The best language learning apps

Learning a new language has never been easier – if you’re willing to commit, that is. Thankfully, there are loads of apps out there to make the whole process manageable and, in many cases, fun – perfect for those of us who suddenly have a lot more time at home than we’re used to.

Whether you want to learn for travel, for work, because you’re moving abroad, or just for the personal satisfaction, there’s an app on this list for you, even if you’re not a native English speaker. We’ve sorted through all the apps, software, and services we could get our hands on to figure out the best ways to learn a language online.

And if you want to use your language for a big trip in the future, you might also want to check out some of our favourite travel gadgets and travel apps, to help with some of the holiday headaches beyond the language barrier.

Duolingo

Duolingo is probably the best known and most popular language app out there, and for good reason. For one thing, it’s entirely free – you can pay an extra fee to remove ads from the app, but none of the actual content is gated behind a paywall.

There are currently 35 language courses available for native English speakers (including constructed languages like Klingon and Valyrian!) and it also has courses designed for non-English speakers to learn English or other languages, which not every language-learning app does.

You can use it on iOS, Android, or in a web browser, and your progress is synced across devices. As for the actual learning? Modules are broken down by both subject areas and grammatical types, and after completing them you’re periodically encouraged to practice older modules.

The whole system is gamified – you gain experience, level up, and earn a virtual currency as you build up your skills, which goes a long way to encouraging you to keep up your daily practice streak.

Exercises include reading, listening, writing, and speaking (though you can skip those ones in case you don’t want to be awkwardly reciting French sentences on the train), and you can set daily reminders to practice, with custom goals for how much you want to achieve each day.

The big downside is that the app doesn’t always teach you why some of the grammar works the way it does, only how to use it, but beyond that there’s little to complain about.

The ads can get a bit obtrusive, popping up after every module, but if you get too fed up there’s Duolingo Plus, which clears away all the adverts and adds offline lessons for $6.99/month (around £5.37/month).

That’s a steep price just for removing ads, but the lesson downloads will be useful for anyone who hopes to practice on an underground commute – though be aware that you can’t download practice sessions, only the initial modules to learn material for the first time.

Drops

Drops is a neat language-learning system that’s perfect for improving your vocabulary, but will need to be supplemented with something else to build up your grammar too.

Each word is a new ‘drop’, which you can choose to learn or skip. Learning puts it into a pool where it will pop up regularly, challenging your ability to remember it with a variety of simple learning games: matching the word to its translation, or to its image, or spelling it correctly, or even finding it in a mini word search – with the difficulty slowly ramping up as you master each word.

Vocab is split into the usual categories, with loads to learn, or you can get daily mixes of five words from across the spectrum. If you’re coming from English there are 34 languages to choose from, including relatively unusual ones like Ainu or Maori. And if you’re learning English, you even get the choice between American or British variants, which is nice.

The free version limits you to five minutes a day, but the idea is that five minutes of intense daily practice is a great way to drill the concepts and slowly build up your vocabulary. If you’d rather move faster, the paid tier can give you unlimited learning time, with options for monthly, annual, or lifetime subscriptions.

If you’re a fan of the format, there are also two other similar apps from the same developer. Droplets is essentially Drops but aimed at kids: the vocab lists are tweaked, there are parental controls, and options for group learning to make it more suitable for classrooms.

Scripts is a great option for anyone learning a language with a new alphabet. It uses the same format as the main app, but trains you to both recognise and write the characters of various alphabets, with difficulty ramping up in the same way. It supports the Roman/English alphabet, Cyrillic, Japanese Kana, Chinese Hanzi, Korean Hangul, Hindi Devanagari, and even American Sign Language.

Memrise

Memrise is another popular smartphone app for language learning, with a focus on repetition and memorisation as a way to boost language skills. As you’d expect, it’s out on both iOS and Android.

You practice specific words or phrases at a time, loosely connected by topic areas, with a focus on practical words and phrases, and the inclusion of videos of native speakers to help you figure out pronunciation.

As you practice words and phrases, you build up a flower for each – one leaf or petal for every correct answer until you have a full flower and have now learnt it. There’s a bit of a confusing mix of metaphors at work though, since the rest of the app has a sci-fi theme that casts you as a galactic explorer – we’re not quite sure how the flowers and the spaceships fit together.

The base app is free, but there’s a rather pricy Pro subscription available (£8.99/$8.99 per month at the time of writing, though you can save money with an annual or even lifetime pass), which unlocks features like an offline mode, a chat system to talk to native speakers, and unlimited access to every mode. There are a few too many pop-up ads for the Pro mode though, so it can get a little annoying.

Ultimately, how well you get on with Memrise depends on how well rote learning works for you when it comes to languages, as compared to learning how to build up sentences on your own.

Tandem

If you don’t feel like shelling out the big bucks for the chat option in Memrise, you might want to look at Tandem, available for iOS and Android.

This free chat app connects you with people from around the world that you can talk to by either text or voice chat to help each other learn languages and share your culture.

