Multilingual Mastery

Online language learning coaching & education

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italki review: the best place for private language lessons

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Italki is arguably the most popular language-learning resource online used by learners of all languages under the sun, so an italki review only seems reasonable! Like Verbling, italki provides its users the opportunity to practice speaking the language they’re learning with real live native speakers, regardless of geography.

From a social network for language learners in 2006 to the world’s most popular platform to find foreign language teachers, let’s dive into this italki review and see what the italki experience is like.

Finding your italki teacher

Italki boasts hosting native speakers of any and all languages you could be learning. Because there are so many italki teachers available to you, the site helps you narrow down your search, so you’re not sifting through all kinds of italki teachers that you don’t actually have any interest or need in setting up a conversation with.

That being said, your italki teacher search can and should be incredibly specific if you can make those decisions for yourself. This will really narrow down the number of choices you have to make.

So, for example, when I’m searching for an italki teacher to practice Spanish with, I’ll always choose Spain in this first category. Most of my experience communicating in Spanish is from living in Spain, so I have a hard time understanding accents from any other countries.

Though you do have a plethora of options to narrow down your search, my personal sticking point is that you can’t easily search by gender.

italki price

Hopefully, you’ll notice that one of those categories is “price”. Your italki price depends entirely upon the teacher that you choose. If, for example, you’re searching around for italki Spanish lessons, and you choose an italki tutor that’s from Spain (like I do), your italki cost is going to be just a bit pricier than if you’re learning from someone based in a Latin American country.

This is also the difference between an italki community tutor and professional teachers – because professional teachers are more experienced and likely have some sort of degrees or certification, you’ll pay a premium.

Fortunately, if you’re just testing the water, you do have 3 free trials to spend. Free trials are 30-minute lessons that must be used with different teachers. Not all teachers offer these trial lessons, but it makes it just a bit easier to try out using italki for the first time.

Choosing your italki teacher

After you’ve narrowed your search for an italki teacher, it’s time to do some deeper research. Each italki teacher offers a ton of information: an intro video, About Me, calendar, statistics, reviews, any packages they offer (like specific test prep, for example), and more.

Suffice it to say, all the information any reasonable language learner would need to make an educated decision.

And if you have any further questions, you can easily send your potential teacher an email, no pressure.

The italki lesson experience

Once you’ve gone through all these options and decided who you want to try out, you’ll go through a few steps. The italki platform does this all pretty well and very smoothly, in my opinion. Everything is very clear and to the point.

As you can see above, you’re already given a preview of your italki teacher’s availability on their page. And yes, this availability is presented in your time zone, so you don’t have to do any gymnastics to find a teacher that matches up with your schedule.

Once you’ve made an actual decision regarding who you want to learn from, you’ll get access to their calendar and be able to make a selection based on their open slots. If you’ve opted for a trial lesson, you’ll be able to select a 30-minute slot, and if you’re making a request within 24 hours, you won’t be able to cancel or reschedule your lesson after your teacher accepts it.

Then, once you choose a time, you’ll be able to choose your communication tool. Italki offers 3 options for you to host your lesson:

  • italki Classroom
  • Zoom
  • Skype

If you choose the italki Classroom (which I honestly recommend* – it runs well, and you don’t have to worry about tech issues/passwords), you’ll be granted access once your teacher accepts your lesson.

*it is worth noting that my experience using the italki Classroom is limited, and my teacher stated the platform isn’t as good as just using Skype or Zoom.

Then, like any lesson with a language teacher, you’ll be able to make full use of whichever platform you choose – talk to your teacher via the video chat, get corrections in the chatbox, or follow along if your teacher shares their screen to walk you through an activity.

italki language partner & other perks

Besides being able to pay to talk to native speakers of the language you’re learning, italki has also expanded to offer a few other perks. If you head to the Community tab on the upper right-hand side, you’ll see your options.

Articles are written by italki tutors, and you can specify which language you want to be reading in. Notebooks, on the other hand, are written by your fellow language learners, and you have the opportunity to both review others’ content and post your own practice and potentially have it reviewed by someone else.

You can see the option to listen to a recording, participate in a quiz, and answer a question, all of which can be great ways to engage in your target language.

italki review: group classes

Usually language learners seek out italki for private lessons, but some learners can try out italki’s group classes as well. It’s not nearly as popular on this platform, so you’ll have fewer options, but it’s still an opportunity you may want to take advantage of.

