🇵🇹 The best websites for learning Portuguese

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.

Vivian Flanzer's university coursebook, published open-access under Creative Commons: seven thematic units built around video interviews with Brazilians, each with readings, grammar explanations and vocabulary lists, plus a standalone grammar bank covering the indicative and subjunctive. Free to read online and to adapt. Written for intermediate classroom use, so it assumes you have the basics and expects you to do the exercises.

Pairs of Brazilians improvising a scenario — a complaint, a negotiation, a piece of gossip — filmed unscripted so the hesitations and interruptions survive, then annotated with commentary bubbles explaining what just happened and why. Portuguese transcripts and English translations come with every clip, and the whole set is downloadable as a PDF. Free, from UT Austin. Aimed at intermediate and up; the archive is fixed at 35 dialogues.

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.

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.

Run out of ISCTE in Lisbon, it answers submitted questions about grammar, usage, regional variation and the spelling accord, and the searchable back catalogue now covers nearly every argument speakers have about the language. This is where you go when a grammar book gives a rule and you want to know whether anyone follows it. Entirely in Portuguese and written for an educated native audience, so it is a C-level reference, not a study tool.

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.

Pedro built this for the specific problem of understanding Portuguese as it is actually spoken in Portugal — fast, swallowed vowels, idiomatic — with levelled listening practice, vocabulary saving and grammar articles. The free tier gives a weekly allowance of content and vocabulary review; Plus is about €11.60/month annually and adds unlimited access and AI speaking practice. Explicitly best from A2 upward; absolute beginners should start elsewhere.

Thousands of short documentary and explainer videos from RTP's archive, organised by school subject — history, science, literature, Portuguese language itself — with accompanying text. It is made for Portuguese schoolchildren rather than foreign learners, which is the point: real European Portuguese, clearly enunciated, on topics concrete enough to follow. Free and not geo-blocked like RTP Play, but there is no vocabulary support of any kind, so bring a dictionary.

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.

Type a word or phrase and it plays back real YouTube clips of people saying it in context, across 25 languages plus sign languages, so you get natural intonation and regional variation rather than an isolated dictionary recording. Free, donation-supported, no account needed. Complements Forvo: Forvo for single words, YouGlish for phrases and prosody.

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.

A browser extension plus web reader covering 100+ languages: click a word or drag across a phrase, get an inline translation, and it becomes a flashcard automatically. The free tier gives unlimited single-word translations but caps phrases and AI explanations at 10 a day; Premium is $6/month. Simpler and cheaper than LingQ or Migaku if all you want is frictionless reading of articles and ebooks.