Many people who want to learn a new language don’t know where to start other than downloading Duolingo. However, there are many more language learning resources out there to aid in their journey. They come in various formats to cater to your particular learning style. Many are free, but the best are extremely expensive. In either case, I’ve collected a list of all the language learning resources I’ve encountered. I present them here for you, complete with my review and their use cases, and suggest ways to mix and match them into a language learning curriculum.
DISCLAIMER: I have no formal training in linguistics or pedagogy, and this is not the advice of an expert.
DISCLAIMER: I receive no monetary compensation from referral links in this post. The only compensation I receive is app credit, so I quite literally won’t recommend something I wouldn’t use myself.
Guidelines
There are 6 levels of language comprehension, according to the CEFR, from A1 to C2.
B1 is the level where people can start acting independently in arbitrary interactions. C1 is the level where you can call yourself fluent. Be wary of different apps’ definitions of “intermediate”; it could mean anywhere between A1 and B1.
However it’s defined, that is the level that focuses on new grammar. Formally studying the nuances of grammar is good and well, but the human brain excels at recognizing patterns. Ensure that you are being exposed to new sentence structures in these stages, and you will build a natural intuition for correct word patterns. Even natives use grammar incorrectly, so don’t fret about pedantry.
More important than even grammar is listening and conversational comprehension. Developing these skills should be your primary goal after achieving an A2 level. Incorporating audio sources into your learning routine is the best way to develop your listening skills. But if you’re like me, you learn to read faster than you learn to listen. So, be sure not to rely too heavily on captions or transcripts. If you use reading as a crutch, you train your brain to ignore audio stimuli, which is a rut that is hard to get out of.
Be careful when falling into the trap of wanting to speak like a native. An accent can be a blessing in disguise. It marks you as someone who may need help and patience. If you are awkward, clumsy, and susceptible to faux pas but have an accent, then natives will attribute any failings you may commit to a language barrier and help you overcome it. But if you don’t have an accent, they will simply assume you are a native speaker who is also kind of an idiot.
Curriculum
The rest of this post is interactive. Select your desired language and pricepoint below, and recommended language curricula will be generated for you. You can switch out different resources to customize for your particular learning style. Every app, audio course, and more are detailed later in the blog. Assess which you like and build your language learning plan.
Or, if you prefer, you can check “All” to see all resources available across all languages and price points.
What would you like to spend?
A Guide
Below, you can find my reviews of the resources mentioned in the suggested curricula. They are filtered according to the language and price options you selected above.
Note that not all resources are beginner-friendly, so if you see an icon that says A1, A2, or B1, you should attain that level of fluency elsewhere before attempting to use this resource.
Legend
– my stamp of approval. While I have personally used many apps on this list, these are my favorites
– Freemium. Most things listed below have a free trial, but any resources with the lock can be reasonably used without ever paying money.
– Paid, but for less than $30/year. Each additional corresponds roughly to a doubled cost.
Learning Apps
While gamified apps have been touted as the best way to learn languages because “it’s how children learn”, it’s mostly just advertising. They appeal to an audience drunk on TikTok and shortform content. Sure, gamifying the experience may help you stay focused enough to learn for 10 minutes a day, but contrary to the advertising, you cannot learn a language for 10 minutes a day.
However, they do present vocabulary and grammar in an accessible way. Most also have proficiency tests when signing up, so they can be started in the middle for a more tailored experience. Contrast that with Audio Courses, which can feel slow at first if you already have experience in the language. Using a daily app provides an entree for your language learning course. Just be sure to include sides.
Duolingo
Do not use, but read the pro tip at the end if you’re going to ignore my advice
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Discussing the elephant in the room is less conspicuous than leaving it unaddressed, so let’s get it out of the way. Duolingo doesn’t teach you how to speak a language. It teaches you how to read it.
Duolingo was never the best way to learn a language, but it was adequate for a long time. That, coupled with it being free and accessible, made it the best way to start learning a language.
However, after investors got involved in 2021, the app repeatedly modified its design to pressure users into a premium subscription. This was done not by introducing useful features into the premium plan but by restricting their ability to use the free plan. This sometimes entails removing features from the premium plan. RIP audio lessons.
At this point, Duolingo is not only worse than other paid apps but also worse than some other free resources. Its only benefit is that it’s featured prominently at the top of the app store, ready to be downloaded by learners ignorant of free alternatives, so it can frustrate them enough into paying $60/year
If you insist on using Duolingo, here are some pro tips: Anyone can set up a Duolingo classroom and add pre-existing accounts as students. All students in the class get free premium. Additionally, you can disable the gamified components by setting your profile to private. This gives you a free premium without any distracting anxiety over your position in the leaderboards.
