Learning Portuguese as a beginner? We've gathered 81 resources pitched at your level, 36 of them free. Highlights include Practice Portuguese, European Portuguese Shorties (Practice Portuguese) and Plain Portuguese. They're ordered so the things that teach you come first, free ahead of paid at the same standing, and reference material last.
Rui and Joel have built since 2012 what nobody else has for European Portuguese: 100+ structured units, hundreds of graded audio Shorties and podcast episodes, a verb trainer, pronunciation analysis and an SRS review system, all in the Lisbon standard rather than Brazilian. The Practice Portuguese Podcast and Shorties are free in any podcast app; full site and app access is about €15/month with no free trial but a money-back guarantee. If you live in Portugal and can only pay for one thing, this is it — the caveat is that it is Lisbon-accented and light on the northern varieties.
A separate feed from the main Practice Portuguese podcast: short scripted scenes and monologues, each tagged A1, A2 or B1, read at a pace a learner can follow. The audio is free and the back catalogue runs to hundreds of episodes, so it is one of the best free listening ladders for European Portuguese. Transcripts, translations and the linked exercises sit behind the paid Practice Portuguese membership, so on the free feed you are listening blind.
Short lessons on the gap between textbook Portuguese and what comes out of a Brazilian's mouth: swallowed syllables, diminutives, expressions that resist translation. Explanations are in English with Portuguese examples, which makes it usable from day one and a poor choice once you want immersion. Free, over six hundred videos, publishing weekly. Good alongside a course rather than instead of one.
The best-known European Portuguese YouTube channel (around 290K subscribers), covering everything from why Portuguese sounds the way it does to interviews with speakers of other Romance languages, with Portuguese subtitles throughout. He also runs separate Beginner and Intermediate Portuguese Podcast series and gives away several ebooks; the B1, B2 and pronunciation courses are paid. YouTube uploads have slowed to every month or two, so treat the channel as a deep archive and the podcasts as the active feed.
The most reliable Brazilian Portuguese teaching channel: pronunciation, grammar, verb conjugation and culture, taught slowly in Portuguese with English support, and still uploading several times a week to over 330K subscribers. Free on YouTube; the paid side is a school with levelled digital courses, group classes and private lessons. A good default first stop for Brazilian Portuguese, and it pairs well with a conversation podcast once you can follow one.
Innovative Language's Portuguese arm: short dialogue-plus-explanation lessons organised into level pathways, with line-by-line transcripts, flashcards and a decent mobile app. Sheer volume is the selling point — you will not run out of material at any level. The free account gives limited access and the marketing is relentlessly discount-driven, so never pay list price. It teaches Brazilian Portuguese, so it is the wrong tool if you are living in Portugal.
The Portuguese arm of Easy Languages: people stopped in the street and asked something ordinary, answering at their own speed with dual subtitles on screen. Deliberately left untagged for a variety because the channel runs separate Brazilian and Portugal playlists — most of the output and the base are Brazilian, but the Portugal set is real, so check which playlist you are in. Free on YouTube; a membership adds transcripts and exercises.
Each episode tells a short story set in Brazil, then goes back through it one sentence at a time alternating Portuguese and English, so you get the meaning without reaching for a dictionary. Over 340 episodes and a new one most days, which solves the usual beginner problem of running out of material at your level. The podcast is free; a paid Plus tier adds transcripts and vocabulary lists. The site does not say who writes or narrates the stories, and the format is formulaic by design — useful as daily volume rather than as your only listening.
The state body responsible for teaching Portuguese abroad runs self-study and tutored eLearning courses aligned to both the CEFR and Portugal's own QuaREPE framework, along with workplace-Portuguese tracks and a network of Portuguese Language Centres. Being the official institution matters if you want certification or a syllabus that matches what Portuguese schools teach. It is bureaucratic to navigate, courses are paid and run in enrolment windows, and the platform feels institutional rather than modern.
