I’ve been writing about and reviewing software since 2009, and I have a long track record of writing from the perspective of the average user. I’ve written tutorials and essays about how to get more out of technology and reviews of software for outlets including Wired, The Atlantic, PCMag, Lifehacker, and many more. I am also an unsuccessful language learner—I struggled with language learning in both high school and college.

For this guide:

• I spent 20 hours researching language learning as a concept and talking to linguists about what to look for in a language learning tool.
• I researched 15 apps for this article before testing the eight that best fit my criteria. I then spent eight hours testing each one.
• Like all Wirecutter journalists, I review and test products with complete editorial independence. I’m never made aware of any business implications of my editorial recommendations. Read more about our editorial standards.

This guide is for anyone who is looking to start learning a new language or who wants to learn more of a language they’re already somewhat familiar with. It’s also intended primarily for casual users—people who are looking to learn a language for travel, communicating with loved ones, or just the fun of learning.

Note that the language you want to learn may have an impact on which app you should use. Most language learning apps offer courses for the major European and Asian languages but little else. However, the number of languages each app offers varies wildly, and even if an app supports a language you’re interested in, the quality of the courses can vary.

Language learning is work. You are deciding to learn an entirely new way to speak, write, and think about the world, and that isn’t something you can do overnight. The best language learning apps help by introducing words and concepts to you over time in a way that’s consistently engaging enough for you to stick with it.

As part of my research, I spoke with Shawn Loewen, a professor of second language studies at Michigan State University, who has done some of the most visible recent research on language learning apps specifically. He helped me define which features I should look for in a language learning application.

• Habit formation: The biggest predictor of success with a language learning app is whether you stick with it. “One problem is that these apps are easy to put down,” said Loewen. “That’s why you need to find one that you like, that is engaging to you, and that you will actually come back to.” Apps built entirely around rote repetition don’t meet that criterion, whereas apps with a variety of engaging content are more likely to help you learn. Gamification features can also help make the learning sticky, though some people might find them grating.
• Meaningful input: Loewen emphasized that language learners need what he calls “meaning-focused sentences,” as opposed to decontextualized words. Ideally an app has stories, conversations, and other real (or realistic) content to learn from, not just isolated random sentences.
• A blend of audio, visual, and text exercises: Language encompasses what people hear, say, read, and write. It is essential for a language learning application to blend exercises that engage all of those different parts of communication.
• Interactive activities: The primary goal of language learning isn’t memorization—it’s building comprehension and gaining the ability to interact with native speakers. An app should provide interactive activities that test your comprehension and your ability to respond. They can come in the form of stories, audio dramas, or even AI conversations.
• Cultural context: Language and culture interact with each other; the ideal language learning app acknowledges that fact and provides language examples that relate to the culture of the countries and places where the language is spoken. This isn’t just a nice-to-have feature—cultural norms can have real language implications. For example, knowing when to use formal or informal language requires at least some cultural understanding.
• Human interaction: Loewen emphasized that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to fully learn a language unless you’re interacting with people who speak it. Some apps allow for that, whether it’s through video conferencing or sharing recordings. The point is to get feedback from an actual speaker.

I tested every app for eight hours, making sure to try as many of the different kinds of lessons and activities in each one as I could. I generally did a couple of hours in a language I didn’t know at all to get a sense of the early lessons and then switched to Spanish, which is more familiar to me, to get a feel for the more advanced content. My wife, who is smarter than me, also tested these apps and told me what stood out to her (mostly because she thought it was fun).

There is, inevitably, a certain subjectivity to which language learning application works best for any given person. We recommend that most people try more than one app and decide for themselves which one is the best fit for their learning style and preferences.

Top pick

Duolingo

The best language learning app for most people

This app employs all of the dirty tricks that social networks and mobile-games companies use—but for the virtuous purpose of helping you learn. The lessons are quick and enjoyable, too.

Buying Options

Buy from Duolingo

Buy from Google Play

Buy from Apple App Store

The best language learning app is the one you’ll actually use. For most people, Duolingo (available for Android and iOS) is that application. It’s downright addictive to use, thanks to its various social and gamification features, and its lessons are the most engaging ones I came across in testing. It’s also the sleekest app I tested—whereas Babbel and Busuu rely on stock photography, Duolingo has a consistent art and animation style.

