🇸🇪 The best dictionaries for learning Swedish

A freely licensed Swedish–English dictionary hosted by KTH, with inflections, example sentences and audio on many entries. Because the dataset is openly published it is also what a lot of Swedish flashcard decks and apps are built from, so entries will look familiar. Free, no registration, and quick to search. It is community-maintained rather than editorially curated, so rare or technical words are patchier than in a commercial bilingual dictionary.

Published by Institutet för språk och folkminnen specifically for people learning Swedish, Lexin translates into around twenty languages including Arabic, Somali, Persian, Ukrainian, Kurdish and Spanish. Beyond definitions it carries spoken pronunciation, illustrated 'bildteman' vocabulary boards, and short films demonstrating verbs and dialogues — genuinely useful for the pronunciation and stress patterns that trip up beginners. Entirely free public service. Vocabulary coverage is everyday rather than literary, by design.

The authoritative free reference for Swedish: SAOL for the sanctioned spelling and inflection of current words, SO for full modern definitions and usage, and SAOB for deep historical treatment — all searchable together from one box. When you need to settle how a word is spelled, inflected or actually used, this is where Swedes look too. Completely free with no account. It is monolingual throughout, so pair it with Lexin or Folkets lexikon until your Swedish carries you.

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.