov, Turgenev or Tolstoy in Lingo7 from free Russian Wikisource EPUBs or your own books, watch Russian YouTube with Language Reactor, move from learner podcasts to Russian Progress’s videos in Russian, and talk about all of it with your tutor. With a TORFL date, book a tutor who has taught that exam.
| App | Role | Levels | Coverage for Russian | Free | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duolingo | Best free daily course | A0 to A2 | Standard Russian; early A2 by Duolingo’s section labels; 95 units and 1,613 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 |
| Busuu | Best structured course | A1 to B2 | 245+ lessons, A1 to B2 on the course page; side courses on the alphabet and travel; no AI conversations for Russian | Course with ads, not stated for Russian | US$10 to 15 a month, US$6 to 12 a month yearly |
| Pimsleur | Best for speaking from lesson one | A0 to A2 | 150 lessons in 5 levels, about 80 hours; about 100 reading lessons for Cyrillic; no vendor CEFR claim | 7 day trial | About US$20 a month, or US$575 once |
| Be Fluent in Russian | Best free grammar videos | A1 to B2 | Grammar lessons in English, A1 to B2 by our estimate; a podcast; a paid platform of 5 levels and courses on the cases and prefixes | YouTube lessons and podcast | Free videos; platform US$20 a month |
| Russian With Max | Best learner podcast | A2 to B2 | A2 to B2 by the author; podcast to episode 377; members add transcripts, 180+ Listen and Respond and 100+ shadowing episodes | Podcast and videos | Free podcast; $16 a month or $239 once |
| OpenRussian | Best dictionary for stress | A1 to C2 | Stress on every form; declension and conjugation tables; 54 grammar articles and 2,000+ exercises since August 2026, part of them Pro | Dictionary and most articles | Free; Pro price not shown |
| Preply | Best live tutors | A1 to C2 | 1,209 Russian tutors from 38 countries; tutors located in Russia blocked since March 2022 | None | Average US$21 an hour, subscription only |
| Mango Languages | Best free course with a library card | A0 to B1 | 5 units, 41 chapters and 528 lessons by a June 2026 count; A1 to B1 by Mango’s scale; slang and superstitions side courses | Free through many US libraries | Free via many libraries; US$10 a month yearly |
| Lingo7 | Best for reading real books | A2 to C1 | No Russian public domain shelf; 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 Russia accent; translation into 49 languages | First page of each book | US$5 a month, US$2.50 a month yearly |
| Language Reactor | Best for video input | B1 to C2 | Any Russian 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 |
| Clozemaster | Best sentence drill | A2 to C1 | Frequency lists past 50,000 words; sets for aspect, verbs of motion and participles; no CEFR labels | 30 sentences a day | US$13 a month, US$7 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: short Russian 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: Russian from English is 95 units in an Intro section, two A1 sections and an A2 section, by an unofficial tracker. On its own it is not enough: the course ends at early A2, has no Stories and no Video Call for Russian, and Russian is not among the 9 courses Duolingo took to B2 in April 2026; on a phone, Energy stops free study after about 2 to 3 lessons a day, by a third-party count (the web version runs on hearts). Add Busuu for a course to B2, Be Fluent in Russian for the cases, OpenRussian for the stress and a tutor once you can put a few sentences together.
Yes, before any app that makes you read: the alphabet has 33 letters, and Clozemaster, LingQ and Language Reactor assume you know them. Busuu has a separate alphabet course beside its Russian course, Babbel says it walks you “through each letter and its pronunciation”, and Pimsleur’s Russian has about 100 reading lessons, which Pimsleur says help you acquire the script. For free, Russian For Free has a “How to read Russian” course, RussianLessons.net starts with the alphabet and handwriting, and a 33 card Anki deck gives the print and handwritten letters with their sounds.
None of the apps is an exam course. US candidates take the TORFL online, proctored by St Petersburg University through torflrussian.com: speaking with an examiner over Zoom, then writing, lexis and grammar, reading and listening, with results in 5 to 7 working days. Its event listing gives US$164 for the sessions of 28 and 29 October and 9 and 10 December 2026. Zlatoust sells an online test bank by level. For US high school students, NEWL Russian from American Councils is the exam modelled on AP; there is no AP Russian. Beyond that, book a tutor who has taught the exam.
Reading grows your vocabulary and shows you the case endings in every sentence, but ordinary Russian text does not mark the stress, so the page alone will not tell you how a word sounds. Read with audio, or with stress-marked readers such as Zlatoust’s. Lingo7, our app, puts a translation under each sentence of a Russian book, reads it aloud in a Russia accent and drills the words you save in 12 kinds of exercise, for US$5 a month or US$30 a year. It has no Russian shelf, so begin with its Stories, then import the classics free as EPUB from Russian Wikisource, such as Chekhov’s stories or Pushkin’s Повести Белкина; Project Gutenberg has only about 10 Russian books.
For a course, Duolingo, with every lesson free and Energy capping study on a phone, to early A2, or Mango, free with many US library cards, to about B1 by Mango’s scale; Busuu’s other course pages give the whole course free with ads, and its Russian page does not say. For the grammar, Be Fluent in Russian’s YouTube lessons and RussianLessons.net. For stress and words, OpenRussian and the stress-marked Russian Core 5000 deck for Anki. For listening, Russian With Max, Easy Russian and Real Russian Club’s Slow Russian. For a tutor you pay: Preply from US$4 an hour on a subscription, or italki with no subscription.
Be Fluent in Russian explains the grammar in English in free YouTube lessons, with a paid Russian Cases Mastery course on its US$19.99 a month platform, and OpenRussian added 54 grammar articles, most of them free, on 19 August 2026. RussianLessons.net covers all six cases for free, and Amazing Russian has video sections on verbs of motion and aspect. For drills, Clozemaster has Russian sets for “Perfective vs. Imperfective” and “Verbs of Motion”. Babbel explains the grammar in English but stops at A2, per a May 2026 review; Duolingo, Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone leave the cases to patterns.
Kuban State University’s guidance for the TORFL counts about 440 to 460 academic hours of study from zero to B1, and about 380 more for B2. Apps alone do not get you there: Duolingo stops at early A2, Babbel at A2 by a May 2026 review and Busuu at B2 by its course page. Plan on a daily course for the first months, a tutor and a podcast from A2, and reading and native video every week after that.
Read your first page free, in Russian.