It gamifies language learning to keep you engaged. Duolingo employs every mobile-game and social-media trick to keep you interested in language learning—and I mean that as a compliment.

The app features leaderboards and unlockable badges, and it regularly emphasizes building and maintaining a streak. That approach, combined with notifications that remind you to practice, really helps to build a habit. It’s hard to overstate how effective this method can be in getting you to do your daily lessons.

The free version is surprisingly generous. Anyone who installs Duolingo immediately has access to almost all of the features that make it great; the only cost is the ads that appear after every lesson.

The main limitation of the free version is the “heart” system (think Legend of Zelda) that limits you to five wrong answers per day. Pay for a subscription, and that limit goes away. This system, along with frequently offered trials of the paid tier, allows you to do a lot of learning without ever spending a dime.

The paid version includes offline lessons and personalized practice. Starting at around $7 per month (or $13 if you pay a month at a time; the pricing also varies a lot), Duolingo’s cheapest paid plan, Super Duolingo, removes the ads and gives you infinite hearts, so you can make more mistakes. It also provides offline lessons, which are perfect for travelers.

Duolingo Max, which starts at around $12 per month, adds AI-powered conversations with the app’s fictional characters. It also offers an AI-powered Explain My Answer feature, which outlines why the last answer you gave is or isn’t correct; that feature in particular adds context to your lessons at moments that otherwise might just be confusing.

Its lessons are engaging and cover a variety of topics. Duolingo’s standard lessons are quick but always combine a number of different skill sets. Each lesson blends talking, listening, reading, and writing in a way that always feels engaging. Sometimes you’re translating from English, for example, while other times you’re recognizing spoken words.

The lessons feature memorable characters. Duolingo’s lessons feature a core group of characters who all have their own personalities and preferences: the always-excited Zari, the sarcastic Lily, and for some reason a talking bear named Falstaff.

These characters all have quirks that you get to know during the lessons, which in my opinion makes learning vocabulary from context just a bit easier.

The app includes an assortment of interactive features. Between the standard lessons are a variety of longer-form activities, including stories, interactive radio shows, and—in the top paid tier—AI conversations with the characters.

These activities not only break up the lessons but also allow you to put your comprehension and speaking skills to the test. In addition, the app has regular reviews that go over specific words and concepts you have struggled with in particular.

Social features add stakes. Odds are, you already know at least one person who uses Duolingo. Add them as a friend, and the app will regularly assign you Friends Quests with them. The idea is to create social pressure—your friend is counting on you to help them complete the quest. Believe me when I say that this tactic works (and my sincere apologies to friends I have wronged during the testing process).

Flaws but not dealbreakers

• Its gamification is divisive. Many people love Duolingo for its addictive nature, but it isn’t for everyone. Sometimes, for some people, the game-like aspects may even drown out the learning features.
• It lacks conversations with, and feedback from, native speakers. Some of our other picks offer video classes or feedback from other users. Duolingo doesn’t provide any way to talk with other users or practice language with them. Although it has some AI features that allow for basic conversation practice (which we did find interesting), that isn’t really the same thing.

Upgrade pick

Babbel Live

A true classroom experience in app form

This app puts a textbook-like emphasis on grammar and offers one key feature that Duolingo doesn’t: classes with human instructors.

Buying Options

Buy from Babbel

Buy from Google Play

Buy from Apple App Store

Babbel’s approach to learning is different from the other apps we tested in that it emphasizes direct instruction, with pop-ups explaining grammatical and cultural concepts. In many ways Babbel feels the most like an interactive language-learning textbook of any of the apps we evaluated.

And it goes even further, offering a virtual classroom to match. Babbel Live, the app’s premium subscription, costs a lot more than the paid tiers of our other picks, but for a clear reason: The service supplements the app with actual human teachers and one-on-one or group classes. Most people would do better finding a local, in-person class at, say, a community college, but if that’s not realistic for you, Babbel Live offers a convenient alternative.

