Home / Best apps to learn a language / Swahili
Prices and language coverage checked in October 2026.
Swahili has 5.3 million native speakers and 92 million second-language speakers, by Ethnologue’s 27th edition as cited by Wikipedia, and estimates of all speakers run from 40 million to 200 million. It is the national language of Tanzania, official in Kenya and, since 2022, Uganda, and a working language of the African Union. In US colleges it is the most studied language of sub-Saharan Africa: 1,467 enrolments in fall 2021 against 279 for Yoruba, per the MLA. What Swahili asks of an app is the noun classes, a verb built from prefixes and a choice between Tanzanian and Kenyan usage.
Babbel, Busuu, Rosetta Stone, Mondly and Speak have no Swahili course, Duolingo’s is A1 by an unofficial tracker’s label and Pimsleur sells one level. Much of the best material is free: Language Transfer’s audio course, the US government’s 1963 FSI course and the African Storybook project’s 629 Swahili picture books. So the apps below are compared on which variety they teach, whether they explain the noun classes, where they stop, what is free on day 30 and who corrects your speech.
The US Foreign Service Institute puts Swahili in category II (of I to IV), about 900 class hours for an English speaker to reach professional working proficiency.
Standard Swahili, Kiswahili sanifu, is based on the Zanzibar dialect, chosen at a conference in Mombasa in June 1928. Tanzanian usage stays close to it, while Kenyan speech mixes in more English and Sheng, the slang of Nairobi’s youth, per a June 2026 guide, and everyday words differ, per a learners’ blog: a traffic jam is foleni in Tanzania and jam in Kenya. Duolingo’s course is Tanzanian; Pimsleur and Lingo7’s one voice are Kenyan, and SwahiliPod101’s series titles point to Kenya. Learn the standard, and pick tutors and media from the country you are heading to.
Every Swahili noun belongs to a class, about 16 of them by the Bantu numbering, and learners meet them as singular and plural pairs such as m/wa, ki/vi and ji/ma, plus the locatives. The class sets the prefix on the adjectives, verbs and possessives that agree with the noun. Language Transfer explains this out loud, the Foreign Service Institute’s 1963 course and the Peace Corps manuals in print, and Mango has grammar notes; Duolingo, Memrise, Pimsleur and Glossika leave it to pattern. Learn every noun with its plural.
A Swahili verb carries its subject, tense and object as prefixes: anakupenda is a- (he or she), -na- (present), -ku- (you) and -penda (love), “he or she loves you”, per Wikipedia’s grammar article. There are no articles and no gender in the European sense, and unlike most Bantu languages Swahili is not tonal: 5 vowels, the Latin alphabet and the stress on the penultimate syllable. About 40% of its vocabulary comes from Arabic, by a table on Wikipedia. Build verbs by changing one prefix at a time, out loud.
Duolingo’s Swahili is A1 by an unofficial tracker’s label, with no Stories, and was last revised in July 2025. Pimsleur sells one level of 30 lessons, and Language Transfer reaches about A2 by our estimate. Memrise says “All levels” and Mango gives no level; SwahiliPod101’s pathways run from Level 1 to Level 5 and Glossika’s sentences from A1 to C1, both by their own labels. Babbel, Busuu, Rosetta Stone, Mondly and Speak have no Swahili at all. Plan on a tutor, the news and books from A2.
We found no international Swahili exam for foreigners: Avant’s STAMP WS tests writing and speaking, Cambridge IGCSE Swahili (0262) is for school students, and universities run placement tests. Kenya’s citizenship by registration, after 7 years of lawful residence, asks that you “understand and speak Kiswahili or a local dialect”, with no test format in the Act; Tanzania’s naturalisation asks for “adequate knowledge of Kiswahili or English”, per its consulate in Denmark. A Kenyan Class D work permit asks for no language. Ask the office you apply to what proof it takes.
