Home / Best apps to learn a language / Vietnamese
Prices and language coverage checked in October 2026.
Vietnamese has 86 million native speakers and 97 million in all, by Ethnologue’s count as cited by Wikipedia, and 1.6 million people speak it at home in the US, the 5th language there after English, Spanish, Chinese and Tagalog, per the 2024 American Community Survey. It is written in Latin letters that mark every tone, and its grammar has no conjugation. What Vietnamese asks of an app is tone training by ear, since English has no tones, and a choice between the speech of Hanoi in the North and of Saigon in the South.
The big apps give Vietnamese little. Babbel, Busuu, Speak and Language Transfer have no Vietnamese course, Memrise has only community word lists, Duolingo’s course is A1 by an unofficial tracker’s label and Pimsleur sells one level. Much of the best teaching comes from schools in Hanoi and Saigon that post free lessons on YouTube and sell lessons with their teachers. So the apps below are compared on which variety they teach, whether they train the tones by ear, where they stop, what is free on day 30 and who corrects your speech.
The US Foreign Service Institute puts Vietnamese in category III (of I to IV), about 1,100 class hours for an English speaker to reach professional working proficiency.
Vietnamese is traditionally divided into three dialect regions: North, Central and South. The North has six tones; in the South hỏi and ngã merged into one, leaving five. In Hanoi d, gi and r are all pronounced “z”, and everyday words differ: pineapple is dứa in the North and thơm in the South, a spoon thìa or muỗng. Duolingo, Pimsleur and Tiếng Việt Ơi teach northern Vietnamese, Learn Vietnamese With Annie and SVFF southern, and Glossika both. Learn the variety of the people you will talk to, and train your ear on the other.
Vietnamese is written in chữ Quốc ngữ, a Latin alphabet of 29 letters with 5 marks for the tones, so a written word tells you how to say it. The work is hearing and saying the tones, and Vietnamese packs the most information into each syllable of the 17 languages in a 2019 study in Science Advances. Pimsleur drills the northern tones by ear, Glossika whole sentences in either variety, and Anki decks with audio word by word. Learn every word with its tone, by ear, from the first day.
Vietnamese grammar is light by English standards: no conjugation, no plural endings and no gender, with tense and aspect shown by words before the verb, đã for the past, đang for now and sẽ for the future. What takes time is the pronouns: anh, chị, em, ông and bà are kinship words chosen by the age of the person you address and how you relate, with tôi as a neutral “I”; nouns also take classifiers. Pimsleur and Duolingo introduce anh, chị and em; the schools’ YouTube channels give the rest whole lessons. Learn each pronoun with the person it fits.
Duolingo’s Vietnamese is A1 by an unofficial tracker’s label, with no Stories, and was not among the 9 courses Duolingo took to B2 in April 2026; a March 2026 review puts the end of its tree at A2 or B1 at best. Pimsleur sells one level of 30 lessons. Mango, Rosetta Stone and Glossika print no Vietnamese level we could find, and Babbel, Busuu, Speak and Memrise have no Vietnamese course. VietnamesePod101’s labels run to Advanced, and the schools in Hanoi and Saigon teach past intermediate by their own labels. Plan on a school or a tutor from A2.
Vietnam’s proficiency test for foreigners has 6 levels, set by the 2015 framework and run under exam rules of 2021 by licensed universities, among them Ton Duc Thang University in Ho Chi Minh City and VNU Hanoi’s University of Social Sciences and Humanities. Ton Duc Thang charges about US$115 (3,000,000 VND) a sitting in 2026, with sessions on 18 October (registration closed on 4 October) and 6 December; we found no sitting abroad. A work permit asks for no Vietnamese, and naturalisation asks for Vietnamese good enough to integrate. Book the exam your school or office names.
Best free daily course
The Vietnamese course from English teaches northern Vietnamese, per a March 2026 review, in 75 units and 1,294 lessons, A1 by an unofficial tracker’s label, with no Stories. The same review puts the end of the tree at “around an A2 or maybe B1 level at best”. It builds a daily habit and the tone marks, then stops.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A free daily Vietnamese habit from zero to A1, in the northern variety; on a laptop, without the Energy cap.