As of the date on the bottom of this post, group classes are only an option for learners of English, Spanish, and Japanese. To be honest, though, I’d be more inclined to use Lingoda for group English and Spanish lessons, as that’s Lingoda’s bread and butter.

But if you’re more interested in one-off group lessons, every bit of exposure to the language helps.

italki review: alternatives

If this italki review just proves that you’re looking for something else, there are also a few italki alternatives you might also consider. There aren’t many other major platforms like italki, especially considering the sheer number of languages available.

For websites like italki that also host a variety of languages, you might consider Verbling, which is very closely related – the biggest difference is that Verbling does not support as many languages. HelloTalk is a free option if finding a professional teacher isn’t important to you.

And if you’re looking for one language in particular, that may help narrow down your search. BaseLang, for example, is a potential option for Spanish language learners who are open to a more intensive commitment..

italki review: in conclusion

This italki review proves that the platform has a lot to offer any language learner. There’s a reason it’s the go-to for most of us in the language learning community. Conversations with natives in almost any language you could think of are easy to find with just an internet connection; it doesn’t get much simpler than that!

Ready to give italki a try? Click here to get $10 in free italki credits!

Busuu vs Duolingo: do you want fun or functional?

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Busuu and Duolingo are two of the most popular language apps there are, so how do you make the choice when it comes to how to learn a language? In this post, let’s compare Busuu vs Duolingo, so you can make the best choice for your own language learning.

We’ll address each app’s flaws, where they shine, and which one is more likely to get your language learning where you want it to go.

Busuu vs Duolingo: languages

The following languages are available on both Busuu and Duolingo:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Turkish

Busuu also offers English, and Duolingo’s list of languages is massive, so I’ll leave it to my Duolingo review.

Busuu vs Duolingo: finding your level

Both Duolingo and Busuu are appropriate for total beginners, and both honestly have similar systems. It may be surprising to see how Busuu has evolved to be easier and more addictive, like Duolingo has trained language learners to become.

Here’s Duolingo’s checkpoint test to fast-forward in your Learning Path.

And here’s Busuu’s version.

As you can see, Busuu isn’t actually very different from Duolingo. It’s smooth, easy, and focuses almost entirely on passive skills (i.e. learning to understand the gist of the language, not necessarily reproducing it).

This makes it a fairly easy transition for language learners who enjoy Duolingo, but are tired of the heavy gamification. Busuu does have some gamification, but the way that it’s implemented makes the process of learning a language smoother and more engaging, not just an addiction.

That said, what makes Duolingo and Busuu different?

Using your target language

The base core of learning languages on each language app is pretty similar. However, learning new words, grammar, and other concepts isn’t so hard – it’s using them that gets language learners stuck.

It’s very easy to present you with new information, but not so much to lead you to actively use and produce that information. Let me show you what I mean.

This feature of Duolingo, Stories, is the main way that they attempt to get you to use the language. These Stories are intertwined within the Learning Path, so you have to complete them when presented in order to continue to higher levels.

And even though it’s technically closer (I guess?) to real use of the language, it’s still pretty passive. You’re still tapping buttons, an activity you can do in the background of watching a movie or doing the dishes.

Here’s Busuu’s strategy for comparison.

The Busuu community is full of language learners who speak your target language natively, and use this skill to help critique your submissions and motivate you.

While you are prompted to submit something (whether it be an audio recording or a writing prompt, your decision) consistently after lessons, you don’t have to. I mean, obviously it’s a good idea, but you’re not going to be chastised if you just want to move on.

Suffice it to say, Busuu is much better for helping you to produce the language using the information they teach you.

What you’ll pay to access each language app

This comparison couldn’t be more simple (in theory): Duolingo is free, and Busuu is not.

Being free is very important to the Duolingo brand. While you can invest in a Premium membership, Duolingo states that they will never hide access to their content behind a paywall. Their goal is to make education free for all.

It’s the ads/gamification that is different with a Premium subscription, and many users claim that the Duolingo app becomes less and less usable for free members as time goes on. I personally can’t speak on that particular theory, but you should keep it in mind.

Busuu, on the other hand, is largely a paid app, and offers subscriptions from monthly to annually. You can see updated prices here. You can generally expect to pay $10-15 a month.

Duolingo or Busuu?

This is honestly a short review, but only because there’s not much to say about the difference between Busuu and Duolingo. Duolingo is addictive and surface-level, while Busuu is engaging and well-rounded.