Best free daily course
The Swahili course from English, Duolingo’s first African language course, was built with the Peace Corps’ language trainers in Tanzania and launched on 3 March 2017. An unofficial tracker counts 73 units and 1,039 lessons and labels it A1, with no Stories. It builds a daily habit and first words in a Tanzanian setting, then stops.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A free daily Swahili habit from zero to A1; on a laptop, without the Energy cap.
Best free audio course
Complete Swahili is 110 free audio tracks, about 15.5 hours, in which you pause and answer out loud while the noun classes and the prefixes of the verb are explained. It carries no level label; by our estimate it reaches about A2. It is the free grammar course to start with, before or beside Duolingo.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Anyone from zero who wants the noun classes and the verb explained by ear, free, before or beside any other app.
Best live tutors
Preply lists 880 Swahili tutors, from Tanzania and from Kenya, so you can book the variety you are learning. Below B1, pick a trained teacher who can explain the noun classes in your language; from B1 on, a weekly lesson gives you a person who hears your Swahili and corrects it.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Anyone from A1 who needs a person to talk to in the Swahili of Kenya or Tanzania, and to explain the noun classes.
Best structured course
Innovative Language’s Swahili course runs from Absolute Beginner to Advanced by its own labels, with no CEFR mapping, in pathways such as Level 1 Swahili, 25 lessons and about 4 hours, set in Kenya by its series titles. It is the structured course to take once Duolingo stops, and it thins out at the advanced end.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Beginners who want Swahili lessons in order, by audio and video, past the point where Duolingo stops.
Best for phrases with native video
Memrise has an official Swahili course of 300+ lessons, 3,000+ words pronounced by native speakers, 130+ videos and 75+ AI conversations, per its Swahili page. It says “All levels” and gives no CEFR level or variety, and the page does not explain the noun classes, so pair it with Language Transfer.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: The first few hundred Swahili words and phrases with native voices, at the yearly price.
Best free course with a library card
Mango’s Swahili course is built on conversations, with grammar notes and culture notes, per its Swahili page, which gives no lesson count, level or variety. Many US public libraries give it free with a library card, which makes it a second free course beside Duolingo; without a library, it is US$10 a month on the yearly plan.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Beginners 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 Swahili book (49 languages), reads it aloud and drills saved words in 12 kinds of exercise. It has no Swahili shelf, so you read its Stories, then books you import, such as the African Storybook project’s free EPUBs. It is our app, and it has no course.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A2 learners reading the Stories or African Storybook’s free EPUBs, and B1 and up readers who import their own Swahili books and want their own language under the text.
Best for speaking from lesson one
Pimsleur’s Swahili is one level of 30 audio lessons of 30 minutes in “Standard Swahili as spoken in and around Nairobi, Kenya”, per its page: you answer out loud, and words come back at spaced intervals. It publishes no CEFR level and sells no Level 2, so it is a month of speaking practice, not a course.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A trip to Kenya in a month, a commute, or anyone who wants to say Swahili out loud before they read it.
Best for shadowing sentences
Glossika labels its Swahili A1 to C1, with 5,000+ words and sentences you hear and repeat aloud, IPA under each sentence and a placement test, per its Swahili page. It explains no grammar, names no variety and costs US$19.99 a month for one language, with nothing free after the trial.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A2 learners and up who want Swahili sentences in their ears and mouth every day, and can pay for it.
Best for video input
Swahili subtitles and a translation into your language side by side on YouTube, with a dictionary on click, free for subtitles and lookups. It works on any Swahili video with subtitles, from BBC News Swahili and DW Kiswahili to Swahili Kingdom’s lessons. 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 Swahili YouTube and the news into listening practice.
Best vocabulary trainer
Free spaced repetition: Anki brings each card back just before you would forget it. We could not check its shared Swahili decks, since AnkiWeb’s search asked for a login on 5 October 2026, so plan on making your own cards. It is the cheapest place to keep the words you meet, 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.