Best structured course
Innovative Language’s Vietnamese course comes in 5 levels, Absolute Beginner to Advanced by its own labels with no CEFR mapping, as audio and video lessons; its podcast feed had a new episode on 30 September 2026. It is the deepest course we found for Vietnamese, and it is sold hard on long plans.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Beginners who want a course in order, by audio and video, past the point where Duolingo stops.
Best live tutors
Preply lists 778 Vietnamese tutors, and their profiles name a Northern, Southern or Central accent, so you can book the variety you are learning. Below B1, pick a trained teacher who can explain the tones in your language; from B1 on, a weekly lesson gives you a person who hears your tones and corrects them.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Anyone from A1 who needs a person with the right accent to talk to and to correct their tones.
Best for northern Vietnamese
A school in Hanoi that teaches northern Vietnamese, with a free YouTube channel of 60,200 subscribers and 690 videos, the latest on 5 October 2026, and a podcast of 103 episodes. Its teachers give private lessons on Zoom or in Hanoi from US$16 an hour, and it teaches the North only: for Saigon, SVFF is its southern counterpart.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Learners of northern Vietnamese who want free daily video and, when they are ready to pay, a teacher from the same school.
Best for southern Vietnamese
Southern Vietnamese for Foreigners is a school with a YouTube channel of about 1,300 videos and 38,800 subscribers, the latest on 5 October 2026, and lessons with its teachers from US$18 an hour. It claims a structured A0 to C2 curriculum, its own label rather than an exam mapping. It is the southern counterpart of Tiếng Việt Ơi.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Learners of southern Vietnamese who want a big free video library and a teacher from the same school.
Best southern self-study course
A school in Saigon that teaches “authentic Southern dialect Vietnamese”, with more than 1,000 lessons of all levels by its own count, a book, Southern Vietnamese for Beginners, and teachers for hire. Its YouTube channel has 46,200 subscribers and 265 videos, though new long videos have slowed: the latest came out on 10 May 2026.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: Learners whose family or partner speaks southern Vietnamese and who want a course in that variety, with a teacher when needed.
Best free course with a library card
Mango’s Vietnamese course is built on conversations, with grammar notes, culture notes and a voice comparison tool for pronunciation, per its Vietnamese page, which gives no lesson count, no level and no variety. Many US public libraries give it free with a library card, which makes it a second free course beside Duolingo.
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 Vietnamese book (49 languages), reads it aloud and drills saved words in 12 kinds of exercise. It has no Vietnamese shelf, so you read its Stories, then the classics you import, free as EPUB from Vietnamese 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 Thạch Lam or Nam Cao from Vietnamese Wikisource and want their own language under the text.
Best sentence drill in either variety
Glossika is the one app we found with two Vietnamese courses, Northern (Hanoi) and Southern (Saigon), in which you hear and repeat whole sentences with native audio. It explains no grammar, prints no Vietnamese level we could confirm, and its new iOS app is rated 1.56 from 34 ratings.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A1 to B1 learners who want to train their ear on whole sentences in the variety they chose.
Best for speaking from lesson one
Pimsleur’s Vietnamese is one level of 30 audio lessons, about 16 hours, in “the contemporary Hanoi (northern and widely-spoken standard) dialect”, per its page: you answer out loud, and words come back at spaced intervals. It drills the six northern tones by ear from the first lesson, publishes no CEFR level and sells no Level 2.
Good
Where it stops
Best for: A trip in a month, a commute, or anyone who wants to hear and say the northern tones before they read.
Best for video input
Vietnamese 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 Vietnamese video with subtitles, from VTV24’s news to the lessons of Tiếng Việt Ơi and SVFF. 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 Vietnamese YouTube and the news into listening practice.
