🇰🇷 The best dictionaries for learning Korean

Korean–English and Korean–Korean entries with thousands of real example sentences pulled from news and books, native audio, conjugation info and Hanja. The mobile app is excellent and works offline for core entries. Free. The interface is Korean-first and the volume of results is overwhelming at first — expect to learn how to read the entry layout before it becomes fast.

Free official dictionary with definitions graded by learner level, grammar and usage notes on each entry, conjugation tables, and translations into a dozen languages. Because it is designed for learners rather than natives, definitions are simpler and the example sentences are chosen to teach. If you later want the full monolingual reference used by native speakers, the same institute runs the Standard Korean Language Dictionary at stdict.korean.go.kr.

The official monolingual dictionary of the National Institute of Korean Language — the final word on spelling, meaning, Hanja origin and standard usage. Switching to it is the point where you start defining Korean words in Korean, which sharpens nuance in a way bilingual entries cannot. Entirely in Korean with no learner scaffolding, so it is genuinely unusable below upper-intermediate.

Over 100 language editions; the English edition alone has millions of entries covering hundreds of languages, with IPA, declension and conjugation tables, etymologies and usage notes that commercial apps usually paywall. The etymology sections are quietly one of the best vocabulary-retention tools available. Being crowd-sourced, coverage is uneven and rare entries can be wrong — cross-check anything unusual against a native-language dictionary.

Around 6 million words recorded by native speakers across 400+ languages, usually with several accents per word so you can hear regional variation. Free to search on the site; the paid tiers are aimed at API users and bulk audio downloads. Indispensable for names, place names and anything a TTS voice would mangle — many learners wire it directly into Anki for card audio.