Home / Best apps to learn a language / Swedish
Prices and language coverage checked in September 2026.
Swedish has about 10 million native speakers and 3 million who speak it as a second language, by Ethnologue’s 2022 edition, and it is official in Sweden and, beside Finnish, in Finland, where 285,360 people spoke it in 2024. For an English speaker the grammar starts easy: verbs do not change with the person (jag är, du är). What Swedish asks of an app is the ear (two word tones, 18 vowel sounds, several spellings for the sj-sound) and en or ett before every noun.
The big apps are thin here. Busuu, Speak, Language Transfer, Lingopie and Readle have no Swedish, Duolingo’s course ends at early A2 by its own labels, and the Swedish Institute closed its free course in December 2022. The strong material is Swedish-made and free: Sveriges Radio’s easy news every weekday, 8 Sidor’s easy articles and learner podcasts. So the apps below are compared on how far the course goes, what is free on day 30, how much native Swedish you hear and who corrects you.
The US Foreign Service Institute puts Swedish in category I (of I to IV), about 750 class hours for an English speaker to reach professional working proficiency.
Sweden and Finland write the same standard, but they do not sound the same. Finland Swedish has no tonal word accent, its sj-sound is lighter and often close to English “sh”, its tj-sound is close to “ch” in chin, and p, t and k are not aspirated. None of the apps we checked has a Finland Swedish course; Pimsleur names its variety as Rikssvenska, from the Stockholm area. Learn the Swedish of Sweden, and add Finland Swedish listening once you know you are going there.
Swedish nouns are common (en) or neuter (ett), and Babbel’s Swedish page says there are “no simple rules” to tell which. The definite article is an ending that follows the gender (en bil, bilen; ett hus, huset), and the verb comes second in a main clause. Babbel explains this in writing; Duolingo and Pimsleur leave it to patterns. For drills, Clozemaster has an Indefinite Articles set for en and ett. Learn every noun with en or ett and its definite form from the first day.
Swedish tells some words apart by tone alone: anden with tone 1 is the duck, with tone 2 the spirit. It has 9 vowels, each long or short, 18 vowel sounds in all, and one sound written sj, stj, skj or sk (sjuk, stjärna, skjorta, sked). Watch the false friends too: glass is ice cream, barn a child, fart speed and gift both married and poison. Pick apps with native audio beside the text, and listen every day from the first week.
Duolingo’s Swedish ends at early A2, by the labels an unofficial tracker reads from its sections, and the B2 extension of April 2026 left Swedish out. Babbel’s help centre takes Swedish to B1 with extra topics to B2, its deepest Nordic course. Pimsleur has one Swedish level of 30 lessons, and Michel Thomas one Foundation course that ends at “basic Swedish” in the vendor’s words. Past A2, plan on easy news, podcasts, graded readers and a tutor.
Swedex, from Folkuniversitetet, is two tests, A2B1 and B2C1, at 3,125 kr and 3,850 kr in Sweden, and it ends on 31 December 2026. TISUS, Stockholm University’s test for university entry, costs 2,380 kr in Sweden and 2,875 kr abroad, and the university does not tie it to CEFR. Since 6 June 2026 citizenship asks for Swedish at B1 for reading and listening and A2 for speaking and writing. Check which proof your office accepts before you book.
Best free daily course
The Swedish course ends at early A2 by the labels Duolingo gives its sections, as an unofficial tracker reads them: 85 units and 1,459 lessons, unchanged since July 2025, with no Stories. It teaches en and ett and the definite endings by pattern. It builds a daily habit for the first months, then hands you to Babbel or to listening.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A free daily Swedish habit from zero to about A2; on a laptop, without the Energy cap.
Best structured course
Babbel’s help centre takes Swedish “up to level B1 with extra topics up to level B2”, its deepest Nordic course: Danish and Norwegian stop at A2. The lessons explain the two genders and word order and teach pronunciation rules from the first lesson. It is the paid syllabus we would pick for Swedish, with a tutor added at B1.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A1 to B1 learners who want en and ett, word order and pronunciation explained in order, no games and no ads, and will pay for it.
Best podcast course
Joakim, from Stockholm, teaches spoken Swedish in 200+ podcast episodes and 200+ video lessons, with an Absolute Beginner course that starts from zero, and the whole podcast catalogue is free. The YouTube channel has 49,000 subscribers and posted a new video on 21 September 2026. It is the free audio course we would pair with Duolingo.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A0 to B1 learners, by our estimate, who want a free audio course in spoken Swedish, with paid notes if they want them.
Best for daily easy news
Sveriges Radio’s news “på lätt svenska” for people new to Sweden: a short episode every weekday, the latest on 28 September 2026, and 2,676 in the archive. Klartext, the same broadcaster’s easier news, runs every weekday too. It is the free daily listening we would add from A2, with 8 Sidor for the text.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A2 and B1 learners who want a few minutes of real Swedish news every weekday, at no cost.