This is one of those cases where the price point accurately reflects the quality of the service – if you’re willing to invest in your language learning just a little bit, Busuu will teach you exponentially more.

On the other hand, if you’d rather keep things fun, low-commitment, and flexible (this part being a reference to the sheer number of languages available to learn on Duolingo) Duolingo is excellent at keeping education accessible and consistent (many Duolingo users complain of addiction to their daily streak, despite not learning as much as they’d like).

If you want to learn more about either of these ways to learn a language, you can read my Duolingo review here, and my Busuu review here.

Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone: the most important comparison

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Comparing Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone is pretty close to comparing apples and oranges. They’re both great for starting new languages from scratch, but the way it’s done could not be more different. It all has to do with what exactly you want to get out of your first experiences with your new language.

Let’s compare Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone to see how best to start your language learning journey.

Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone: available languages

Duolingo and Rosetta Stone both teach the following languages:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese (Mandarin)
  • Dutch
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Turkish
  • Vietnamese

Additionally, Duolingo teaches:

  • Czech
  • Esperanto
  • Finnish
  • Hawaiian
  • Hungarian
  • Indonesian
  • Navajo
  • Norwegian
  • Swahili
  • Ukrainian
  • Welsh

Rosetta Stone also supports:

  • Farsi
  • Latin
  • Tagalog

Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone: lessons

Both Rosetta Stone and Duolingo are built to teach languages from the beginning, but the way that they do that is very different. If you’ve gotten bored over time using Duolingo, I’ll show you how Rosetta Stone is much better at keeping you on your toes.

Duolingo

Duolingo’s bread and butter is short, easy-to-accomplish lessons. They’re around 5 minutes long, and are meant to be addictive; you get through one lesson, and it’s so easy that you keep playing for another 5 minutes…and another, and another.

The point is that Duolingo gets you addicted, fast.

Rosetta Stone

In recent years, Rosetta Stone has also caught up to this more modern, easy-to-accomplish approach, while still maintaining the challenge.

That is to say that Rosetta Stone is not brainless. It’ll get you thinking pretty hard for those 5 minutes by stretching your ability to come up with the language itself and limiting the multiple choice.

Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone: your goals

How do you want to use the language you’re learning? What skills are important for you to build? What do you want to be able to do with it after finishing with your language app (if you do finish – both apps teach enough languages to last anyone a lifetime, honestly)?

Your answer to these questions will help you understand which language app will get you closer.

Duolingo

Duolingo is tricky because it’s so good at what it’s supposed to do (be addictive) that many users misunderstand how it’s meant to be used.

Really, Duolingo’s first job is to start a habit and keep the motivation going strong.

Teaching you basic grammar is secondary, honestly.

That said, I would recommend Duolingo if you’re interested in playing around with the languages a little bit and getting used to the patterns and the flow of the language. However, don’t expect Duolingo to get you farther than it’s meant to.

Start a habit, but also keep a healthy distance from the addiction of it.

Rosetta Stone

On the other hand, Rosetta Stone is much better at this part. It’s designed to get you using the language, starting from some basic vocab and ending with useful statements that are simple, but still teach your brain to function in the language.

Rosetta Stone is still for beginners, though, and cannot be expected to teach languages beyond a tourist level of the language. It’s much more adept at doing this than Duolingo, though.

Using your language skills

As you learn a language using either Rosetta Stone or Duolingo, the activities you’re led through have you build your new language skills in slightly more difficult ways. Here’s how each language learning resource does this.

Duolingo

While Duolingo does build up a little bit, it does focus more on the gist of the language. This is evident in comprehension questions like this.

While you do need to know the vocabulary here and the general idea behind some grammar points, this activity is about answering broad questions. While this isn’t inherently a problem, it can cause some language learners to be frustrated that they don’t understand as much as they would like to.

For example, while you may be able to understand the question just enough to answer it, you’ll be disappointed if you try to reproduce it for yourself. This is because Duolingo focuses almost entirely on passive skills, without supplementing the practice required to be able to express yourself in the language.

Rosetta Stone

The thing that makes Rosetta Stone difficult (in a good way) is that it leads you to use the language in a variety of different formats. While it starts out with matching simple phrases with pictures just like Duolingo, it follows up by having you express those phrases yourself.

What many language learners tend to forget is that in order to improve your ability to speak a new language, you need to practice speaking; while a beginner may not be ready to jump into a conversation, simply repeating phrases out loud starts to train your brain to get used to those conversations.