Duolingo + Language Transfer + Memrise
Do Duolingo every day for the basics in a Tanzanian setting, and listen to Language Transfer’s Complete Swahili for the noun classes and the verb, answering out loud. Add Memrise for words with native voices and SwahiliPod101’s free Survival Phrases. Pimsleur is the paid choice if you want to speak Nairobi Swahili before you read; with a US library card, Mango Languages is free.
SwahiliPod101 + Preply + Anki
Keep a course going to B1: Duolingo stops at A1 by the tracker’s label, so move on to SwahiliPod101’s Level 3 Swahili pathway or the free FSI course. Book a Preply tutor from Kenya or Tanzania once a week, and put every new noun into Anki with its plural. Start reading with Lingo7’s Stories at A2, then African Storybook’s Level 3 to 5 books you import, since Lingo7 has no Swahili shelf.
Lingo7 + Language Reactor + Preply
Courses thin out here. Read Kenyan set books or Tanzanian novels in Lingo7 from your own EPUB or PDF copies, watch BBC News Swahili and DW Kiswahili with Language Reactor, read Taifa Leo or Mwananchi, and talk about all of it with your tutor. If you apply for Kenyan citizenship, which asks that you understand and speak Kiswahili or a local dialect, practise with a tutor from Kenya.
| App | Role | Levels | Coverage for Swahili | Free | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duolingo | Best free daily course | A0 to A1 | Tanzanian setting, built with the Peace Corps in Tanzania; A1 by an unofficial tracker’s label; 73 units and 1,039 lessons 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 Swahili, 110 audio tracks, about 15.5 hours; no CEFR claim, about A2 by our estimate; no variety stated | All of it | Free |
| Preply | Best live tutors | A1 to C2 | 880 Swahili tutors from Tanzania and Kenya; an average of US$10 an hour by the page’s FAQ | None | Average US$10 an hour, subscription only |
| SwahiliPod101 | Best structured course | A0 to B1 | Kenyan settings, no variety stated; Absolute Beginner to Advanced by the vendor’s labels, no CEFR mapping; Level 1, 3 and 5 pathways of 25 lessons each | First 3 lessons of each pathway | US$2 to 13 a month on a 24 month plan |
| Memrise | Best for phrases with native video | A0 to A2 | Official Swahili course; 300+ lessons, 3,000+ words, 130+ videos, 75+ AI conversations; “All levels”, no CEFR mapping, no variety stated | Limited, with ads | US$25 a month, US$5 a month yearly |
| Mango Languages | Best free course with a library card | From A0 | No variety, lesson count or level stated; conversations with grammar and culture notes | Free through many US libraries | Free via many libraries; US$10 a month yearly |
| Lingo7 | Best for reading real books | A2 to C1 | No Swahili 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 Kenya accent, one voice; 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 | Kenyan, “Standard Swahili as spoken in and around Nairobi”; Level 1 only: 30 lessons of 30 minutes; no vendor CEFR claim | 7 day trial | About US$20 a month, or US$150 once |
| Glossika | Best for shadowing sentences | A2 to C1 | 5,000+ words and sentences, A1 to C1 by Glossika’s label; IPA under each sentence; no variety stated | 7 day trial | US$20 a month, students US$9 |
| Language Reactor | Best for video input | B1 to C2 | Any Swahili YouTube video with subtitles; few Swahili titles on Netflix, which works with known bugs in September 2026 | Most of it | US$6 a month, US$3.33 a month yearly |
| Anki | Best vocabulary trainer | A1 to C1 | Shared Swahili decks not checked (AnkiWeb’s search asked for a login); your own cards, with any field you choose | All of it (iOS US$24.99) | Free; iOS US$25 once |
Prices are US store or vendor prices as of October 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 Swahili 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 October 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 Swahili course from English, built with the Peace Corps’ trainers in Tanzania, is 73 units and 1,039 lessons by an unofficial tracker’s count. On its own it is not enough: the tracker labels it A1, it has no Stories, it has not been revised since July 2025, the noun classes are taught by pattern, and 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 Language Transfer for the grammar, African Storybook’s free books for reading and a tutor once you can put a few sentences together.
