🇵🇰 The best websites for learning Urdu

Built by the Rekhta Foundation, this walks through the Urdu alphabet and Nastaliq letterforms in sequence, with audio and writing practice, and then into words and sentences. It is the single most useful free resource for the thing that stops most learners: Urdu in Nastaliq looks nothing like the isolated letters in a chart. Script and basic vocabulary only — you will need something else for grammar.

Classic Urdu prose and verse, openly licensed and searchable — the free half of what Rekhta charges nothing for either, but in book-length form rather than by the couplet. Smaller than the Bengali or Hindi editions and unevenly proofread. For extensive reading at an advanced level; start with the poetry, where the lines are short.

Ghalib, Faiz, Mir and tens of thousands of others, each poem displayed in Urdu, Devanagari and roman with word meanings on hover and often a recitation. Urdu's centre of gravity is its poetry, and this is the reason a learner can reach it years earlier than they otherwise could. Also hosts a large free ebook library. Literary register throughout — it will not teach you to buy a train ticket.

Pick subjects you know well in another language and let context carry you through the unfamiliar words — that is what makes an encyclopedia usable long before you could read a novel. The Urdu edition leans heavily on coined technical vocabulary that nobody says aloud, so treat it as reading practice rather than as a model for speech.

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.