So in activities like those shown above, Rosetta Stone leads to more “useful” use of the language than Duolingo does. You’ll start producing the language much more quickly than the simple button-pressing of Duolingo.

Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone: price

Historically, Duolingo and Rosetta Stone have come and very dramatically different price points. Times are always changing, though, so here are the price points as of this review’s most recent revision.

Duolingo

Another feature that is major to the Duolingo brand is that it’s free. Duolingo’s thing is that they want education to be free and available to all, which is an awesome initiative. While there are paid options for Duolingo users, you won’t be blocked off from any of the lessons with a free account.

Of course, just like Rosetta Stone, Duolingo is a business, which means it needs to make money. Over the years, as its business model has shifted, many free users are worried that the changes make the app less and less usable over time.

Rosetta Stone

Gone are the days of spending hundreds of dollars for Rosetta Stone CDs – it’s the 21st century, and Rosetta Stone has been forced to modernize their pricing to compete with apps like Duolingo.

Just like many other language apps, Rosetta Stone has switched to monthly, annual, and lifetime memberships. Now Rosetta is cheaper…as long as you get through the material in a reasonable amount of time.

Nonetheless, even if you do keep your subscription to Rosetta Stone going, it’ll be a few years before you spend as much as you would have had to spend in prior decades.

Which is better for you?

While Duolingo and Rosetta Stone are both great choices for beginner language learners, they also offer wildly different experiences.

Duolingo can be a great way to get in the habit of learning a language, but be careful about getting addicted to earning XP and using those fun colors and sounds to overinflate your actual ability. Read more about Duolingo here.

While Rosetta Stone is less “fun” and a bit more difficult to accomplish, it’ll draw out your ability to use a new language much better. You’ll finish Rosetta Stone feeling much more confident in your abilities to learn a language. Click here to learn more about Rosetta Stone.

Busuu vs Babbel: minor differences, major implications

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Busuu and Babbel are in tight competition with each other. It can be difficult to compare the two because they are so similar (not to mention both being named 2-syllable words that start with ‘b’). So for language learners, which is better, Busuu vs Babbel?

In this blog post, we’ll focus on what each language app does differently, for better or for worse, so you can make an educated decision for your own language learning strategy.

Busuu vs Babbel: languages

Both Busuu and Babbel offer their content in the following languages:

  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Turkish

You can also use Busuu to learn:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese
  • Japanese

and Babbel to learn:

  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • Indonesian
  • Norwegian
  • Swedish

Busuu vs Babbel: getting started with each app

Like many other apps to learn a language, Busuu and Babbel both give you the opportunity to assess your current level in the language. However, the way they do this is wildly different.

When assessing your skills, most language learning resources will provide you with a series of activities and see how far you can go before answering consistently incorrectly. This is exactly what Busuu does.

It’s a very simple, black-and-white, “either you know it or you don’t” kind of thing. Very academic.

And while I would also consider Babbel to be a more academic approach to learning a language, their assessment style is…decidedly not.

Here, Babbel is more focused on how your skills can be used in real-life scenarios. Here, Babbel is less focused on helping you get an A on an exam and more focused on what you can do with the information you already have.

When it comes to assessments like these (as in, assessments given by a computer), I’ll tell you what I tell my clients: don’t rely on these results too much. If the app does its tech right, these assessments will get the right level of activity for you, but it’s not a very reliable indicator of your skill in the language as a whole.

And this is an excellent display of this. Do you care more about acing a test or using these skills? How do you want to have your foreign language abilities judged?

Busuu vs Babbel: which skills you’ll build

To the unseasoned language learner, Busuu and Babbel seem to both be excellent quality apps. While this is true, there are some small yet important differences to consider when comparing to two, especially when it comes to which skills you’ll be building.

Let’s look at a Busuu lesson.

In this lesson, you follow along with a simple dialogue and then are tested on your comprehension of the conversation. Exercises like these are really helpful if you want to be able to understand conversations in a foreign language or watch foreign language movies.

These are important skills, but they’re not the only important skills.

One of my biggest critiques of Duolingo is that it’s a lot of button-pushing, not a whole lot of learning to use the language. And in this way, Busuu has the same problem.

To show you what I mean, here’s a Babbel lesson.

In one Babbel lesson, you’re using the content in a variety of different ways, including speaking and writing. Most language apps struggle to fit such a holistic approach into one system, but Babbel does it well!