Babbel
My daily driver
No surprises here. It’s good at the things apps are good at (vocab) and bad at the things they’re bad at (conversational comprehension). It does attempt to improve this with live tutoring for an extra charge, although I haven’t used this feature. Supplemented with other resources, this is a very rounded tool to start your language learning journey.
Praises: the multi-modal approach to learning vocab. Review is built into the app. Review exercises are vocabulary focused, and can be practiced via listening, speaking, reading, and writing to create a multi-modal language learning experience. No conversational content is built into the review, so you should use other (preferably audio/video) resources. Compared to the other gamified apps (Duolingo, Mondly, Busuu, etc.), Babbel has next to no clutter. No leaderboards, daily challenges, or confetti animation that plays after every lesson.
Cons: The content sputters out after reaching A2 level. They have a few dozen lessons categorized as “B1” and “B2”, but I call false advertising on that. If you finish all the app content, it would barely place you at an A2 in conversation. The app encourages you to move on to their podcast content to build listening comprehension, which I agree is a natural progression in your language learning journey.
It is developed by a German company, so they excel specifically at teaching German.
Busuu
Duolingo’s closest competitor
This is the most comparable to Duolingo on this list in terms of price and features.
They technically have a freemium plan, but it’s so barebones that you should treat it as a trial. You’re not doing yourself any favors waiting through ads for an incomplete experience. All the features customers have grown to expect from learning apps, like grammar instruction, spaced repetition vocab review, and conversation examples, are only available in the premium plan.
While not as quality as Babbel and its associated ecosystem, one could argue it’s a better value. In any case, it is categorically better and cheaper than Duolingo’s premium plan.
Mondly
Freemium alternative to Duolingo, now with VR
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It’s another interactive, gamified app, complete with bells and whistles and annoying confetti animation.
Also, they have VR for some reason. Not to be dismissive, it’s one of the most downloaded apps on Oculus.
Mango
Free at your local library
Not quite as gamified as the options above; I wouldn’t classify it as long-form either. Each lesson is broken down into a series of slides, from grammar notes to example sentences for you to pronounce or translate.
The lessons also have an autoplay feature, so you can listen hands-off. This is useful if you want to avoid reading as a crutch or if you prefer listening. But in the latter case, I would recommend audio lessons instead.
The main selling point is that this app is free with a library card. It is also better than all the free apps on this list. If you need to tap buttons on your dopamine device to learn but also have a budget of $0, then this is the ideal app.
Downsides: Like Babbel, this also has a dearth of content that sputters out after A2. You will need to move on to other resources afterwards. Since you probably chose this app because it was free, tutoring is likely not an option. Perhaps you would consider one of the many story and conversation podcasts.
Rocket Languages
Longform content for those who don’t like learning with gamified apps
This is not a gamified app like the others. It features longform lessons, half of which are primarily audio, and the other half primarily text. Each lesson has multimodal supplementary exercises to practice new vocabulary through speech, listening, writing, and flashcards.
It is one of the most polished apps on this list and prioritizes cultural education. On the downside, it does focus more on rote memorization and isn’t as good at building intuition.
My biggest gripe is with the course’s modular nature. Usually, language programs are designed so that vocabulary and concepts introduced in one lesson are incorporated into the example sentences of subsequent lessons as a passive review. In rocket languages, lessons barely reference each other. Each lesson introduces brand new vocabulary that never comes up again. Grammatical concepts eventually get revisited, but only by coincidence, not by design.
It’s also pricey. The program comes in 3 levels, each $100 for lifetime access. There are bundles and a monthly subscription, but I don’t consider either worth the savings. Just buy each level individually, and if you do a lesson a day (which is pretty rigorous), the entire course will last you eight months. Realistically, you’ll be at this for a little over a year.
Gymglish
Best app out there if you’ve got the money
This is by far the best app I’ve found. The only downside is that you have to pay—a lot, like $32/month, and that’s only if you get the annual plan.
They claim to be powered by AI (who isn’t these days?), so the lessons are tailored to fill gaps in your knowledge. This is probably for the best since this app is not beginner-friendly.
Users tend to come here after finishing/abandoning another resource. I started learning French on this app shortly after passing a 365-day streak on Duolingo. I started learning German after completing all of Babbel’s A1 and A2 content. In both cases, I found Gymglish to be adequately challenging from the start.
The lessons typically include a short cartoon, comic, or audio clip in your target language. The content is often meant to entertain and combines to create a broader story as you take the course, which is fun and engaging. The rest of the lesson is primarily text-based, with some audio cues. The nature of questions throughout the lesson, combined with the fact that it’s all in your target language by default, forces you to process the context of the video and lesson instead of parroting back phrases you memorized.