The Portuguese entry in the Teach Yourself graded-reader series: sci-fi, fantasy, crime and thriller stories written for high-beginner to low-intermediate readers, with bolded vocabulary, chapter glossaries, plot summaries and comprehension questions. It is the most reliable way to get from textbook sentences to reading whole chapters. Brazilian Portuguese only — there is no European Portuguese edition, which is why Storyglot exists.
A University of Texas project that contrasts each Portuguese sound with its Spanish equivalent, using paired dialogues plus a cultural comparison between the US and Brazil. If you come to Portuguese from Spanish it addresses your actual problems — nasal vowels, open and closed e/o, the sounds Spanish simply lacks — rather than starting from zero. Completely free with transcripts, from an academic institution. It is an older series with no new episodes, and useless if you have no Spanish.
Comprehensible input done properly: Diana speaks only Portuguese, from slow beginner stories up to a full-speed vlog, and puts Portuguese and English subtitles on screen so you can follow before you can decode. The 'Podcast Português' episodes and the 'just listen' videos are the closest thing on YouTube to European Portuguese Dreaming-Spanish-style input. Free and posted roughly twice a month; a short-story ebook, Patreon and one-to-one sessions are separate paid extras. Small channel, started in late 2025, so the archive is still thin.
Adelina builds each lesson around one small thing — the difference between 'a' and 'para', how to say 'in the' — and narrates it in slow, clear European Portuguese over simple illustrations, so an absolute beginner follows the picture while the language does the work. The English appears only in the titles; nothing in the audio is English. Over 400 free videos, subtitled in many languages, still updated. Deliberately tiny lessons, so it complements longer listening rather than replacing it.
A Brazilian teacher narrating short stories and describing everyday scenes at a pace a beginner can follow, with hand-written Portuguese subtitles rather than YouTube's automatic ones. Episodes are explicitly built as comprehensible input — she describes a photo, tells a small story, and repeats the key structures instead of explaining them in English. Free on YouTube, with transcripts and a Discord on the site; supported by tips rather than a paywall.
Sofia films ordinary Rio life — a supermarket run, a story about going vegetarian, a football explainer — speaking only Portuguese and slowing down for learners rather than switching to English. Every video carries hand-made subtitles in a couple of dozen languages, which is unusually generous for a channel this size and makes it workable from the first weeks. New since 2025 and still small, so the back catalogue is thin compared with the Portugal-side channels.
Eli has been publishing short spoken essays and situational lessons — taking a bus, making comparisons, Brazilian superstitions — since 2010, now well past 900 videos, all in Brazilian Portuguese with manually written Portuguese subtitles. The delivery is deliberately plain and unhurried, which is what makes it usable well before you can follow native-speed media. A one-person channel with a modest following; the audio quality is functional rather than polished.
Each 8–12 minute episode presents a short dialogue between Brazilians, translates it line by line into English, then digs into the vocabulary, grammar and culture behind it, graded Beginning, Elementary or Intermediate. Written by Prof. Orlando Kelm with Brazilian co-hosts from several regions, and completely free — no account, no upsell. Use the Library page rather than the podcast feed: both feeds also carry Slice of Life, the same team's English course for Brazilians, and its fifty episodes sit in front of the Portuguese ones. An academic archive, finished rather than growing.
Built around the observation that most learners in Portugal can read fine and understand nothing, so the method leads with pronunciation and reduced everyday speech rather than grammar tables. The YouTube channel (around 134K subscribers, posting regularly) and a free beginner training are the entry points; the Portuguese Pro courses are paid. She is a fluent non-native teacher explaining in English, which some prefer for the early stages and others specifically do not want.
A Lisbon teacher who structures things unusually clearly: short podcast episodes each doing one thing — a grammar point, a pronunciation contrast, a listening drill — with printable support materials. The podcast and a starter phrase pack are free; Portuguese Lab Academy (A1–B2) is the paid course. Very good for the A1–A2 stage where European Portuguese material is thinnest; her Storyglot readers cover the same ground for reading.
Carla and Marlon built 'The Journey' — 80+ filmed episodes following two characters solving a family mystery around Portugal — and hang vocabulary, grammar and exercises off the narrative, which keeps motivation up far better than unit-by-unit slogging. Podcast episodes, YouTube lessons and a weekly email are free; membership is €30/month or €349/year. Genuinely goes up to C1–C2 grammar, which almost no other European Portuguese course does, though the storytelling format is slower per hour than a conventional textbook.