If speaking and contributing to the language (not just understanding it) is important to you, this is a major distinction.

How each app reviews vocabulary

An important part of learning is the review, and both Babbel and Busuu have slightly different systems to do this. Each platform allows you the option to review instead of learning at any point, and these reviews are similar to their lessons.

For example, here’s a Busuu review session.

Busuu takes the vocabulary terms it’s shown you and has you actively write them out. This is very helpful for recall, as it forces your brain to think about it more deeply than it would if you were just constantly pushing buttons.

Let’s compare it to Babbel’s review.

I love that Babbel starts out by asking you how you’d like to practice. If you’re intentional about your language learning and are clear about what skills you want to develop, this is an A+ way to review.

This is opposed to Babbel, which does not give you any options. Writing out all the answers is excellent, but it can also be frustrating if spelling isn’t your priority.

Busuu vs Babbel: how you’ll practice having conversations

Likely the biggest way that these two apps differ is how you’ll practice using the things you learn in conversation. Neither is better nor worse than the other, but this difference can truly define which app is the better fit for you to learn a language.

Central to the Busuu experience is the community. As you complete your lessons, you’ll be led to submit a recording or written prompt (your choice) to Busuu’s community. You also have the option to truly invest time into Busuu’s community and build up your conversation skills.

This is a hugely important part of the Busuu experience because there are so many options to use the language you’re learning in engaging ways. It’s always your decision when to practice and how in easy, 5-minute exercises that are not just pushing buttons.

Assuming you take the time to build up some relationships and connect with other community members, your functional language skills will skyrocket.

Babbel takes a different approach with their new group lesson service, Babbel Live.

While Babbel focuses on short, community-driven practice sessions that you can execute in whatever ways you need to in your own time, Babbel gets you in front of professional teachers that will lead you appropriately and correct your mistakes.

These are very different strategies, so here’s a basic pros/cons list to help you understand your best fit.

Babbel Live

  • Professional support
  • Scheduled lessons = accountability
  • Labor-intensive
  • Expensive over time

Busuu community

  • Convenient for any schedule
  • Flexible activities
  • Unreliable feedback
  • Less structured focus

How much do they cost?

Both Babbel and Busuu are premium apps. They’re not free, but they’re also not outrageously expensive. If you’re in a position to invest in your language learning, the prices are worth it.

That said, the apps themselves are similarly priced. Their subscription lengths may differ, but the price you pay monthly/yearly/whatever is essentially the same.

You can find updated Busuu prices here, and subscription prices for the Babbel app here.

Babbel Live is a different, more expensive subscription, but real access to language teachers is going to cost more (and be worth more) than an app. Check Babbel Live prices here.

Busuu vs Babbel: make your choice

Now that we’ve compared Busuu vs Babbel in different ways, it should be clear which language app is the better fit for you.

Babbel is considerably more flexible, as it’s always asking you how you want to complete your activities, so you’re always building the skills you want to build. And if you spring for Babbel Live, you’ll be held accountable by your teachers in your lessons to not only study, but also to study correctly.

On the other hand, Busuu’s lessons are a lighter touch, closer to Duolingo’s method of tapping away. It’s not quite so surface level, though, as you can use Busuu’s huge online community of language learners to help correct you and keep you accountable.

Still can’t decide?

You can learn more in my review of Busuu here, or my Babbel review here.

Babbel vs Duolingo: only one will truly teach you languages

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Babbel vs Duolingo are two of the most popular language-learning resources on the market. While they’re both great for language learning in general and have really nice platforms, each of them has a different approach. This review will help you decide which app to use to learn a language

We’ll compare behind-the-scenes looks into the apps themselves and see what you can expect from each way to learn a language.

Languages

Babbel and Duolingo both offer a wide variety of languages, which means some significant overlap. Both apps can be used to learn:

  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • French
  • German
  • Indonesian
  • Italian
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Turkish

The only other language that Babbel supports that Duolingo does not is English. Otherwise, the list of Duolingo languages is honestly massive. Because all the other languages cannot be compared to Babbel, I’ll let you read more in my Duolingo review.

It’s also important to know that not all languages are equal, especially on Duolingo. While you can spend months learning Spanish on Duolingo, a newer language won’t have as much content. Babbel is much more likely to have some uniformity in their languages.

Babbel vs Duolingo: what you’ll learn

The first significant difference between Babbel and Duolingo is the approach each language app takes to teach you a new language. In simplest terms, Duolingo is much more of a game, while Babbel is closer to a high-tech textbook.