Although each lesson is only 10-20 minutes long, it’s very cognitively dense. It forces you to think and process a lot of information. Other apps may teach you something new that goes in one ear and out the other, but it’s difficult NOT to retain knowledge learned with this app. As usual, I recommend supplementing it with flashcards and listening practice elsewhere.
It’s also geared for adults. You learn curse words, romantic etiquette, politics, and dirty jokes. At the end of each lesson, there is a “dessert” that is usually a clip from a film or TV show, followed by an explanation of its cultural importance. More than any other app, this app teaches you to integrate into the society of your target language.
You can get a one-month free trial with this referral link.
Gymglish Conjugation Apps
Great reference for the most common verbs
The developers of the Gymglish courses provide free apps that act as conjugation references for the most common verbs in your target language. These apps are less of a study tool and more of a helpful reference.
Rosetta Stone
A classic
I’ve never used it, but I’ve included it here as a reminder for the user that it exists. The general consensus is that the long-form content drags and can be repetitive at times, but it provides more extensive grammar explanations and cultural education. If you found appeal in my descriptions of both Babbel and Rocket Languages, this might be a solid middle ground—which is coincidentally where it sits, price-wise.
Drops
It’s just an elaborate flashcard app
Don’t use Drops as your daily driver. It primarily focuses on vocabulary but does so in a more gamified way. Not only do you associate words with their translation, but you associate them with a corresponding graphic or practice spelling to create a holistic understanding of the concept. It seems like a compelling alternative to flashcards if you find those too boring. But this is $60/year, and you can’t create your own vocab decks. DuoCards accomplishes everything Drops tries to achieve and then some while being cheaper and providing a more permissive freemium use case.
Audio Lessons
If you have the tenacity, this is probably the best way to develop conversational comprehension in a new language. It forces you to understand a language without the crutch of getting to read accompanying text. But depending on the course, the mono-modal nature of the approach can often be tedious, and you may struggle to maintain focus. This is especially true if you’re the type of person who’s trained your brain to multitask while listening to podcasts. Know your limitations when taking this route.
The primary downside to audio courses is that you can’t jump into the middle. An interactive app will have a placement test to skip over content you already know. Audio courses only cater to beginners, so if you want to use this route to take you to a B1 level, select Pimsleur or CoffeeBreak. The other options don’t have enough content to take you that far. If you get bored of the Audio approach, you can always switch to an app, but you can’t switch back without repeating redundant learning, which is highly wasteful.
At the bottom are audio resources that can be used as supplementary listening practice in addition to your audio course or interactive app.
Pimsleur
Program is great, the app sucks
This is a complex love-hate relationship on which I have no dearth of opinions, so let’s start from the beginning. In 1963, linguist Dr. Paul Pimsleur developed a method to optimize the acquisition of French for English speakers. He perfected it. Pimsleur is objectively the best way to learn French if you speak English. His company went on to create many courses for other languages, which are equally impressive. I can’t emphasize enough: I adore Pimsleur’s learning content.
The Content.
The most developed Pimsleur courses are released in 5 units, each with 30 half-hour audio lessons for 75 hours of audio content. The courses take a very audio-first approach, which is best for listening comprehension. They walk you through sample conversations and introduce new grammar in an iterative fashion that incorporates previously learned grammar and vocabulary into new sample sentences. This way, review is naturally integrated with new learning, greatly accelerating the learning process.
After each audio lesson, a short reading lesson is provided. At first, these are simple pronunciation practices, but eventually move on to full sentences. Interestingly, the content in the reading lessons is completely different from the audio lessons. You aren’t expected to understand what you’re reading; you’re only meant to pronounce it. This technique teaches you how to read without discerning meaning from the written words. With Pimsleur, meaning is only discerned from spoken speech. I promise this approach gets you reading and listening to a language faster in the long run.
The one downside to the course is its lack of focus on vocabulary. You become conversational so fast that there’s no time to learn enough words. You’ll learn all the important ones, of course, but by the time you reach the end, you’ll find that you can speak and understand conversations perfectly fine, but only if they use the 1000 most common words in your target language. I would suggest checking out other video resources when you’re done to improve your vocabulary to a more functional level.
The Rant.
Since its inception, Pimsleur’s language content hasn’t changed much. It hasn’t needed to. It’s perfect. But in 1995, Simon & Schuester, the publishing house run by complacent old boomers, acquired Dr. Pimsleur’s company. While other language programs transitioned into the internet age, Pimsleur preferred audio CDs. Eventually, in 2020, they finally caved and made an app. And HO-LY SHIT, does it suck ass.