Best vocabulary trainer
Free spaced repetition with shared Vietnamese decks on AnkiWeb in either variety: Northern Vietnamese Words (5,810 notes) and Southern Vietnamese Sentences (3,000), both updated in February 2026, plus the 5 levels of the LTL Vietnamese Deck with audio. It is the cheapest way 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 + Tiếng Việt Ơi + SVFF
Choose North or South before anything else. Do Duolingo every day for the northern basics, and watch Tiếng Việt Ơi’s free lessons for the North or SVFF’s for the South; Learn Vietnamese With Annie is the southern course to pay for. Add VietnamesePod101’s free account, and learn every word with its tone. Pimsleur is the paid choice if you want to speak before you read; with a US library card, Mango Languages is free.
VietnamesePod101 + Preply + Anki
Keep a course going to B1: Duolingo stops at A1 by the tracker’s label, so move on to VietnamesePod101’s Intermediate lessons or a school’s curriculum. Book a Preply tutor with your accent once a week, and put every new word into an Anki deck of your variety. Start reading with Lingo7’s Stories at A2, then Thạch Lam’s stories you import from Vietnamese Wikisource, since it has no Vietnamese shelf.
Lingo7 + Language Reactor + Preply
Courses thin out here. Read Nam Cao, Ngô Tất Tố or, for the South, Hồ Biểu Chánh in Lingo7 from free Vietnamese Wikisource EPUBs or your own books, watch VTV24’s news and the schools’ channels with Language Reactor, and talk about all of it with your tutor. With a proficiency test date, book a tutor who has taught that test.
| App | Role | Levels | Coverage for Vietnamese | Free | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duolingo | Best free daily course | A0 to A1 | Northern Vietnamese, per a March 2026 review; A1 by an unofficial tracker’s label; 75 units and 1,294 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 |
| VietnamesePod101 | Best structured course | A0 to B1 | Variety not stated on the pages we read; Absolute Beginner to Advanced by the vendor’s labels, no CEFR mapping; a Level 1 pathway of 27 lessons | 3 to 5 new lessons a week | US$2 to 13 a month on a 24 month plan |
| Preply | Best live tutors | A1 to C2 | 778 Vietnamese tutors; Northern, Southern or Central accents on tutor profiles; tutors from Vietnam average US$15 an hour | None | Tutors from Vietnam US$15 an hour, subscription only |
| Tiếng Việt Ơi | Best for northern Vietnamese | A0 to B2 | Northern Vietnamese; a 4 level curriculum from Beginner to one level past Intermediate, by its labels; 690 YouTube videos and 103 podcast episodes | YouTube lessons and podcast | Free videos; lessons US$16 an hour |
| SVFF | Best for southern Vietnamese | A0 to B2 | Southern Vietnamese, one northern reading course; A0 to C2 curriculum by its own label; about 1,300 YouTube videos | YouTube videos, 30 minute trial | Free videos; lessons US$18 to 48 an hour |
| Learn Vietnamese With Annie | Best southern self-study course | A0 to B1 | Southern Vietnamese; 1,000+ lessons of all levels by the vendor’s count; tutoring; 265 YouTube videos | Free plan and YouTube lessons | US$14 a month; tutoring from US$13 an hour |
| Mango Languages | Best free course with a library card | A0 to A2 | No variety, lesson count or level stated; conversations with grammar and culture notes and a voice comparison tool | Free through many US libraries | Free via many libraries; US$10 a month yearly |
| Lingo7 | Best for reading real books | A2 to C1 | No Vietnamese 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 Vietnam accent, one voice; translation into 49 languages | First page of each book | US$5 a month, US$2.50 a month yearly |
| Glossika | Best sentence drill in either variety | A1 to B1 | Two courses, Northern (Hanoi) and Southern (Saigon); sentence repetition with native audio; no Vietnamese level we could confirm | 7 day trial | US$20 a month, students US$9 |
| Pimsleur | Best for speaking from lesson one | A0 to A1 | Northern, the Hanoi standard; Level 1 only: 30 lessons, about 16 hours; no vendor CEFR claim | 7 day trial | About US$20 a month, or US$150 once |
| Language Reactor | Best for video input | B1 to C2 | Any Vietnamese 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 |
| Anki | Best vocabulary trainer | A1 to C1 | Shared decks: Northern Vietnamese Words (5,810 notes), Southern Vietnamese Sentences (3,000), the LTL Vietnamese Deck in 5 levels with audio | 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 Vietnamese 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 Vietnamese course from English is 75 units and 1,294 lessons by an unofficial tracker’s count, in northern Vietnamese, per a March 2026 review. On its own it is not enough: the tracker labels it A1, it has no Stories, Vietnamese was not among the 9 courses Duolingo took to B2 in April 2026, tone practice is mostly tap and listen, 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 Pimsleur or Glossika for the tones by ear, a school’s free videos and a tutor once you can put a few sentences together.