The service provides live classes. Smartphone applications alone can’t turn you into a native speaker—that requires using the language in real-world situations and learning from feedback. Babbel Live offers online classes with actual language teachers from around the world, allowing you to get real-time feedback to supplement the learning you do in the app.

Other apps allow you to learn from native speakers—Memrise’s lessons are built around videos recorded by native speakers, and Busuu allows other users to provide feedback on phrases you write or say out loud. But real-time interaction with a native speaker helps a lot more than either of those approaches, at the expense of an additional time commitment.

Its app-based learning is really helpful, too. The lessons, which are a little longer than those of our other picks, seamlessly weave audio, video, and text-based learning. In any given lesson, for example, you may be asked to quickly translate a sentence and then be tasked with deciding which words you would use to navigate an everyday situation or travel scenario. In our testing, this variety did a great job of keeping us engaged.

Both Duolingo and Babbel offer compelling lessons, but they differ in several respects. Duolingo’s standard lessons are shorter and tend to stick to the same blend of exercises—it reserves the longer, conversation-based content for special story- and podcast-based exercises. Babbel, in contrast, blends everything together, so a single lesson goes from practicing quick phrases to reviewing an entire conversation. Some people may prefer Babbel’s approach.

Interactive features are woven into the lessons. Partway through a lesson, you might find yourself hearing a conversation between two people or interacting with an imaginary text-message thread. Injecting these exercises and stories in the middle of lessons puts the concepts you’re learning into context and is also more fun than constant repetitive exercises.

It puts emphasis on teaching grammatical concepts. Outside of the video classes, Babbel’s lessons regularly provide English grammatical context, explaining to you how the language you’re learning works. That stands in contrast to the approach of competitors such as Duolingo or Rosetta Stone, which depend on your figuring out these concepts from context over time.

Both approaches are valid, but some learners will appreciate straight-up instruction in the middle of lessons. Occasionally Babbel also provides valuable cultural information—facts about how words are used differently in different places, for example.

It includes interactive reviews. The app regularly reminds you to review concepts that you learned earlier, allowing you to choose between flash cards and listening, speaking, or writing exercises. It prompts you to do these reviews on a regular basis, which is a great way to make sure you’re not forgetting concepts you learned earlier.

It isn’t as gamified as Duolingo. Although Babbel isn’t as intensely focused as our top pick on keeping you engaged, it has some basic features to draw you back day after day. Daily streaks and reminder notifications, for instance, make it easier to remember to stick to your learning habit. Some people might prefer this less-intense approach.

Best for...

Memrise

The best app for hearing native speakers

Every lesson in this app is built on videos submitted by real native speakers, so you hear a broader range of accents and voices than you do with competing apps.

Buying Options

Buy from Memrise

Buy from Google Play

Buy from Apple App Store

Most of the apps I tested employ voice actors or machine reading for audio—you do not usually see the person who is talking. Memrise isn’t like that: Every lesson is built on user-submitted videos by native speakers saying the phrases and words that you’re learning.

As a result, you hear a range of voices and accents as you learn. And you hear real people speaking in their natural cadence, which is generally faster than the professionally voiced clips you get in other applications. That can make these videos tricky to understand, but it also reflects what you’re likely to hear while interacting with native speakers.

Including videos from native speakers is very effective. You hear and watch someone say something, then you learn what it means, then you learn to spell it, and then you repeat it. The videos often have visual context, too, so you see real people using phrases in scenarios that make sense. They’re also pretty entertaining at times, thanks to their cheesy TikTok-esque quality.

Lessons are built on specific topics. From ordering food in a restaurant to discussing particular health issues, lessons in Memrise are built on specific themes, and unlike Duolingo and Babbel, Memrise allows you to choose the topics you want to focus on. (Busuu also lets you learn this way.)

Outside of the lessons, you have a few interactive activities to choose from, including conversations you can listen to while reading.

The free plan is a great place to start. Nearly all of the core functionality of Memrise’s app is available for free, if you’re willing to endure some ads.

Upgrading to the Memrise Pro plan removes those ads, unlocks specific lessons on things like verb conjugation, and adds a few features such as AI chatbots and role-playing. If you get serious enough about your practice, those features could be worth paying for.