You get to set up your own profile with a few photos, and information about the kind of people you’d like to talk to, what you’d like to talk about, and which languages you speak and which you want to learn.

You can then either set the app to only suggest people who are native in the language you hope to learn, or to let you match with other people trying to learn the same language.

There’s a feedback system to flag or recommend people who are good matches, and the app has some built in tools for translation, and for correcting each other’s messages, including sending audio messages to help with pronunciation too. There’s also an icebreaker game to help you get past the initial hurdle of starting conversations with strangers.

It also makes every user agree to a behaviour guideline that includes agreeing not to treat it as a dating app, so you shouldn’t have to worry too much about dealing with creeps.

If you want to take it up a level you can pay to book a session with a certified language tutor through the app (or use it to advertise your own tutoring services), but if you just want to chat with other users it’s totally free.

If you’re just starting to learn, Tandem is a bit like throwing yourself in at the deep end, but if you’ve made good progress on another app or service and want to get better at actual conversation, Tandem is ideal.

Available on iOS and Android.

Lingvist

Lingvist is one of the most impressive language learning apps we’ve come across so far – so long as you’re learning one of the few languages it currently supports, and can afford the steep price.

At the time of writing, Lingvist covers French, German, Spanish, Russian, and Latin American Spanish. If you’re hoping to learn one of those, then Lingvist comes highly recommended, but naturally for many language learners it just won’t cover what they need.

Boasting a clean, minimalist design, Lingvist is different to many other language apps. Rather than separating its content around topic areas, it instead sorts them by difficulty level, which you progress through by practicing.

It encourages you to work through flash cards each day, learning a certain number of new words and practicing others along the way. Grammar tips pop up at relevant points to help with trickier elements, and there are also separate ‘challenges’ devoted to specific grammatical points.

The gimmick/selling point is that it’s all built around AI and machine learning, which it uses first to determine your ability level and then to serve you flash cards at the best moment, adjusting on the fly to your current ability level. That’s hard to assess in a brief testing period, but it did do a decent enough job assessing our initial skill level at least.

The free trial offers 7 day’s access to Lingvist Unlimited, which includes up to 5,000 pieces of vocabulary and as many new words you want to learn per day, along with unlimited reading, listening and speaking challenges a day. 

After the trial, you can choose to either pay £16.99/US$19.99 per month on pay as  you go, or choose from cheaper quarterly (£11.66/US$13.33 per month) or annual plans (£5.83/US$6.67 per month).

Lingvist is available for both iOS and Android.

Mondly is a subscription-based language learning app that lets user gain conversational fluency through gamified lessons, similar to Duolingo. It offers real and simulated conversations through tools like chatbots which allow you to feel like you’re immersed in a real-world exchange.

Whether or not you find it cool (or corny), Mondly also offers lessons in augmented reality too, so you can experience a virtual instructor in your space, wherever you are. 

Mondly is available for both Android and iOS and allows users to learn up to 33 different languages. What’s particularly useful is that lessons are taught in over 1000 languages apart from English, so you don’t have to be a native English speaker to start a lesson.

You can either choose to purchase lessons for a single language at £9.99/$9.99 per month or gain annual access for £49.99/$47.99. The best value comes with lifetime access to all 33 languages for £99.99/$99.

See all Mondly plans and pricing.

Rosetta Stone

If you’ve ever looked into language learning software before, you’ve probably heard of Rosetta Stone. First launched way back in 1992, for a long time it was the absolute go-to language software, but its clout has diminished slightly in the Duolingo age.

First, let’s get the bad news out of the way. Compared to the competition, Rosetta Stone is expensive. At full price, a year’s subscription to the online course (for web browsers and smartphones/tablets) will set you back at least £240/$119, and it’s even more if you want permanent access to the downloadable desktop software or one of the advanced courses.

What sets Rosetta Stone apart (other than the price) is the unique learning method. It’s a system designed to teach you to speak like a native, without reference to your own language. Instead you pair pictures with words and phrases, or pick out correct answers from a list or type in translations.

It’s an immersive approach that lets you build up your own language associations as you go – you can try out a free demo to find out if it’s for you or not.

You get not only the main courses, but also online tutor services in your chosen language, community access, and a variety of language games to help you learn. Bear in mind that you pay for a specific language though – so you don’t get to study any others without paying again.

FlashAcademy is one of the many language apps that takes its cues from Duolingo, using gamification to encourage users to stick to their language learning goals.

Exercises are broken down by topic area, and test grammar as well as vocabulary, each introducing a few new words before building up to more complex sentences and conversations. There are also mini-games that give you the chance to apply those new words against the clock.

The only real downside from our time with the app is its insistence on pairing new words with cartoon icons to illustrate them – useful with basic nouns like ‘apple’, but less helpful when you’re trying to figure out which icon is meant to represent ‘internet connection’ or ‘advertising agency’.

Probably the coolest feature is outside the main learning experience though. FlashAcademy can use your phone’s camera to scan objects in the world and give you an immediate translation, which is a pretty nifty way to learn and reinforce new terms.