Teaching since 2008, with self-paced courses, private video lessons and dedicated prep for Celpe-Bras — the Brazilian government's official proficiency exam, which matters for study or work in Brazil. The blog and YouTube channel carry a long run of free grammar and idiom lessons that stand alone even if you never book a class. YouTube uploads have become infrequent; the paid tutoring is the active part of the business.
One of the oldest Portuguese learning podcasts, with several hundred lessons on conversation, vocabulary and the popular expressions textbooks skip. The podcast feed stopped publishing around 2020, so treat it as a large free archive rather than an active show. The audio podcast is free in any app; structured course bundles and lesson materials are sold through their Teachable site, which is now the main web presence. Production is basic and the archive is organised by episode number rather than by level, so plan on some digging.
Two strands: 'Portuguese Basic Tips' for near-beginners and full Todo Mundo Pod episodes in Portuguese on Brazilian culture, history and figures, with transcripts and exercises behind a membership. The Brazilian-culture angle gives it more substance than generic learner chat. Output has become sporadic — the blog archive largely stops around 2021 — so value it for the existing catalogue rather than a steady feed.
Raquel Reis runs two parallel podcasts from Portugal — a beginner feed at A1/A2 and an intermediate one at B1/B2 — and both were still publishing in August 2026. The recurring "Notícias com o Uca" segment retells real Portuguese news stories at each level, which is a rare bridge between learner audio and the real thing. The feeds are free; full transcripts and vocabulary support come with the paid membership.
A hundred-plus episodes of European Portuguese, each labelled A2 or B1, ranging from practical scenes at the pharmacy to travel pieces on Trás-os-Montes. The level tagging is consistent enough that you can work through it in order. New episodes stopped in September 2025 and the companion "Clube de Conversas" feed is also idle, so treat it as an archive; transcripts and extras are sold separately on the site.
The Master Course walks from true beginner to upper-intermediate in a conventional, thorough, CEFR-aligned way — grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and exercises — plus a separate Speech Course on the sounds of European Portuguese and interactive story material. Courses are one-off purchases with lifetime access rather than a subscription, which suits people who dislike recurring fees. It is a solid textbook-style course, not an entertaining one; the free materials on the site are a fair sample of the teaching style.
Instead of studio dialogues you get episodic video stories filmed on location, with the language graded across series and grammar explained visually rather than in tables. It is the strongest option if you learn from narrative and want to hear Portuguese in situ rather than in a classroom. Subscription-only with some free sample posts, the accent is a deliberately neutral Brazilian one, and the video library grows slowly — long-standing subscribers do notice.
Sara Durães records short episodes around one practical situation each, in clear European Portuguese aimed at A1 to B1. It is a small, free, one-person podcast rather than a course, and the episodes are genuinely useful if you are living in Portugal and need the language for errands. Fewer than thirty episodes exist and there are no transcripts, so treat it as extra listening alongside something structured.
A young European Portuguese podcast, still publishing in August 2026, with every episode tagged by level and built around one everyday topic. Jess speaks slowly and repeats key phrases, which suits someone who has finished a beginner course and cannot yet follow native radio. The catalogue is short and there are no transcripts on the feed itself.
A small Portuguese channel built on comprehensible input: story-time retellings of the Grimm brothers, a walk through the vipers of Portugal, making coffee outdoors, all at a pace a B1 learner can follow. Most videos are Portuguese from start to finish, but some — the nature series in particular — set the topic up in English first, which is why it is filed as explained-in-English rather than Portuguese-only. Free, roughly monthly, and under 2,000 subscribers, so expect a personal rather than a polished production.
Ellie, from southern Brazil, narrates short original stories and marks each one A1, A2, B1 or B2 in the title — the level labelling is the point, because it lets you find input you can almost follow instead of guessing. Subtitles are hand-made in over twenty languages. Very small channel with around fifty videos and an irregular schedule, so treat it as a supplement rather than a spine.