In this lesson, while it’s obviously more intermediate (as in, you’re completing sentences, not just matching words with pictures), it’s important to realize that this is all still passive. You’re consuming the language and expressing that you understand it, but that’s only one piece of the puzzle.

This is an important flaw because many language learners get this far into their Duolingo learning path, but end up frustrated because they can understand a lot more than they can communicate themselves.

A surefire way to know that you’re not developing your speaking skills is if you’re not spending a lot of time speaking. Duolingo gives you a little bit of opportunity with some speech recognition exercises, but it’s definitely not enough to truly build those skills.

To compare, here’s a Babbel lesson at a similar level.

The lessons aren’t wildly different, but they are different enough that as you continue through them, you’ll end up with very different skills. You’ll find yourself tired after a few minutes of Babbel, because you’re working your brain and having to figure out the language, not just press the right button.

With Duolingo, you can expect to nail down a solid routine (shout out to that anxiety you get when you’re about to lose your streak!) and be able to understand quite a bit.

With Babbel, your skill set will be more complex, and you’ll be able to do more with the language. It’ll be less fun and less motivating over the short term, but if you can stay reasonably consistent in the long term, you’ll be great.

Duolingo Stories vs Babbel Live

Babbel and Duolingo’s lessons are similar, but the way that each app helps language learners to “immerse” in the target language is vastly different.

With Duolingo, each language has a “Learning Path”, which is essentially a handful of lessons followed by Duolingo Stories. These Stories used to be a separate activity from the Duolingo tree, but now they’re stuck right into the Learning Path, and you’re required to complete them to continue to the next lessons.

Objectively, this is a more helpful strategy to make sure you’re getting more realistic practice.

As you can see, Duolingo Stories takes you through a real-life conversation, so you can see the language in action. It’s still just tapping buttons and figuring out just the general gist of the conversation, but it’s a step closer to functional use of the language, and a step is a step.

In recent years, Babbel has taken a much larger step towards connecting language learners to useful skills: Babbel Live. This feature (outside the Babbel app) makes it easier for language learners to work with professional teachers in group classes.

These are online classes with real-life language teachers who have the material to support your language learning right alongside the lessons you’re learning inside the app.

Unlike Duolingo’s Stories, Babbel Live classes are not required; in fact, they’re an extra subscription (more on that below).

Babbel vs Duolingo: price

When comparing Babbel vs Duolingo, the biggest difference is the price.

One of the major parts of Duolingo’s brand as a whole is that its app is free. There are ways to pay, but you will never be restricted from educational material if you don’t want to or are unable to pay.

While this is true, many language learners believe that Duolingo intentionally changes their app so that it’s next to impossible to use without a paid subscription. Whether this is true, I can’t say, but it is worth noting when comparing paying for Babbel with Duolingo’s paid subscription.

On the other hand, the Babbel app is a paid service, through and through. You can see updated prices here.

Babbel Live, the group coaching platform, is another paid service. Here’s Babbel Live’s prices. Fortunately, if you do invest in a Babbel Live subscription, they throw in full access to the app for free!

Duolingo is always free, Babbel is not (especially not Babbel Live).

Which one?

After comparing Babbel vs Duolingo’s lessons, goals, immersion activities, and price, it should be pretty clear which language app you should be using.

At the end of the day, Duolingo is free and fun, but it’s important to remember that it’s designed to make you feel like you’re making more progress than you really are. And unfortunately, most language learners don’t realize it until they’ve spent many hours in the app and then try to participate in a conversation.

You can learn more in my Duolingo review here.

Babbel is much more structured and is designed to help you build practical skills. Babbel’s primary goal is real-life, functional skills, in a way that’s logical but not boring. It’s not for everyone, but if you decide that Babbel is your best bet, the app (and Babbel Live) will get you far.

Read more about both in my Babbel review here.

Mango Languages review: 70+ beginner languages

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Mango Languages is a crowd favorite for language learners because it’s engaging, offers real-world education, and can be accessed for free through institutions everywhere. In this Mango Languages review, learn everything you need to know about this resource for your own language goals: what it does well, what it doesn’t, and who should use it.

And if you fall under the category of language learners who won’t really benefit, this Mango Languages review ends with a couple of other recommendations, based on Mango Languages’ biggest flaws.