Available on iOS and Android.

Léa Knows

Léa Knows takes a single aspect of Google Translate – saving translations for future reference – and expands it into a full-blown app, entirely for free.

While Google’s software lets you star a few translations to look at again, it doesn’t let you do much with them, simply giving you a date-ordered list to scroll through.

Léa Knows expands on this by automatically saving every translation you make into a flash card, and then allowing you to categorise them further by starring ones you want to reference frequently, archiving others that you don’t need so often, and deleting any you know you’re done with.

You can further sort lists by alphabetical, most recent, or most viewed, and can also colour code them for easy reference. In the future we’d love to see the option to sort translations by language – useful if you travel a lot or are learning more than one – but for now you can use the colour coding for the same effect if you don’t mind the extra legwork.

There’s no gamification either, so it’s entirely up to you to put the effort into going through your flashcards every now and then – the app won’t hassle you into it, or reward you after you do, so how useful Léa Knows is will depend a lot on your motivation going in.

This won’t be the core of your language learning, but it’s a neat little app to supplement your learning by helping you remember those tricky translations, rather than just use them once and forget.

The app is available for both iOS and Android.

TripLingo

TripLingo is a little different from the other apps in this list, because it isn’t technically focused around language learning. Instead the focus is on specific trips, giving you all the knowledge you need to travel abroad without a hitch, for either iOS or Android.

You simply pick the country you’re travelling to, and you’re given access to an array of common phrases and slang (split into topics like dining, shopping, getting around, and business) and a culture guide, letting you know about local quirks like dress codes, dining etiquette, and safety tips.

There are also heaps of other features, including a currency converter, Wi-Fi dialler to save on international calls, an image translator, a tip calculator (factoring in local rules), data roaming tools, and a voice translator.

The free version gives you basic access to every feature in every language, but you’ll have to pay a subscription if you want full access. The basic features should be enough to get you by on an occasional trip, but frequent travellers might want to consider the upgrade.

Udemy

Udemy isn’t strictly language learning software, but it’s a platform for a variety of educational courses – including plenty to do with languages.

There are courses on just about every language you can learn, from short ones tied to specific topics right up to sprawling multi-part courses across every aspect of a language. Naturally, prices also vary along the way, but a lot of the shortest ones are free, so you can get a taster for the service.

Courses typically include video, supplementary files, listening practices, and quizzes and tests, and some will continue to be updated even after you’ve paid for them, so could keep on improving as you use them.

Since they’re put together by different instructors there can be some variation in quality and style, but there are user reviews to help guide you towards the best lectures for you, so you should mostly be able to avoid any duds.

Babbel

Babbel is a more traditional language learning app, offering an array of exercises in 14 different languages. Surprise surprise, it’s on both iOS and Android.

Courses are split up into some beginner and intermediate sections, and then others separated by topic area, type of learning (listening, speaking, writing), or language section (grammar, vocab, etc.).

The array of courses (in Italian, at least) is absolutely vast, and feels very comprehensive – even beating Duolingo. Unlike that app, it also offers more cultural insight, with a section dedicated to local traditions, even going into regional variations – while still offering language skills.

The user interface is pretty bare unfortunately, and there’s not much in the way of gamification either, so if you’re worried you might struggle with motivation then Babbel may not be the app for you.

It also feels a bit repetitive within each course – probably good for language learning by drilling things into your head, but it can make using the app a little dull.

HiNative

HiNative is another language learning app that’s doing something a little bit different. It’s really a Q&A app, which you can use to ask people around the world questions about their language and culture, with a community shared across the iOS and Android versions.

When you sign up, you fill in which languages you speak and which you’d like to learn, and are taught how to use the app by asking your first question. There are a few basic formats, encouraging you to ask how to translate certain words or phrases, or why a certain sentence might be right or wrong, or about something more cultural.

Obviously that means that HiNative isn’t going to give you a solid grounding in a language’s grammar and vocabulary, or get you up to fluency on its own.

But if you don’t want to invest the time in a language exchange app like Tandem, it’s a great way to get answers to occasional questions, with the benefit that you’ll get a variety of answers from different people – it’s basically crowdsourcing your language learning.

Busuu

Busuu is a pretty slick language app that could easily rival Duolingo – but only if you’re willing to shell out for the premium version, whether you’re on  iOS or  Android.

The base app gives you a selection of languages to choose from, which exercises across a variety of topics tiered into the internationally recognised CEFR levels.

Busuu offers courses from A1 to B2 (upper intermediate) – wisely acknowledging that if you want to reach the upper tier of language proficiency you’ll need to actually talk to people in that language, not just use an app.

Courses are split up by topic and type, and there’s an attractive UI and some light gamification to keep you interested – though not quite as extensive as Duolingo’s.

The downside is that the best features are locked behind a premium paywall, which the app is almost constantly encouraging you to cough up for. Not only are things like offline downloads kept to premium users, but so are basic grammar units and quizzes, and even the ability to learn more than one language.