🇺🇦 Ukrainian for beginners: the best resources

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.

A free open-access grammar workbook focused squarely on Ukrainian morphology — the seven cases, aspect, verbs of motion — with explanations followed by interactive practice rather than prose alone. It is the resource to reach for when the case endings stop making sense and a podcast is not enough. Hosted by KU Libraries and stable, though the presentation is plain and there is no audio to speak of. Use it as a companion to a communicative course, not as a standalone way in.

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.

Hanna teaches through pictures, gesture and repetition rather than English explanation, which lets the videos work from a much lower level than most immersion content — several are pitched at people in their first weeks. Formats vary from six-minute stories to guessing games that quietly drill vocabulary. Uploads continued through August 2026 and the channel is free. If you want grammar rules stated explicitly in English, this is not that channel.

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.

Viktoriia works through practical topics and grammar in short episodes, using enough English early on that a near-beginner can follow, then shifting toward Ukrainian as the levels climb. With 100+ episodes released through mid-2026 it is one of the more substantial actively-produced Ukrainian learner podcasts. Free to listen. Audio is home-studio quality and episode ordering is loose, so browse rather than starting at episode one.

An open-access introductory course by Alla Nedashkivska and Olena Sivachenko (University of Alberta), structured as 26 'trips' through contemporary Ukrainian language and culture with quizzes, a glossary, grammar reference and verb tables. Because it was written for university classrooms it is more systematic about cases and conjugation than most free web courses. Self-learners can use everything at no cost, though without an instructor you lose the assignment layer. Best for someone who wants a real syllabus rather than scattered lessons.

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.

The main English-language gathering point for Ukrainian learners, with native speakers reliably answering 'why this ending' and 'how would you actually say this' questions, plus recurring resource threads. Useful for resolving the specific doubts no textbook covers and for sanity-checking sentences you have written. Free. As with any subreddit the answer quality varies and Russian-Ukrainian comparison threads can get heated.

Comprehensible-input done properly: Yevhen narrates short, genuinely interesting stories at a deliberately reduced pace, with on-screen subtitles so you can read along when your ear falls behind. Over 200 episodes exist across YouTube and the podcast feed, with new ones through August 2026. It becomes usable earlier than most immersion channels — roughly A2 — and stays worthwhile into B1. Free on both platforms; there is no structured grammar teaching here by design.

Built by Skills Academy for the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy, this is the state-backed platform for learning Ukrainian, organised into 25 everyday themes and roughly 100 lessons of dialogues, video and exercises. It deliberately teaches through situations rather than grammar tables, which makes it approachable but leaves gaps you will need a grammar reference to fill. Completely free including the certificate, and there is an English-facing version for foreigners. The interface feels dated in places and some media loads slowly from outside Ukraine.

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 single page that gets you reading Ukrainian Cyrillic, with recorded pronunciation for every letter and explicit warnings about the letters that differ from Russian (і, ї, є, ґ and the г/ґ distinction). Working through it takes an evening and removes the biggest early barrier for learners coming from a Latin alphabet. Entirely free with no signup. Pair it with a handwriting resource if you also want to write by hand, which this page does not teach.

Tutor Larissa's show grades every episode so you can pick material that sits just above your current level instead of guessing — the thing most learner podcasts fail to do. Around 30 episodes exist, with the most recent from late 2025, so it is a compact archive rather than a weekly habit. Free on the usual podcast apps. Best used to bridge the gap between beginner phrase courses and full-speed comprehensible input.

A no-signup site collecting alphabet lessons, graded texts and dialogues with audio, and — most usefully — a standalone course working through the cases one at a time. There is also a section using Ukrainian songs as listening material. It is the work of an individual rather than an institution, so coverage is uneven and some sections are thinner than others. Good free supplementary practice, particularly if cases are your sticking point.

A quietly excellent non-commercial site whose standout piece is a beginners' reading course that takes you from decoding Cyrillic to handling real sentences, alongside themed vocabulary lists and an unusually good guide to Ukrainian word stress. There is also niche material for researchers and a legal English-Ukrainian reference. Everything is free with no accounts. The design is spartan and navigation is old-fashioned, so it rewards a bit of clicking around.

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.

The gentler sibling of the main Ukrainian Lessons podcast: 60 short lessons, each built around a single practical exchange with plenty of repetition and pauses for you to speak. It works well as a first contact with the language or as a low-effort daily habit alongside a heavier course. The series completed in 2021, so nothing new is coming, but beginner phrasebook material dates slowly. Free to listen; the lesson notes are part of the Premium membership.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Same idea as HelloTalk but with vetted profiles and a cleaner focus on actual voice and video calls, which makes it noticeably less spammy in practice. Free to use; Pro adds unlimited partner search and extra languages, 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.

Six seasons that climb from the alphabet to B2 discussion, each episode pairing a dialogue with grammar and cultural commentary — it is the closest thing Ukrainian has to a complete free audio curriculum. The final episode landed in July 2024, so treat it as a finished archive rather than an ongoing show; that also means the whole arc is available to binge in order. All 240 episodes are free; transcripts, translations and flashcards sit behind the paid Premium membership. If you only pick one Ukrainian resource, this is the usual answer.

The usual Pod101 formula: hundreds of recorded dialogues with line-by-line breakdowns, vocabulary lists, flashcards and PDF notes, plus a YouTube arm that posted through August 2026. Its strength is sheer volume of listening material at the lower levels and the polish of the audio. The weakness is structure — lessons are organised into pathways but the sequencing is loose, so it suits topping up an existing plan better than being your only course. Free tier is limited and the site pushes hard on discounted subscriptions.

VERBA's channel does the explanatory half that the immersion channels skip: verb groups, case usage, word-building, delivered in clear English with Ukrainian examples and a strong thread of cultural context. Videos are tagged by CEFR level, which makes it easy to find material that actually fits you. YouTube content is free; the school's actual courses and one-to-one lessons are paid. Upload pace slowed during 2026, so treat the back catalogue as the main draw.

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.

Subscription-only after a handful of free intro lessons, typically $10–15/month with big discounts on annual plans. Lessons are short, dialogue-first and explain grammar properly, which makes it a much more serious beginner course than Duolingo. It covers only 13 languages and effectively stops around B1, so it is a stepping stone rather than a destination.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

One of the larger dedicated Ukrainian schools for foreigners, running levelled group courses, private lessons, short conversation sessions and a kids' programme with a sizeable teaching staff. It is the straightforward option when self-study has stalled and you need someone correcting you. Its YouTube channel publishes free comprehensible-input and tips videos and was active through August 2026, and there is a free placement test. Course pricing is not listed publicly — you have to request a consultation, which is worth factoring in.

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.