The stewards of God’s perfect language program know more about business acquisition than language acquisition, more about litigation than automation. A useful or even just functional app is so far beyond their ability to manifest that one questions whether the fundamentally broken IP laws that permitted this undeserved monopoly to occur are indicative of a capitalist system that peddles false promises of meritocracy.
They advertise supplementary study materials like flashcards, but any flashcard review is in strictly alphabetical order. Their homebrew audio solution is unresponsive to Bluetooth controls. Unfinished lessons usually fail to save progress, which can be extremely irritating.
Honestly, if one were to acquire jailbroken content from Pimsleur, their audio lessons🧲 could be loaded into an audiobook app, their flashcards🧲 could be loaded into an Anki deck, and you could enjoy their content without the hassle of actually having to open their godforsaken dumpster fire of an app.
Coffee Break
Popular series of free language podcasts
This is a collection of 9 different podcast series covering different languages. They are presented fly-on-the-wall, where you listen to a pupil and teacher as one teaches the other a new language. It features a lot of conversational content, and there are plenty of special travel episodes where the pupil has a (possibly staged?) conversation with real natives.
Some of these podcasts are decades old and haven’t been updated. For instance, Coffee Break French encourages beginners to start at season 1, released in 2007. Beyond the first four seasons, which comprise the backbone of their course, they have been regularly releasing new content ranging from storytelling to interviews to travel blogs. These are all good and well, but I can’t stand listening to the core course. It’s just so jarring to listen to old audio.
If you disagree with my justification or seek one of their newer language offerings, try them out. If you like their podcast, you can also purchase course content, which comes with reading materials and video lessons. Or explore the rest of their educational ecosystem.
They have a Japanese course launching later this year
Language Transfer
My favorite introductory resource
I can’t recommend this enough. Everyone should start here when learning a new language. It’s free, targeted at beginners, only takes a month or two, and gives you a solid feel of the difficulty of the language while establishing basics that can transfer to other courses.
It features a series of 5-10 minute audio lessons introducing you to a language’s core grammatical concepts and baseline vocabulary. In the process, it imparts a natural intuition of the language that accelerates your learning and grants a strong appreciation of linguistics that keeps you motivated. This momentum stays with you after you move on to a more complete program.
Even if you don’t have the focus for longform audio like Pimsleur, you’ll have the focus for these shorter lessons.
Learn with Paul Noble
Free if you already have Spotify Premium
The Paul Noble series is a collection of audiobooks for language learning. Each supported language has two audiobooks targeted at beginners and intermediate learners, as well as a supplementary collection of conversations to listen to. They also offer an “Essentials in 2 hours” book that you can use before a vacation, but I’ve never been an advocate of the pre-vacation cram. You’ll embarrass yourself.
The main course content is only 20 hours for each language, so it’s far from extensive. If you prefer an audio approach, it’s better to commit to courses that can take you further, like Pimsleur or Coffee Break.
If you’re learning Spanish or French, the Conversation with Paul Noble audiobooks are a useful supplementary tool, regardless of your primary learning tool.
All courses are included for free with Spotify Premium.
Spanish Beginner (13 hours)
Spanish Intermediate (8 hours)
French Beginner (13 hours)
French Intermediate (8 hours)
Italian Beginner (13 hours)
Italian Intermediate (8 hours)
German Beginner (12 hours)
German Intermediate (8 hours)
Japanese Beginner (12 hours)
Japanese Intermediate (8 hours)
Mandarin Beginner (15 hours)
Mandarin Intermediate (12 hours)
Michel Thomas Method
Another Spotify course, with more languages
This would never be my first choice for an audio course because of its scant content (~25 hours/language). But suppose you don’t want to deal with the hassle of using Pimsleur (legally or otherwise) and are seeking a language not supported by CoffeeBreak or Paul Noble’s courses. In that case, this is the last quality course remaining. It will get you well on your way to an A2 skill level.