A native Portuguese teacher offering personalised online lessons, with a specific focus on the CAPLE exams — CIPLE at A2 and DEPLE/DIPLE at B1–B2 — which matters if you are working toward Portuguese nationality or residency requirements. She publishes a free podcast on idioms and a blog on culture and learning. Pricing is not listed publicly, so you have to ask; this is a tutor, not a self-study product.
Susana Morais of Portuguese Lab writes these to fill an obvious gap — nearly every Portuguese graded reader on the market is Brazilian. Each book targets a level and consolidates specific grammar through story rather than exercises, with audio available. Reasonably priced ebooks; the range is smaller than the Brazilian equivalents, so heavy readers will exhaust it faster than they would like.
RTP zigzag is the state broadcaster's children's brand, and its YouTube channel carries the programmes from the TV channel: animation, nature, and studio shows made in Portugal or dubbed into European Portuguese. RTP describes it as being for ages 3 to 12, which is the range recorded here. For an adult learner it is unusually good listening — children's television speaks slowly, repeats itself and names what is on screen.
Animated musical videos for small children, with clear diction, heavy repetition and vocabulary built from the concrete world — animals, food, weather, the body. The repetition that makes children's music bearable to toddlers is the same thing that makes it stick for adult beginners. Free, around six hundred videos. Genuinely made for the very young, so the subject matter will bore you before the language does.
Mauricio de Sousa's Mônica, Cebolinha and Magali have been the shared reference point of Brazilian childhood for sixty years, and the official channel animates them in short episodes with everyday dialogue and simple plots. Useful past the toddler stage: the language is real conversation rather than sung vocabulary, and the cultural literacy is worth something on its own. Free, publishing weekly. Note that Cebolinha's speech impediment is a deliberate joke, not a model.
Definitions in Portuguese with synonyms, antonyms, example sentences, full conjugation tables and etymology, using Brazilian spelling throughout. Free with no account. Being monolingual it is a step up from a translation dictionary, and worth switching to as soon as you can read a simple definition — looking a word up in Portuguese is itself practice. Ad-supported.
Panda e Os Caricas are the songs Portuguese children actually grow up with, and this is their music catalogue. Sung European Portuguese, slow and endlessly repetitive, which is what makes nursery rhymes work for a learner as well as for a four-year-old. Two things to know: it is reached through the Canal Panda Portugal handle but published as a VEVO channel, so the feed name differs from the page name and the channel id is the reliable reference; and every upload carries a YouTube region restriction, so it is a link out rather than something our player can queue. No age range is recorded — nobody publishes one and the songs span the whole of early childhood.
Elsa Teixeira writes these for M80 Rádio and each one carries a small lesson, which is what bedtime stories are for. Five to eight minutes, one voice, told slowly — the easiest authentic listening in the Portuguese set, for a child or an adult who has just started. Ninety-four episodes and still arriving.
The show describes itself as a children's podcast in Portuguese from Portugal, for children and families, and it is one of the few that says so outright. Episodes run six to fifteen minutes, some standalone and some serials like A Ilha dos Feitiços, with music and sound around the narration. Long enough to hold a car journey, short enough for one at bedtime.
Miriam Gonçalves writes these for Renascença, explicitly for the parents who cannot face making one up again when they are asked for just one more. Around eleven minutes each, told softly for a dark room. Eighty-six episodes, and the last one landed in April 2025 — it is a finished back catalogue rather than a running show, which for bedtime stories matters less than it would for news.
Made with the Pavilhão do Conhecimento for RTP's Rádio Zig Zag: a real child's question — can I look at the sun during an eclipse? — answered by a scientist, in about a hundred seconds. The format is close to perfect for a learner as well as a child: one idea, one voice, and short enough to replay until you have it. Over a hundred episodes.
The official channel for Simon, the rabbit from Stephanie Blake's picture books, in a European Portuguese dub. Five-minute episodes plus half-hour compilations, arriving weekly. The Portuguese is unmistakably from Portugal — 'emprestas-me', 'vai-te embora' — and the sentences are short, repeated and attached to what is on screen, which is why preschool television is such good early listening.