You also get a wide variety of supplemental videos. Memrise has a section that almost feels like browsing YouTube or TikTok—a library of videos, all made by native speakers, putting your recently learned words into a different context. Some of them are corny, granted, but a few actually made me laugh.

The basics of habit formation are covered. The app has a streaks feature that encourages you to log in once a day, along with notifications that remind you to do it. It also offers a dictionary showing you all the words and phrases you’ve learned; a total is prominently featured here, incentivizing you to keep using the app so you can make the number go up, but it’s nothing like the extensive gamification you get with Duolingo.

Best for...

Busuu

The best app for getting feedback from native speakers

Learning a language in the real world means being corrected by native speakers. This app is the only one we tested that gives you that experience.

Buying Options

Buy from Busuu

Buy from Google Play

Buy from Apple App Store

You can’t learn a language in a vacuum—you need feedback. Busuu relies on its users to provide that feedback, giving you insights on your progress that you can’t get from our other picks.

This approach can’t replace the kind of learning you can get from language immersion—it offers just the occasional bit of feedback—but it’s a feature that none of the other tested apps offer. And considering that Busuu’s lessons are also quite good, this app is well worth checking out.

Its feedback from native speakers is unique among language learning apps. Every once in a while, something you write or say during the course of your studies is offered to users who natively speak the language you’re learning. These users then provide feedback: They might correct your pronunciation, for example, or explain that you’re using a word in an odd context.

You, as an English speaker, also have the opportunity to correct other people’s English. It’s a community effort.

Learning is built on specific topics. Like Memrise, Busuu generally orients its lessons around specific scenarios, such as ordering food in a restaurant or arriving at a hotel and asking questions. The kinds of lessons it offers vary depending on what you’re trying to learn—you can decide which topics you want to prioritize. You can even pick a broader course based on your goals, such as travel, exam prep, or more general learning.

It has a more polished presentation than other apps. Busuu’s lessons are a combination of professionally made photos, videos, and clips read by voice actors. Depending on your preference, this presentation can be a welcome contrast from Duolingo’s (very good) computerized voices or Memrise’s user-submitted videos.

Gamification features abound. Busuu seems to be taking a lot of pages from Duolingo’s playbook. The streaks feature offered in all other apps is here, but so are metal-themed leagues and daily goals. Overall I find Busuu’s methods less effective than Duolingo’s, if only because it puts less emphasis on social features, but Busuu comes in a strong second in this regard.

Its Premium subscription adds useful features. Like our other picks, Busuu offers a Premium plan that adds specialized courses, personalized grammar practice, and priority feedback from native speakers. It also allows you to skip lessons, if you’re having a hard time or aren’t interested in the subject matter.

Anki is a free and open-source flash-card app beloved by language learners on Reddit. Within the app, various communities share decks for learning vocabulary and verb conjugation. However, it isn’t a complete language learning app—it’s more of a supplemental tool—which is why we decided not to include it in our list. Even so, anyone serious about learning a language should look into it.

Rosetta Stone is a longtime leader in language learning, but we don’t recommend it to beginners. The sheer amount of repetition makes it hard to stay engaged, as over time words stop feeling like they mean anything. The standard lesson consists of images and audio or text in the language you are learning. It includes no English-language audio or text, which is intentional—the idea is that you’ll learn by immersion—but most learners need at least some grammatical or cultural instruction from time to time. It also has few features to ensure that you’ll stick with your learning habit.

Pimsleur started as a series of audio cassettes. The app version hasn’t evolved much past that—it has a handful of visualizations, but for the most part every lesson consists of just you listening to a 20-minute audio recording. Each tape starts with an exchange and then meticulously breaks it down. Ideally, learning occurs through a lot of repetition, but we found the experience exhausting. Still, the audio itself is well made, and the lessons include a wealth of cultural information. This method might work for some people, though we suggest checking eBay or your local library for the CDs over paying for a subscription.

Drops feels like it was designed by an AI to torture humans. Most of the lessons consist of dragging objects and phrases to clip art that vaguely resembles the words you’re learning. None of the material I came across had any cultural content, and the vocabulary list seemed to be identical regardless of which language I was learning. The app also doesn’t have much in the way of stories or other interactive features.

This article was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg.