Ranking 30 Language Learning Apps (Ultimate Tier List)

Meh and ok are the same for me?!?!?
I needed a good man! :/

Rosetta Stone in "no" is crazy...

In regard Duolingo's hearts, you can do practice sessions (click n the hearts and select from menu), to get more hearts.

I rank DuoLingo as my worst app off the mere fact that I've personally been fed incorrect nuanced vocabulary for Japanese by the app routinely. It didn't even know what shinaito was used for when I was using it, and it was rather embarrassing for an app that is so self proclaiming that it literally pays people to spam language groups of facebook with ads and fake reviewers/users

Pimsleur is really good 💙 the method works really well, after the lesson it sticks to my head and I can speak them easily. It works better than repetition (flashcard or duolingo’s method).

currently i also use italki and preply, I like that it’s interactive and you can learn directly from an experienced native tutor, and so your experience with the app is gonna depend on the tutor you choose

Adding another app: Fluent Forever.

It is spaced repetition like Anki, but I'm not aware of any of the above options teaching phonetics + pronounciation first and then going forward from there.

Bro, you showed HelloTalk like it’s an APP from the 90s

I'm a serious Fluent Forever fan. Started after reading the book 'Fluent Forever'. Please check it out.

Any English learning app that help with grammar correction as well?

Lies

Hello Talk = God tier. Once you have a basic grasp of a language there is no better tool, just use a translator and learn the phrases you need/hear. Those other apps won't teach you real life conversation skills, except maybe the tutoring ones.

If your goal is to have conversations and make friends then HT will be super motivating. If you just want to consume movies and books with zero human interaction, then sure HT is "Meh tier".

I enjoyed the review! Thank you so much. I'm a Japanese language learner and heard that Jumpspeak might be good. Do you have any experience with Jumpspeak?

Immersive Translate is another great way to become fluent in another language. I use it to practice my Vietnamese every day, and I have to say, the more I use it, the closer I get to mastering another language.

I don’t think Preply is called pree-ply. I think it’s called prep-lee.

What about Languatalk? GI think they have great tutors

If you’re learning Korean and Japanese YuSpeak, It’s a slightly better version of LingoDeer.

how about EF HELLO

I have Pimsleur Japanese and Rocket Language Japanese. Pimsleur is awesome to get you to speak and understand, and make your pronunciation amazing. Rocket is it's father, it goes just like Pimsleur's approach, but it allows you to talk and check if what you said sounded good, plus all the extra content.
Pimsleur Japanese can take about 5 months to complete, and Rocket will take about 2 years.

DuoCards?

ankidroid was not mentioned. Another thing you did not get into considerarion was lifetime plans and multilanguages. For instance: memrise, Lingodeer, rosseta Stone and lingopie have lifetime plans that unlock all languages. There is a huge value on that for people trying to learn several languages at their own time which likely will take years. Also Duolingo has the classroom option that gives users UNLIMITED hearts for free. This is something worth mentioning as well.

As a person who uses pimsleur and Innovative since 2008, i agree it's on God tier

Lingodeer ans duolingo are the best for me

Langster is pretty good too at least in Spanish, not boring and bote sized articles based on real news. Not frustrating, you’d feel that you understands what you’re reading.

I think Glossika is best for someone who's gone through another program and now wants to expand beyond the basics. I like the depth of the course, but how Glossika prioritizes and orders how vocabulary is introduced is puzzling. For example, in Latin American Spanish, I'm pretty sure you can work through the first 1,000 sentences and still not know the names of days of the week and months of the year or know the names of primary colors or count to fifty.

Personally, I really like Mango Languages. Really good depth on the "big" languages (Latin American Spanish has over 700 lessons), structured, a hands-free listening only mode, reading and listening comprehension exercises. Love it.

Whats your opinion on Bluebird Languages? It is a free app with over 160 languages and I'm using it because its the only app that has Maltese but i don't know how accurate it is

Est-ce que tu utilisais l'appli "Anki" lors de ton apprentissage pour le Japonais ?

I muss alucation and alugha. 10000s of free videos that are all multilingual in audio and also transcribed.

Do you have an IELST certificate

I wonder why nobody mentions OUINO. Is it because they think it's bad or because it's limited to just 5 languages?

Nice vid Lois! I can see that you're a serious language learner, and you can share a lot from your experience. I have some discrepancies considering mostly HelloTalk and Tandem, as I found them pretty useful to put into practice generating input and having real conversations. But as you said are just opinions, so they're ok!

I really missed ELSA in that list, I got surprised not finding it.
And, last but not least haha I think that nowadays we shall consider to include ChatGPT as a language learning app too. It helped me really a LOT!

Thanks Lois, cheers!

A super useful video and love your frank and honest assessments. This is one of the few videos that highlights whether the app is better for developing reading/writing or speaking/listening skills. This will help potential learners identify their objectives better and choose the right app.

I love this video and your channel. Keep up the great work!

Hey, hi to connect with you?

Which one would you recommend for Vietnamese? The god tier ones dont have vietnamese language

You mentioned becoming fluent with only Pimsleur but what about rocket language? Is it a comprehensive course?

Thank you for this 👍🏾. Enjoyed going through all the apps. Just to say that if learning a language linked to a "smaller population" like European Portuguese, that in itself filters out the apps that are available. I had not heard of Rocket before (and Pimsleur, the price put me off) but will look into!

It would’ve been a nice more proper comparison if you tried the Pro/Paid versions for all of them

Big thing for Mango is it is free w/ a library card, at least where I live. The Tagalog course is pretty short but it’s has some pros. Color coding grammar, flashcards and vocab list after the lesson, you can switch the lesson to audio only mode if you’re driving or working out.

I was waiting this type of video in your channel.

No Readlang, sad 😢

Would love to hear your opinion on language transfer

Have you tried Falou, it has a 4.8 rating in the App Store. It's an app that focuses on speaking and pronunciation.

Language Transfer.. What about it?

RIP Rooster unless he was spared.

In all seriousness, I'm a firm Innovative Languages. It seems like it was made for people who can't just focus on one single long lesson at a time like Pimsleur or even Rocket Languages. The main "Path" is super linear, but I've found myself going into the library of content and just doing random 3 minute video lessons or listening to the "Current Events" section. There's almost no end to the content they packed in the JapanesePod site and I'll probably be using it for years before I get to some sort of endpoint.

Thanks for the vid and recommendations! Also I know all too well about the loud roosters lol.

Great video as always! One of the most used language courses used outside of the US for years was Assimil. They now have an app. I was wondering what you thought about that app, and the old school (books + MP3 audio file) versions of Assimil.