Running since 2009 with over three hundred and sixty videos, this channel animates and narrates children's books with the stated aim of getting children to borrow the real thing. Eight to twelve minutes each. Because it is a book being read rather than dialogue, the Portuguese is full sentences at a steady pace — the closest thing here to a graded reader you can listen to.
The official Portuguese channel, posting eleven-minute episodes monthly. The name is the giveaway and the reason it belongs here rather than under Brazilian Portuguese: in Portugal the Smurfs are Os Estrumpfes, and the dub is Portuguese throughout. Ordinary cartoon dialogue at natural speed, which makes it a step up from preschool material.
The digital home of Portugal's biggest reference publisher: the Portuguese-language dictionary plus Portuguese–English and other bilingual pairs, verb conjugation, and native audio for headwords, all from a European Portuguese perspective. The core dictionary lookups are free; some encyclopaedic content sits behind a subscription. Between this and Priberam you have European Portuguese lexical questions covered without paying anything.
A small Portuguese channel that says exactly what it is: educational videos in Portuguese from Portugal for babies, preschoolers and children in the first cycle of school. Íris and Luigi teach the alphabet, colours and numbers, with hour-long compilations alongside the short clips. The published age range — babies to first cycle — is the one recorded here.
Type an infinitive and get every tense and mood laid out, including the personal infinitive and the future subjunctive that make Portuguese conjugation genuinely harder than Spanish. Free, fast and paired with dictionary, synonym and grammar sections from the same publisher. It is a Brazilian site, so where a form differs between varieties the Brazilian usage is what you see — check Priberam if you need the Portugal norm.
A no-account browser drill site: conjugation trainer, listening exercises and vocabulary games, with a setting for which Portuguese you want, including the pronunciation used in the audio. It is a drill tool and nothing more — it will not teach you the grammar, only make you fast at what you have already met. Free, no ads, no sign-up.
Fast, free and comprehensive, with full conjugation for every verb, etymologies, and an explicit switch between the Portuguese and Brazilian orthographic conventions — which is exactly what you need when the same word is spelled differently on each side of the Atlantic. Definitions are in Portuguese only, so it becomes useful around B1. This is the dictionary most Portuguese speakers actually open.
Published by Melhoramentos, with over 350,000 definitions including regionalisms, colloquialisms and slang, plus Portuguese–English and other bilingual dictionaries alongside the monolingual one. It is the Brazilian counterpart to Priberam and the better choice when a word is Brazil-specific. The web version is free; the site is ad-heavy and the mobile apps are paid.
The main English-language forum for Portuguese learners, with native speakers from both sides of the Atlantic. Its usefulness for this language is disproportionate to its size, because the first decision a Portuguese learner makes — which variety to study, and what happens when your materials disagree — is a question about people's habits rather than about grammar, and no book answers it as well as a hundred replies do. Smaller and slower than the Spanish and Japanese communities.
Subscription-only after a handful of free intro lessons, with the monthly price falling steeply on longer plans. Lessons are short, dialogue-first and explain grammar properly, which makes it a much more serious beginner course than Duolingo. It covers only 14 languages and effectively stops around B1, so it is a stepping stone rather than a destination.
Covers 14 languages along an explicit CEFR path, and its best feature is the community exchange: you submit short writing or speaking exercises and real native speakers correct them, free of charge, in exchange for you correcting theirs. The free tier is limited to core lessons; Premium unlocks grammar, offline and the full path. A solid Babbel alternative if you specifically want writing practice with human feedback.
One-on-one video lessons from roughly $5–30/hr depending on the language and the teacher's credentials. It is the single fastest way to get real speaking practice, and the reason most self-study plans stall is that they skip this step. Community tutors are cheap conversation partners; professional teachers are worth it if you want structure, homework and error correction.
Thirty-minute audio lessons force you to produce sentences out loud before you see anything written, which builds unusually good accent and recall. Subscriptions run about $15–21/month (all-access covers 50+ languages), and older courses are often available through public libraries. It is slow and vocabulary-light by design, so pair it with reading — but for commute or walking time it is the best use of otherwise dead hours.