For most learners, standard Swahili: Kiswahili sanifu, based on the Zanzibar dialect and chosen at a conference in Mombasa in June 1928. Tanzanian usage stays close to it, while Kenyan speech mixes in more English and Sheng, Nairobi’s youth slang, per a June 2026 guide, and words differ, per a learners’ blog: a traffic jam is foleni in Tanzania and jam in Kenya, a television luninga and TV. Duolingo was built by Peace Corps trainers in Tanzania; Pimsleur teaches Swahili “as spoken in and around Nairobi”, SwahiliPod101’s series titles point to Kenya and Lingo7’s one voice is Kenyan. On Preply, pick a tutor from the country you are heading to.
We found no international Swahili exam for foreigners. Avant Assessment’s STAMP WS tests writing and speaking in Swahili, Cambridge IGCSE Swahili (0262) is for school students, and universities run their own placement tests. Kenya’s citizenship by registration, after at least 7 years of lawful residence, asks that you are “able to understand and speak Kiswahili or a local dialect”, with no test format in the Act; Tanzania’s naturalisation asks for “adequate knowledge of Kiswahili or English”, per the Tanzanian consulate in Denmark. Kenya’s Class D work permit asks for no language. No app is an exam course; a tutor can rehearse with you.
Yes, and Swahili has free levelled books: the African Storybook project has 629 Swahili picture books in 5 levels by our count, under CC BY 4.0 and downloadable as EPUB. Lingo7, our app, puts a translation under each sentence of a Swahili book, reads it aloud in a Kenya 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 Swahili shelf, so begin with its Stories, then import those storybooks; Project Gutenberg has no Swahili books, and Shaaban Robert, public domain in Tanzania, is still in US copyright. Kenyan school novels such as Ken Walibora’s Siku Njema are bought.
For a course, Duolingo, with every lesson free and Energy capping study on a phone, to A1 by an unofficial tracker’s label; for the grammar, Language Transfer’s 110 free tracks; with a US library card, Mango. SwahiliPod101’s free account keeps the first 3 lessons of every pathway, and Memrise’s free lessons are limited, with ads. For reading, African Storybook’s 629 free books; for listening, BBC News Swahili, DW Kiswahili and the SBS Swahili podcast, 1,019 episodes with the latest on 28 September 2026. For a tutor you pay: Preply on a subscription, or italki with none, with trial lessons from US$5.
Language Transfer’s Complete Swahili explains them out loud, free; the FSI Swahili Basic Course (1963) and the Peace Corps manuals on Live Lingua explain them in print, also free, and Mango has grammar notes. Duolingo, Memrise, Pimsleur and Glossika teach them by pattern. Standard Swahili has about 16 classes by the Bantu numbering, since classes 12 and 13 are missing and none comes above 18, and learners usually meet them as pairs such as m/wa, ki/vi and ji/ma, plus the locatives. Textbooks such as Colloquial Swahili and a tutor fill in the rest.
No. Babbel teaches 13 languages to English speakers, Busuu lists 14 courses and Rosetta Stone 25 languages, English among them, and none of them is Swahili; Mondly’s 41 have Afrikaans as their one sub-Saharan language, and Speak, Praktika, Readle, Beelinguapp, Lingopie and FluentU have no Swahili either (vendor pages, 5 October 2026). LingQ lists Swahili but marks it as not supported. Our picks Duolingo, Memrise, Mango, Glossika, Pimsleur, SwahiliPod101 and Language Transfer teach Swahili; so do Drops, Ling and Clozemaster, which we skip, and Preply and italki have Swahili tutors.
Read your first page free, in Swahili.