All courses are available for free with Spotify Premium. Find links below. (Scroll right on mobile)
| 9-12 hours | 2-3 hours | 5-7 hours | 5-6 hours | |
| Spanish | Foundation | Language Builder | Intermediate | Vocabulary |
| French | Foundation | Language Builder | Intermediate | Vocabulary |
| Italian | Foundation | Language Builder | Intermediate | Vocabulary |
| German | Foundation | Language Builder | Intermediate | Vocabulary |
| Russian | Foundation | – | Intermediate | Vocabulary |
| Mandarin | Foundation | – | Intermediate | Vocabulary |
| Egyptian Arabic | Foundation | – | Intermediate | Vocabulary |
| Modern Standard Arabic | Foundation | – | – | – |
| Japanese | Foundation | – | Intermediate | – |
| Portuguese | Foundation | – | Intermediate | – |
| Dutch | Foundation | – | Intermediate | – |
| Greek | Foundation | – | Intermediate | – |
| Polish | Foundation | – | Intermediate | – |
| Korean | Foundation | – | – | – |
| Hindi | Foundation | – | – | – |
| Irish | Foundation | – | – | – |
| Swedish | Foundation | – | – | – |
| Norwegian | Foundation | – | – | – |
Conversations with Paul Noble
Can be paired with other courses
This deserves a separate entry because unlike the main course, which may be too short to be properly useful, the conversation audiobooks are a helpful supplementary tool no matter what your daily driver is.
As you approach an A2 skill, you want to practice your listening comprehension thoroughly. 12 hours of conversation content is just the practice you need. It includes English translations and longer explanations by Paul Noble himself.
Like the main courses, the conversations are free with Spotify Premium.
Duolingo Podcasts
Train your listening comprehension, Duo not required
Although I don’t recommend the Duolingo app, its story-driven podcasts are an excellent tool for intermediate users. Each episode is about 20-25 minutes long and features a storyteller discussing part of their life, intercut with an English narrator to establish context in the event you lose track of the story.
The podcast series is going strong and is regularly updated with new episodes. At the time of writing, there are over 100 episodes in the French series and over 150 episodes in the Spanish series.
This tool is mostly used to train listening comprehension, so don’t incorporate it into your learning plan until you have a strong foundation in your target language.
Babbel Podcasts
Twice the languages, half the episodes
These are akin to the Duolingo podcasts with a couple of noticeable benefits and tradeoffs:
Pros: More languages are supported. Duolingo podcasts only have a French and Spanish course. Babbel Podcasts include German, Italian, and ESL. It also sorts out podcasts by skill level, so you can start listening even at an A2 level. They do have an A1 French podcast, but it only has five episodes, which brings us to the cons.
Cons: Lack of content. Duolingo has hundreds of episodes and is regularly making more. Babbel only has a few dozen per language and hasn’t released new content in a while. This isn’t a reason not to use Babbel, of course. But plan to move on from it at some point.
These podcasts are available in the Babbel app, but I suggest listening to them wherever you usually find podcasts. All their offerings are listed on their website.
Duolingo Audio Lessons
Piracy isn’t illegal if the product is no longer for sale
These were by far the best part of Duolingo. They were 5-minute interactive audio lessons for French and Spanish, emphasizing conversational comprehension in different contexts. After a well-received rollout on iOS-only in 2021, they were abruptly removed in 2022. They have never returned. I suspect they were removed because there was no way to make them inconvenient for free users. No premium turnover means no profits, which means the feature gets removed.
However, in 2024, Reddit user u/Deep-Breadfruit-5640 recovered the files and uploaded them to archive.org. You can find the Spanish lessons here and the French lessons here
Tutoring
I’ve never done tutoring myself. The cost-reward ratio doesn’t seem worth it. But this would be the ideal option if money is no object and you need a motivating, immersive experience. You’d have all the benefits of genuine conversation with a native speaker, but none significantly less of the social anxiety. Plus, it’s marginally cheaper than buying a plane ticket and relocating.
Lingoda
Most popular language tutor service
You saw the dollar signs. Their most popular plan (12 lessons a month with a class of 3-5) is $200—every month. A more intensive 1-on-1 session 20 times each month amounts to nearly $8k/year.
They do offer a sprint challenge: If you commit to 30 classes in 60 days and succeed, you get half your money back.
iTalki
If Fiverr taught you a new language
While Lingoda has a codified curriculum and vetted teachers, iTalki is more crowdsourced. Some tutors advertise classes for as little as $4/hour. Beware that when cutting costs, you can get less than you paid for.
But with a much larger community, there’s more variety. Lingoda only supports four languages, but iTalki supports over 150.
Babbel Live
Comparably affordable alternative without switching apps
Babbel also offers tutoring services for unlimited group lessons as cheap as $600/year. $900 for 1-on-1. Do the math on that, and it’s clear the tutors aren’t making a living wage, but maybe Babbel is using revenue from their main products to operate this one at a loss.
The 1-on-1 courses are only available in Spanish and German.
Chatterbug Lessons
The tutoring service with a video platform attached
They have another product called Chatterbug Streams, which I love, and which is completely free. I assume this tutoring service is how they pay for such a public service.
Note that the elevated price-point is partially because they only offer 1-on-1 lessons.