100,000+ tutors across 120+ subjects, with a free replacement if your first tutor is a bad fit. The main structural difference from italki is that Preply pushes weekly lesson subscriptions and takes a large commission from tutors, which some learners consider a reason to prefer italki. Worth comparing side by side for your language — prices, availability and tutor quality differ per market rather than per platform.
Mihalis Eleftheriou records real lessons with a real student and walks you through constructing the language yourself using cognates and logic — Spanish, French, Italian, German, Greek, Turkish, Arabic and Swahili are covered. Completely free, no ads, no sign-up, funded by donations. The Spanish course in particular is one of the most recommended free resources anywhere; the trade-off is small vocabulary and no reading or writing practice.
Foreign Service Institute, Peace Corps and DLI materials — full textbooks plus hundreds of hours of audio — are public domain and hosted here for free across dozens of languages. The depth is extraordinary and the FSI Basic courses take diplomats to professional working proficiency, which no consumer app attempts. The recordings are from the 1960s–80s, the drills are relentless, and some vocabulary is dated (Cold War era), so they suit disciplined self-studiers, not casual learners.
Mark Pentleton teaches a genuine student while you listen in, across French, Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Swedish, Portuguese, Japanese and Gaelic. The podcast seasons are free on any podcast app and are structured as a real curriculum rather than scattered episodes; the Academy sells premium lesson notes, video and bonus audio. Ideal commuting material for beginners through B1, and the Spanish and French series are the strongest.
Lessons build outward from real conversations with colour-coded literal translations and cultural notes, and the catalogue includes endangered and indigenous languages nobody else covers. Retail pricing starts around $10/month, but a very large number of public libraries and universities give patrons free access — check yours before paying. Content depth per language is modest, so it suits travellers and early learners more than people pushing toward B2.
Each course is ~100 short bilingual dialogues with native audio: you passively absorb for months, then start an 'active wave' translating back into the target language. Books run around €30 (e-courses ~€50) across 70+ languages, and the method is a long-standing favourite among polyglots for reaching real reading fluency. Caveats: many courses are only published from French, the humour is dated, and it demands daily discipline with no gamification to carry you.
The 'Complete' books are proper structured courses with dialogues, graded exercises and downloadable audio, and the range covers languages no app touches. Quality varies noticeably by title and author, so check reviews for your specific language before buying rather than trusting the series name. Their graded readers and 'Script Hacking' alphabet guides are also worth knowing about for non-Latin scripts.
You sit in on a recorded lesson with two students and build sentences aloud alongside them, with no writing, homework or memorisation; 19 languages are available. It is remarkably good at making the core grammar of Romance languages click in a few hours. Vocabulary coverage is small, the recordings are old, and the courses after Michel Thomas's death are taught by other teachers with mixed results — treat it as a fast on-ramp, not a course of study.
Over 70 languages, each a step-by-step beginner course written by an experienced teacher, and crucially all the audio is free to download from the companion site even if you find the book secondhand. Slightly more academic and grammar-forward than Teach Yourself, which some learners prefer. Like any book series the individual titles differ in quality; the less common languages are often the only decent course in existence.
You listen to and repeat thousands of native-recorded sentences on a spaced schedule, which builds fluent output patterns without explicit grammar study. It covers 60+ languages and keeps nine minority languages (Catalan, Welsh, Taiwanese, Kurdish and others) permanently free as a preservation effort. It is expensive at roughly $20–40/month, and the repetition is monotonous — most reviewers call it effective but overpriced, so try the 7-day trial first.
A reading app built around finishing complete books: you pick a story at your level, tap a word or reveal a sentence's English translation when you get stuck, and it saves the words you looked up. There is one complete free book in every language and you can read a free chapter on the website without installing anything; the rest of the 1,100-book library is paid. The library is uneven: Ukrainian, Indonesian and French have dozens of stories, while Icelandic, Estonian and several Balkan languages have one or two. It is not the same as Storyglot's European Portuguese readers (storyglot.com), which are a separate project with the same name.