Best for speaking from lesson one
Pimsleur’s Swedish is one level: 30 audio lessons, about 16 hours, in standard Swedish, “Rikssvenska”, which the vendor says evolved from the dialects around Stockholm. You answer out loud, and words come back at spaced intervals. It is a first month of speaking, not a course to B1, and Pimsleur publishes no CEFR level.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A trip in a month, a long commute, or anyone who wants to speak Swedish before they read it.
Best live tutors
Preply lists 116 Swedish tutors, rated 4.95 of 5 by 2,186 customers. Swedes switch to English easily (Sweden is 8th of 123 in EF’s 2025 English index), so a tutor is the most reliable way to keep talking in Swedish. Below B1, pick a teacher who can explain in your language; from B1 on, a weekly lesson corrects your Swedish.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Anyone from A1 who needs a person to talk to in Swedish, since Swedes are quick to switch to English.
Best for reading real books
Lingo7 puts a translation in your own language under every sentence of a Swedish book (49 languages), reads it aloud and drills saved words in 12 kinds of exercise. By our estimate 9 of its 99 books are B2 and 90 C1; A2 and B1 readers start with the Stories. It is our app, and it has no course.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: B2 and C1 readers who want the Swedish classics with their own language under the text, A2 and B1 learners starting with the Stories, and anyone with their own EPUBs.
Best learner podcast
Fredrik of Swedish Linguist records a slow podcast in Swedish only, every Monday: episode 337 came out on 21 September 2026, and the feed holds 345 items. His site says he helps people “move from intermediate to advanced Swedish”. It is the weekly listening we would add once Radio Sweden på lätt svenska feels easy.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A2 to B2 learners who want one slow, all-Swedish episode a week.
Best for learning by ear
Roger Nyborg teaches two students on the recording, and you learn along with them: 8 hours of audio in Foundation Swedish, which ends at “basic Swedish” in the vendor’s words. Language Transfer has no Swedish, so this is the course to take if you want to learn Swedish by ear.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A0 learners who want to build Swedish sentences by ear, as Language Transfer does for other languages.
Best for reading with audio
LingQ’s Swedish library promises “1000’s of hours” of audio lessons with matching transcripts, in the vendor’s words, and its importer turns any Swedish article, ebook or YouTube video into a lesson. It is the reading and listening tool for Swedish past the courses, and the free tier is a demo.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: B1 and up with a podcast or article habit you want to turn into study, and the budget for it.
Best sentence drill
Fill the blank in real Swedish sentences, ranked by word frequency from the 100 most common words to more than 50,000, with an Indefinite Articles set that drills en and ett. Its Swedish page says it is not for the complete beginner, and the free 30 sentences a day are enough beside a course.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Ten minutes a day from A2 on top of a course, and a drill for en and ett.
Best for video input
Swedish 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 Swedish video with subtitles, Netflix’s Swedish titles 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 Swedish YouTube into listening practice.
Duolingo + Say It In Swedish + Pimsleur
Do Duolingo every day for the habit, and put Say It In Swedish’s free Absolute Beginner episodes in your ears on the commute. Learn every noun with en or ett from the first week. Pimsleur’s one Swedish level or Michel Thomas’ Foundation Swedish is the paid choice if you want to speak before you read.
Babbel + Radio Sweden på lätt svenska + Preply
Duolingo stops at early A2, so move to Babbel if you want the grammar in order to B1 and will pay. Listen to Radio Sweden på lätt svenska every weekday, read one 8 Sidor article with its audio, add Simple Swedish Podcast once a week, and book a Preply tutor once a week. Start reading with Lingo7’s Stories at A2, then graded readers you import; its shelf of classics starts at B2 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 Swedish YouTube with Language Reactor, move from easy news to Sveriges Radio’s news at full speed, and talk about all of it with your tutor. With a TISUS date ahead, book a tutor who has taught that exam.