Tutors are expensive, strangers on the Internet are free
Do you like meeting strangers on the Internet? Want to learn from someone with no pedagogy experience? Want to teach someone else while you both struggle with a language barrier? The subreddit r/language_exchange offers a chance to meet with fellow Redditors to swap languages. If you’re B1 in a target language, you can place an ad to meet a native who’s B1 in your language, and the two of you can organize a meetup.
This is unregulated, so be wary of weirdos and those who may have exaggerated their English proficiency.
Immersion
Who needs a job? Look how much fun the AI-generated woman is having
They say the best way to learn a language is to move to a country that speaks it. From experience, I should warn you that there’s no special pedagogy that helps you learn when surrounded by native speakers. Rather, it’s the crippling fear of embarrassment that provides a strong motivation.
Saying that moving abroad helps you learn a language is a lot like saying that beating your children will stop them from misbehaving. Maybe it’s true, but that kid is traumatized.
Flashcards
Vocabulary should never be the primary focus of your language learning journey. It’s important, but it can be addressed with 10-15 minutes of flashcards daily. Many apps have their own review feature, but I often find these to be lacking (cough Pimsleur cough). Below are the most notable tools to supplement your learning with vocabulary review.
Anki
Flashcards for power users
Anki is more than an app, it’s a community and ecosystem. It’s also for nerds.
One key feature to look for in a flashcard app is spaced repetition. This is the idea that new and difficult vocabulary should be studied frequently and then, once learned, reviewed less and less frequently. It’s a simple idea, but with a lot of nuance that has led to academic papers. See here for the algorithm used by Anki.
Normal users wouldn’t care about the science, but Anki users are built different. If you set up home automation for fun, are an Android user who knows what the Nova launcher is, or own a Garmin smartwatch, then this is the flashcard app for you. It has a level of technical customization that would give anyone over the age of 50 a mental breakdown.
I use this to review my Pimsleur vocabulary because I can’t stand to use it to do so in their app. If you want to adopt a similar strategy, you can find complete Pimsleur course decks here
Click for their official Android and iOS apps. The iOS app isn’t actually free (one-time $25 charge for lifetime use), but you can use the web app instead. Or try one of their desktop apps if that’s your thing.
AnkiPro
Prettier Anki-compatible alternative for the normies
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If you want to use an Anki deck, but find the design of the official app unappealing, then this is a good alternative.
It does lack certain features, like the ability to use subdecks (which I need for my Pimsleur review). Also, the freemium use case limits the vocabulary you can study every day.
Some Anki users dismiss this app as a money-grabbing scam because it’s not part of the open-source community that develops the official Anki apps. I think it works fine and provides the service it advertises: prettier Anki. If that’s worth $30/year to you, go for it.
Duocards
Conveniently automated and user-friendly
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This is probably the best flashcard app for general audiences. It features spaced repetition, sample decks, captioned video content to pull vocab from, and auto-populating cards
One of the biggest hassles is actually building your flashcard deck, but Duocards automates this significantly. If I encounter a word or phrase in another app that I want to study later, I can highlight and share it to Duocards. It will then automatically generate a translation, voice prompt, sample image, and (in the case of important words) an AI-generated blurb explaining its grammatical importance and usage. Duocards was one of the first apps to incorporate AI, and I think they did it very well.
Other features I like: they have sample decks and videos with transcripts to pull new vocabulary from, all sorted by fluency level. When reviewing, they also periodically blur out the text prompt, forcing you to translate from just the audio cue. This helps train your listening comprehension.
My only real qualm is with the price point, and that’s only because of an “I could do it for less” mentality. This is an incredibly simple app, which isn’t a complaint. But it makes one wonder where the $50/year is going because they don’t need that many developers.
In any case, they have a very permissive freemium plan, so you can take your time to assess if premium is worth it. Or you can use this referral link to get a month of premium for free
Memrise
Do not use
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If you frequent language learning forums, you may have heard people raving about Memrise. Note the date that these comments were made.
It was formerly a language learning darling because its vocabulary review goes beyond flashcards. It has video prompts, pronunciation practice, pictographs, multiple-choice questions, fill-in-the-blank, and every variety of exercise to ensure retention of the vocabulary learned.
However, early in 2024, Memrise made the controversial decision to remove community-created content and instead focus on their curated content, which was much less popular.
This means that you can’t create your own learning decks, negating Memrise’s usefulness as a supplementary vocabulary tool. It’s trying to position itself as people’s daily driver app for language learning. But with no focus on grammar or conversational content, it now fails as both a primary tool and a supplementary tool.
Over the course of 2024, they jacked up subscription prices, fought with customers over community content, and made a big to-do about their redesign. It’s now completely unrecognizable from the app used by all those rave reviews of years past.
