Best Language Learning Apps for 2024

I found Babbel to be the most like a foreign language course you'd see in an online school curriculum. The minimalist layout of the Babbel app helps prevent a new language (French for me) from seeming overwhelming, without making it boring. Each lesson takes you through translations, including variations of the word or phrase, pictures, and whether it's formal or informal, something that’s important in many languages. If it asks you to spell a phrase, it provides you with the letters used.

You also get to see the new words you're learning used in common conversations, listen to them (if you choose to have audio on), repeat the phrases and learn more about verb groups. The 15-minute language lessons are easy to work into your day -- whether it's on your commute, before bed or on your lunch break. The My Activity module lets you track all your progress. 

Babbel currently offers 14 languages and is free to sign up for, and the first lesson of every course is free. A monthly subscription costs $15. You can also choose to renew every three months ($38), every six months ($67), annually ($89) or make a one-time payment of $349 for lifetime access. The other subscription option is Babbel Live, which is a more traditional language learning experience with virtual classes led by an instructor with other students. You can sign up for unlimited classes with this paid subscription for one month ($90), three months ($209), six months ($359) and annually ($599).

I tried my hand at Greek on the Drops app. The app's fun, colorful layout definitely made the language (which has its own alphabet) less intimidating. The app shows users each word in the Greek alphabet and the English alphabet, and says the word and shows an image of it. Drops is owned by the popular game-learning platform Kahoot and is constantly adding new languages. The company recently added its 15th language, Catalan.

You can subscribe to Drops Premium for $13 a month, $70 annually. If you stick with the free version, you have to wait 10 hours to access another lesson, but you can check out your statistics after completing the lesson (correct answers, wrong answers and words learned) and tap on the words you've learned to hear them pronounced again (and see them written in the Greek alphabet). This can give you a leg up when your next lesson starts.

One of my favorite parts of Memrise is the app's use of short videos to show how real locals express different phrases in conversation. I tried the French course, and the first lesson alone let me listen to the tone of voice and casual pronunciation, as well as showing me the phrase's literal translation and explained its gendered usage. The app also helps you spot patterns in the language to make it easier to improve your skills. If you're brushing up on a language you're familiar with, you have the option to skip phrases you already know.

Memrise currently has lessons available in 23 languages. A few lessons are available for free daily, or you can upgrade to a Pro membership for $15 per month, $90 per year or $200 for lifetime access. The Pro membership removes ads, gives you access to all languages and lets you incorporate the 30,000 native speaker videos it has into your lessons.

When you sign up for Busuu, you select the language you want to learn, and the app helps you determine how advanced you are with it, why you want to learn it and how advanced you want to become. From there, you set a daily study goal, and if you subscribe to the premium plan, it creates a study plan so you'll reach your goal by a set date. For example, Busuu says if I study three times a week for 10 minutes a day, I'll be pretty fluent in my chosen language in about eight months.  

Busuu's Basic plan is free, but you can subscribe to Premium for $14 per month.

I tried Italian with Busuu and I liked the clean, bright layout of the app. Busuu also offers helpful reminders: The second time I logged in, it reminded me about "weak words" I needed to review to improve my vocabulary. In addition to listening to a phrase paired with a photo of the corresponding action, Busuu included helpful vocabulary tips (like that "ciao" can mean "hello" or "goodbye").

If you listen to any song enough, you'll learn all the words through repetition -- even if they're in a different language. But how do you figure out what they mean? This is where the Lirica app comes in. This app is unique in how it approaches teaching Spanish and German. Instead of traditional teaching methods for learning a language, Lirica uses popular music by Latin and reggaeton artists to help you learn language and grammar. On top of learning the language, you're also immersing yourself in the culture behind it. The app also includes facts about the artist while you're learning.

Lirica has a one-week free trial and then it's $9 a month, $20 every six months or $30 annually. For now, the app offers only Spanish, German and English.

While not technically an app, the free Language Reactor Chrome extension, formerly called Language Learning with Netflix, can be helpful on your journey to becoming multilingual. Install the extension and click the icon to launch the catalog of movie and TV show options. You do need a subscription to Netflix though. 

Once you launch the catalog, you can pick from hundreds of titles that use movies on Netflix to help teach different languages. For example, if you want to work on your Spanish, select the language in the dropdown menu, along with the country where you're using Netflix. Then, the extension will generate a list of titles it can add Spanish closed captions to. To watch one of the films, just click the red "Watch on Netflix" button. Depending on the language you want to learn or what country you’re watching from, you might have fewer titles to pick from.

As the series or movie plays, two sets of subtitles display at the bottom of the screen. One set is your native language and the other is the one you want to learn. The words highlight as they're spoken, like a karaoke sing-a-long. You can listen to the dialogue phrase by phrase, pause and replay as needed, access a built-in dictionary, and more. Depending on the show or movie you’re watching, you’ll be able to translate your closed captions in up to 52 languages.

If you want to use Language Reactor for more active learning, it also has a chatbot, fun videos and a digital phrase book on its website.

Pimsleur is an app that offers 51 languages to learn but delivers the information in what is basically the form of a podcast. Essentially, you'll choose the language you want to learn and begin a 30-minute auditory lesson (which are downloadable and Alexa-compatible). The app also has a driving mode, so you can improve your language skills during long commutes without looking at a screen. 

You get a seven-day free trial. After, you’ll be able to continue with an Audio-Only subscription ($15/month) that gives you access to all languages and audio-only features. If you want to focus on just one language, you can upgrade to the Premium level for $20 a month, which gives you additional features like lessons, roleplaying challenges and digital flashcards. And if you want everything -- all languages and features -- the All-Access subscription is $21 per month.

Perhaps the best-known language learning service, Rosetta Stone has come a long way since it started in the '90s. My parents still have a box set of discs for learning Spanish somewhere in their house. It's a lot easier now with the Rosetta Stone app, but you still need at least 30 minutes to complete a Core Lesson. 

I tried Rosetta Stone's first Irish lesson, which was primarily auditory with images, though there are ways to customize the app to your learning preferences. The lesson started out fairly challenging, especially since I was completely new to the Irish language. But it did get easier as I went along. 

The iOS app got an update in 2021 that brought augmented reality into the mix. This enables Seek and Speak, which is a scavenger-hunt-style challenge. Point the phone camera at an object and get a translation in the language you're learning. 

Rosetta Stone currently offers lessons in 25 languages. Subscription options include $48 every three months, $127 annually, or you can get a lifetime subscription, currently priced at $199.