| App | Role | Levels | Coverage for Swedish | Free | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duolingo | Best free daily course | A0 to A2 | Standard Swedish of Sweden, no Finland Swedish content; early A2 by Duolingo’s labels; 85 units and 1,459 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 |
| Babbel | Best structured course | A1 to B1 | To B1 with extra topics to B2, by Babbel’s help centre; Danish and Norwegian stop at A2; no lesson count published | First lesson per course | About US$9 a month yearly on the web |
| Say It In Swedish | Best podcast course | A0 to B1 | Swedish of Sweden, a host from Stockholm; 200+ podcast episodes and 200+ video lessons; Absolute Beginner and Beginner courses; no CEFR labels, A0 to B1 by our estimate | The full podcast catalogue | Free podcast; Pro US$15 a month, US$10 a month yearly |
| Radio Sweden på lätt svenska | Best for daily easy news | A2 to B1 | Swedish of Sweden; a new episode every weekday, 2,676 in the archive; A2 to B1 by our estimate | All of it | Free |
| Pimsleur | Best for speaking from lesson one | A0 to A1 | Standard Swedish (Rikssvenska); Level 1 only, 30 lessons, about 16 hours; no vendor CEFR claim | 7 day trial | About US$20 a month, or US$150 once |
| Preply | Best live tutors | A1 to C2 | 116 Swedish tutors, 4.95 from 2,186 customers; average US$38 an hour per the page’s FAQ | None | Average US$38 an hour, subscription only |
| Lingo7 | Best for reading real books | A2 to C1 | 99 public domain books, by our estimate 9 at B2 and 90 at 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 Sweden accent; translation into 49 languages | First page of each book | US$5 a month, US$2.50 a month yearly |
| Simple Swedish Podcast | Best learner podcast | A2 to B2 | Swedish only, spoken slowly; weekly, 345 items in the feed; free transcripts for episodes 1 to 20; A2 to B2 by our estimate | Every episode | Free podcast; transcripts €9 a month |
| Michel Thomas Swedish | Best for learning by ear | A0 to A1 | Foundation Swedish, 8 hours of audio, including Start Swedish; no advanced course; about A1 by our estimate | One free lesson | US$12 taster, US$100 for the course |
| LingQ | Best for reading with audio | B1 to C1 | Swedish library with audio and transcripts, size not published; anything you import | 20 saved words | US$15 a month, US$10 a month yearly |
| Clozemaster | Best sentence drill | A2 to C1 | Frequency collections to 50,000+ words; grammar sets including Indefinite Articles (en and ett); no CEFR labels for Swedish | 30 sentences a day | US$13 a month, US$7 a month yearly |
| Language Reactor | Best for video input | B1 to C2 | Any Swedish 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 Swedish books you can open in the app, and short Swedish 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 Swedish course has 85 units and 1,459 lessons, by an unofficial tracker. On its own it is not enough: the tracker reads Duolingo’s own labels as early A2, the path has not changed since July 2025, there are no Stories, DuoRadio or Video Call for Swedish, the B2 extension of April 2026 covered 9 other languages, and on a phone the free plan’s Energy runs out after about 2 to 3 lessons a day, by a third-party count. Add Babbel for the grammar to B1, Say It In Swedish and Radio Sweden på lätt svenska for listening, and a person to talk to once you can put a few sentences together.
The language of the country you will live in. If that is open, Swedish has the most speakers of the three, about 10 million native by Ethnologue’s 2022 edition, and the largest share of websites (0.5% against 0.4% for Danish, W3Techs). In a Nordic Council of Ministers study of young people, Swedes scored 4.98 of 10 on Norwegian and 3.80 on Danish, and read both better than they heard them. The apps split: Babbel teaches Swedish to B1 but Danish and Norwegian to A2, while Duolingo takes Norwegian to B2 and Swedish to early A2, by an unofficial tracker. Swedish gets you reading much of Norwegian.
None of them is an exam course. Swedex, from Folkuniversitetet, is two tests, A2B1 and B2C1 (3,125 kr and 3,850 kr at centres in Sweden), and ends on 31 December 2026. TISUS, Stockholm University’s test for university entry, costs 2,380 kr in Sweden and 2,875 kr abroad plus the local fee, with the next test abroad on 20 October 2026, and free sample tests. Since 6 June 2026 citizenship asks for Swedish at B1 for reading and listening and A2 for speaking and writing, shown for now by school grades or SFI course D; the state language test starts in October 2027 at the earliest.
Reading grows your vocabulary, and the FSI counts Swedish among the languages close to English, but the page does not show the two word tones or which spelling gives the sj-sound. Read with audio. Lingo7, our app, puts a translation under each sentence of a Swedish book, reads it aloud in a Sweden accent and drills the words you save in 12 kinds of exercise, for US$5 a month or US$30 a year. Its Swedish shelf starts at B2 in practice and 90 of its 99 books are C1, both by our estimate, so begin with its Stories, 8 Sidor or a graded reader, and move to Lagerlöf’s Bannlyst or Dan Andersson’s David Ramms arv around B2.
For a course, Duolingo: every lesson is free, with Energy capping study on a phone, to early A2 by its labels. Mango Languages is free with many US library cards, though we could not confirm the size of its Swedish course. For listening, Say It In Swedish’s full podcast catalogue, Radio Sweden på lätt svenska and Klartext every weekday and Simple Swedish Podcast every week; for reading, 8 Sidor with audio and word help. The Swedish Institute’s free course closed in December 2022. For a tutor you pay: Preply at an average of US$38 an hour on a subscription, or italki with no subscription.
Babbel explains the two genders, common and neuter, from its first lessons, and its Swedish page says there are “no simple rules” to tell which is which. Clozemaster has an Indefinite Articles set that drills en and ett in real sentences, and Duolingo has units on definite nouns and plurals, by the unofficial tracker. Say It In Swedish’s Pro plan adds full grammar articles. Learn every noun with its article and its definite form together (en bil, bilen; ett hus, huset), because the ending follows the gender.
Read your first page free, in Swedish.