Video Lessons
This includes a wide gamut of resources. It can be a video of a tutor giving a lesson. It can be watching a foreign language show. Or it can be a language teaching YouTuber. This has many of the same benefits as audio lessons. However, the additional video component trades effectiveness for retention. Video content is best used as a supplementary resource. Fittingly, many of the tools listed below do not have a structured curriculum categorizing videos by difficulty. They are best consumed haphazardly to expand your vocabulary, cultural knowledge, and listening comprehension. Use an audio course or an interactive app as your daily driver.
Chatterbug Streams
Totally free video learning platform
This is probably the best way to emulate tutoring without costing hundreds of dollars.
This mobile app contains 10-20-minute videos, each presented in a lesson-style format. In each video, the tutor directly addresses the camera and covers some new concept, be it grammar or themed vocabulary, complete with Q&A to keep you engaged. Depending on the difficulty level, the lesson may be presented in English or the target language.
Most lessons start as a livestream, allowing the opportunity to chat with the tutor. If you prefer on-demand content, all livestreams will be saved for later. The more popular/important videos are compiled as a pseudo-official course that you can use to guide your learning process.
Additional extra feature: shortform content. This app has shorts, some educational, some fun, all geared towards immersing you in a new language. I know that TikTok and all its clones are the work of the devil and will be responsible for the collapse of productivity and, ultimately, civilization. Still, at least now you can learn a language while you doom scroll.
This app is mostly useful as a supplementary tool. You can scroll through shorts, catch an occasional livestream, and leisurely skip through their curated videos. It’s a great way to get many benefits of tutoring, but it’s free. The whole thing is a giant advertisement for their actual tutoring services.
LingoPie
Interactive captions on your Netflix
One common strategy for language learning is to watch video content in your target language, with captions in your target language. Even if you can’t understand what the characters are saying, you can at least read it, but never in English. This is useful for people whose reading comprehension has surpassed their listening comprehension.
LingoPie’s advantage is that the captions are interactive. Encounter a word you don’t know? Tap it, read the definition, and save it for later as new vocabulary. They are also a full video-on-demand platform, hosting and integrating content with other services.
LingoPie is the most popular platform to adopt this strategy because of its integration with Netflix. But my personal experience with them (back in late 2022) was one of a buggy platform and a scammy refund policy. After finding their software unusable, I canceled my free trial, but they renewed me for an annual membership anyway. Customer service never responded. It’s the only time I requested a chargeback from my bank.
I got the sense that my experience wasn’t the result of investors bleeding a good thing dry but of a genuinely good startup suffering growing pains and understaffing in its early days. I won’t discourage you if you want to give it a shot.
Intersub
Lingopie from wish
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This is a web extension that serves the same purpose as LingoPie: viewing web content with interactive captions. It supports YouTube, Netflix, Prime, and TED Talks. The upside is that it’s cheaper. The downside is that the translations are AI-generated.
TV5Monde
Great free resource for practicing French listening comprehension
This is my favorite supplementary tool for learning French. You pick a video, watch it (either with or without captions in the target language), and then answer questions about the content. It’s great for developing listening comprehension in context.
The app is completely free. TV5, a French public television network, developed it as a public service.
YouTube
Learn more than how to fix a cabinet
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YouTube has a plethora of language creators. You have to know where to look.
Tip #1: Create a dedicated YouTube account just for language learning. This gives you a clean slate to give to the Algorithm™. Follow a few creators in your target language, and your recommendations will be auto-populated with similar content. Never use this account for ordinary YouTube browsing.
I can recommend French and German YouTubers (examples listed below), and I’ve heard good things about some Russian, Spanish, Italian, and Mandarin creators. You can consult LingQ below for suggested content in other languages. Word of warning: avoid polyglots. “Polyglot” creators are nearly all scam artists who teach you little about your target language but profess to speak a dozen languages thanks to an extraordinary program you should definitely buy through their affiliate link. Better to do one thing and do it well. Focus on creators that specialize in one language and one language only. Find channels that speak exclusively in the target language with bilingual captions to maximize your experience.
German: Learn German with Anja, Stories in German, Die Maus
French: French Mornings with Elisa, Comme une Francaise, innerFrench
Russian: Atonia Romaker, Easy Russian, Russian Grammar
Spanish: Butterfly Spanish
Mandarin: Yoyo Chinese
Italian: Learn Italian with Lucrezia
LingQ
Good for locating YouTube content
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This has videos (and sometimes just audio) with accompanying transcripts. One point in their favor is that they don’t have any shortage of content. They mainly source it from other places (YouTube, news sites, etc.). Their main selling point is that one of their sources is Netflix, so if you like learning by watching foreign media with interactive captions, this resource supports that feature.