Free on desktop, Android and web; the iOS app is a one-off paid purchase that funds the project. The interface is dated and the options are overwhelming at first, but nothing beats it for retaining vocabulary over years. Most effective when you stop grinding premade decks and start mining sentences from things you actually read or watch.
The free tier is genuinely usable (ads plus a limited 'hearts' system); Super removes both for about $96/yr. Its real value is streak-driven consistency for absolute beginners, and the smaller courses are thin machine-assisted content rather than the polished Spanish or French trees. Treat it as a warm-up habit, not a curriculum — nobody reaches conversational fluency on Duolingo alone.
The 'learn with locals' video clips are the distinguishing feature — you hear real people at real speed rather than TTS. Be aware that Memrise moved user-created community courses off the main app in 2024 onto a separate site, which gutted what many long-time users valued most, and the app has leaned hard into AI chat features since. Fine as a phrase-and-vocabulary app for major languages; if you came for the community decks, use Anki instead.
Built-in correction tools let partners fix your messages inline, and the social 'moments' feed gets you corrections from strangers without arranging a call. Free for the core exchange; VIP adds more translations and simultaneous target languages. The persistent caveat is that a fair share of users treat it as a dating app, and exchange partners are unreliable — it works best once you already have some output to correct.
Import podcasts, articles or ebooks, tap unknown words for definitions, and LingQ tracks your known-word count over time. The free tier caps how many saved words you can keep, so serious use means paying (~$13/month or less annually). The interface is clunky and the built-in SRS is weaker than Anki, but the reading-plus-audio workflow with 50+ languages is hard to replicate elsewhere.
Same idea as HelloTalk but with vetted profiles and one-to-one partner matching rather than a social feed, which makes it noticeably less spammy in practice. Texting partners is free; calling them in the app is part of the paid Pro tier, and the app also sells paid tutors. Both apps live or die on finding one or two committed partners, so expect to message a lot of people before anything sticks.
Unlike most apps it is built around producing speech: you repeat, roleplay and converse with an AI tutor that gives pronunciation and phrasing feedback in real time. Covers Spanish, French, Korean, Japanese, Italian and Chinese for English speakers, with a 7-day trial then a subscription (roughly $20/month or $99/yr). Good for overcoming the fear of speaking before your first human lesson, but an AI will not push back or drift off-script the way a real conversation partner does.
A 501(c)(3) nonprofit: you shadow native audio, record your own version, and a real human coach returns feedback — 10 free submissions a month, unlimited for about $20/month, with full scholarships for anyone who needs one. Covers French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and English. It only fixes pronunciation and delivery, so it complements rather than replaces conversation practice.
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.
A detailed staged roadmap for acquiring a language through massive comprehensible input — what to do at each stage, when to start output, how to mine sentences — with a free tracker, starter courses and an active Discord. The roadmap and community are free; vocabulary decks, advanced courses and coaching are paid. It is opinionated to the point of dogma about avoiding early output and translation, so take the framework and ignore the purity rules if they do not fit your goals.
A collaborative, Creative Commons-licensed corpus you can search for real usage of a word or download in bulk to build your own decks. It is the raw material behind Clozemaster and countless Anki decks rather than a study tool in itself. Sentences are contributed by volunteers, so quality and naturalness vary — prefer sentences from native contributors and cross-check anything surprising.
The default place to ask 'is X app worth it' or 'what should I do at B1' and get answers from people who have actually done it, plus per-language subreddits (r/Spanish, r/LearnJapanese, r/French) with far better resource lists. The wiki and FAQ head off most beginner questions. Expect strong ideological camps — comprehensible-input purists versus textbook people — so read a few threads before taking any single answer as settled.
Modern assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) will roleplay a scenario at your level, correct your writing with explanations, generate graded reading, and hold voice conversations — endlessly patient and available at 2am, which no tutor is. Free tiers are enough for text practice; voice modes generally need a subscription. The caveats are real: models are noticeably weaker and more error-prone in lower-resource languages, they tend to produce bland textbook register rather than how people actually speak, and they will not correct you unless you explicitly ask them to.
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.