The variety of the people you will talk to: Hanoi’s if you are heading north, Saigon’s for the South or a family from there. The North has six tones and the South five, since hỏi and ngã merged; in Hanoi d, gi and r are all pronounced “z”; and everyday words differ (dứa and thơm for pineapple, mẹ and má for mother). Duolingo, Pimsleur and Tiếng Việt Ơi teach northern Vietnamese; Learn Vietnamese With Annie, SVFF and the VITAMESE podcast southern; Glossika has both. Rosetta Stone, Mango and VietnamesePod101 do not say on the pages we read. On Preply, pick a tutor by accent.
Yes: a 6 level test for foreigners, set by the 2015 framework and run under rules of 2021 by licensed universities such as Ton Duc Thang University in Ho Chi Minh City, where a sitting costs about US$115 (3,000,000 VND) in 2026, on computer, with reading, listening and writing of 60 minutes each and 15 minutes of speaking; results come in 7 to 10 working days. We found no sitting abroad. A work permit asks for no Vietnamese under Decree 219/2025; naturalisation, under the amended Nationality Law in force since 1 July 2025, asks for Vietnamese good enough to integrate. No app is an exam course.
Reading suits Vietnamese early, because the spelling marks every tone, but the page does not make you hear them, so read with audio. Lingo7, our app, puts a translation under each sentence of a Vietnamese book, reads it aloud in a Vietnam 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 Vietnamese shelf, so begin with its Stories, then import the classics free as EPUB from Vietnamese Wikisource, such as Thạch Lam’s Hai đứa trẻ or Nam Cao’s Lão Hạc; Project Gutenberg has no Vietnamese books. Modern favourites such as Nguyễn Nhật Ánh’s novels 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, and VietnamesePod101’s free account, with 3 to 5 new lessons a week; with a US library card, Mango. For the variety, the free YouTube lessons of Tiếng Việt Ơi (northern) and SVFF (southern). For words, Anki’s shared decks, Northern Vietnamese Words and Southern Vietnamese Sentences. For listening, the VITAMESE podcast and VTV24 with Language Reactor. For a tutor you pay: Preply on a subscription, or italki with none, with trial lessons from US$5.
Pimsleur drills the six northern tones by ear from lesson one, in 30 lessons; Glossika repeats whole sentences in either variety; Duolingo’s tone practice is mostly tap and listen, and Mango adds a voice comparison tool. 123Vietnamese gives 25 lessons free on a free account and sells a 162 lesson course, 149 of them on pronunciation, for US$50; Tiếng Việt Ơi, SVFF and Learn Vietnamese With Annie have pronunciation videos, Annie’s comparing northern and southern in March 2026. Lingo7 plays native audio for shadowing but does not judge your voice, so let a tutor who hears you correct your tones.
The FSI lists Vietnamese among the “Hard languages” of its Category III. The grammar is not the reason: there is no conjugation, no plural ending and no gender, and tense comes from words such as đã and sẽ before the verb. The work is the sound: six tones in the North, five in the South, and a dense language, with 8.0 bits of information per syllable, the most of 17 languages in a 2019 study in Science Advances. The script helps: Latin letters with every tone marked, so a written word tells you how to say it.
Read your first page free, in Vietnamese.