However, they only support Netflix in the browser. Furthermore, I find their app layout to be cluttered and confusing. The browser extension (required for Netflix) is “powered by AI”, but not the cool ChatGPT AI. Moreso the tamagotchi-powered-by-a-hamster-wheel AI. I wouldn’t recommend it, but you can peruse their content to find new educational YouTube channels and then consume them off-platform.
Die Maus
German Sesame Street
This is a wildly popular German children’s education show that is also good for adults learning German. It does have general educational content for all ages, so it’s not completely fair to compare it to Sesame Street, but it certainly fills the same niche.
CoffeeBreakTV
Like Chatterbug, but way more expensive and kind of worse
This is the video platform of the popular free podcast series. Just one aspect of their educational platform.
Reading
Most people are visual and auditory learners, which is why I’ve suggested primarily audio courses and captioned videos. However, some people don’t struggle with speaking practice and prefer reading for vocabulary practice. If you’re one of these people and wish that you could read Ebooks in a foreign language and tap-to-translate individual words to grow your vocabulary, there’s an app for that too.
Beelinguapp
For those who learn by reading
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This offers short stories and news articles that you can read along with a native narrator. New vocabulary encountered during the story can be added for later review, and each story comes with a quiz after to make sure you understand the context.
Langster
Formerly Readle
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This is a direct competitor to Beelinguapp. Their features are totally equivalent, as far as I can tell.
Passive Entertainment
It’s useful to experience a language even if you don’t understand it. Once you achieve an A1 level, start watching foreign shows with English captions or listen to music in your target language. This approach won’t help you learn by itself but will accelerate your ability to retain and comprehend new concepts introduced from other resources. Different languages have a musicality that can be learned even if the content is not understood. This musicality and rhythm will help with your pronunciation and listening comprehension in your target language.
RateYourMusic
Find music you like in your target language
RateYourMusic is a searchable database of all music, searchable by genre, album, artist, year, language, and country of origin.
For instance, I’m a big fan of Misterwives, particularly their 2017 album Connect the Dots. RateMyMusic categorizes that as Indie Pop, Alternative Dance, and New Wave. So I put all those descriptors into the chart filter, selecting German language and 2010s. Reviewing the results, the most popular album meeting those criteria is “Schick Schock” by Bilderbuch. Sure enough, it has a very similar vibe.
Once you start listening to some foreign music you like, the Spotify algorithm will eventually take over and recommend you more in that language and genre.
Netflix
Or MAX, or Prime, or Paramount+, or whatever
Wherever you get movies and TV, you can enjoy non-English classics with subtitles. RateYourMusic also lets you search for movies this way.
This streaming service features South Asian shows to immerse you in Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam. It’s also, as far as I can tell, the only source of the original Telugu cut of RRR. The movie’s dialogue is originally equal parts Telugu, Hindi, and English. But the version on Netflix dubs over the Telugu with Hindi.
This is Disney’s streaming property that serves the South Asian market. Another option if you want to learn Indian languages. Note that it doesn’t have distribution rights outside of Asia, so whip out the VPN and be prepared to pay in Rupees.
Check out Bahubali (parts 1 and 2) and RRR
Movistar is the leading internet provider in Latin America (you’ve heard of them if you’ve ever bought a SIM card there). They also have a streaming service if you’re interested in watching fútbol, telenovelas, or any Spanish content.
Let’s be honest. If you’re trying to learn Japanese, you’ve already heard of Crunchyroll.
fucking weeb.
Honorable Mentions
languagelearning.site
If you’re about that life on the high seas, this website contains links to many torrents of practically every conceivable language course ever produced, including textbooks, audio courses, and dictionaries.
r/languagelearning
I found out about many of the items on this list by scrolling this subreddit for years. Without word-of-mouth, you’ll only find yourself paying money to apps with a marketing budget. Free resources don’t advertise themselves.
In addition, the wiki on that subreddit contains a much more exhaustive list of learning resources (of greatly varying quality). If you feel something in this post is lacking, look there.
AI Assistants
It’s a brave new world we live in. While you should take their grammar explanations with a grain of salt (they tend to make stuff up), AI assistants provide a convenient way to practice your conversational skills. It’s too early days for me to recommend a particular app, given the ethical frontier we’re in regarding data collection and AI training, but keep this option in mind when you reach an A2/B1 level and need a conversation buddy.
If you liked this post, check out some of my other work. None of it is related, but I need to have internal links for SEO reasons. Look! A résumé!