Mango Languages available

To start, Mango Languages offers plenty of languages, plus quite a few different dialects/accents within those languages, including:

  • Arabic (Egyptian)
  • Arabic (Iraqi)
  • Arabic (Levantine)
  • Arabic (MS)*
  • Aramaic (Chaldean)
  • Armenian
  • Azerbaijani
  • Bengali
  • Cantonese
  • Cherokee
  • Chinese (Mandarin)*
  • Creole (Haitian)
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • Dzongkha
  • English
  • English (Shakespeare)
  • Filipino (Tagalog)
  • Finnish
  • French*
  • French (Canadian)
  • German*
  • Greek
  • Greek (Ancient)
  • Greek (Koine)
  • Hawaiian
  • Hebrew
  • Hebrew (Biblical)
  • Hindi
  • Hungarian
  • Icelandic
  • Igbo
  • Indonesian
  • Irish*
  • Italian*
  • Japanese*
  • Javanese
  • Kazakh
  • Korean*
  • Latin
  • Malay
  • Malayalam
  • Norwegian
  • Pashto
  • Pirate
  • Polish
  • Portuguese (Brazil)*
  • Persian (Dari)
  • Persian (Farsi)
  • Potawatomi
  • Punjabi (Pakistani)
  • Romanian
  • Russian*
  • Scottish Gaelic
  • Serbian
  • Shangainese
  • Slovak
  • Spanish (Castilian)*
  • Spanish (LAm)*
  • Swahili
  • Swedish
  • Tamil
  • Telugu
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Tuvan
  • Ukrainian
  • Urdu
  • Uzbek
  • Vietnamese
  • Yiddish

The languages marked with an asterisk(*) also include a variety of different cultural courses, from etiquette to business to superstitions and beyond.

These courses mean that you can also use Mango Languages to learn professional phrases, or even just fun ones (Like St Patrick’s Day Irish, for example). If you’re looking for a clear-cut, specific path in your target language, this is a great, unique approach.

Fun vocabulary options are a great way to make sure you’re enjoying the language learning process! Even if you don’t *need* St Patrick’s Day vocabulary, it still qualifies as legitimate exposure to the language. These fun sections are not reliable across languages, though, so check what’s available before assuming you can use it to learn professional Uzbek, for example.

Mango Languages: an overview

Mango Language’s courses are laid out in a very simple, modern way – no advertising, no outside podcasts or blog posts, nothing – so you can focus on the language and nothing else. It’s been completely redone within the past couple of years, and these updates have made massive improvements to the platform’s usability.

These courses are broken up into units and chapters. Once you start whichever chapter you like (there are no requirements for going through any prior lessons or units, just pick and choose whichever lessons suit your fancy), you’ll see that each chapter is one conversation that you’ll be dissecting. You’ll get a collection of phrases/sentences for a real-life conversation, and break them down bit by bit.

Specifically, you’ll learn to have these conversations by learning the individual words, phrases, and then sentences, with some nice little cultural facts thrown in. You’ll then learn to piece together all of this information yourself, with the option for plenty of help along the way.

As you continue on through these lessons, you’ll learn and understand each individual word and phrase in a variety of different ways. And each of these ways will be repeated many times.

When I say Mango Languages takes sentences bit by bit, I mean bit by bit. The first thing you learn isn’t the entire phrase included in the first piece of dialogue, but just the first word. Mango Languages crawls. Excellent for beginners, but painful for everyone else.

Nope, can’t fast-forward the speed, either.

For each and every little bit, you’ll get:

  • the word you’re learning
  • its translation
  • an audio recording (you can repeat as many times as you like)
  • the option to record yourself saying it (to compare with their audio)
  • the pronunciation

Think you’ve got it? The next step is a chance for you to translate it independently.

These sections are giving you the tools that you need to use the language, it’s up to you to piece the tools together correctly using critical thinking. Using the examples, grammar notes, and cultural notes, you’re led to rise to the challenge of forming foreign language sentences.

Did you notice the color coding? As a visual learner, I do love this part. It makes it easier for me to create the link in my brain between the two phrases and helps me to pick apart what each individual word means, and how the words come together in a way that makes sense.

As you learn new languages, you learn that sometimes the most difficult part is that sentences aren’t built the same across different languages. Words are all out of order, some words don’t even exist in other languages, and some languages need 10 words to say something that another language says in one.

Then, each phrase is repeated consistently while you continue to learn more, which is very helpful in turning that short-term memory into long-term memory if you need to take it slow. Later on in this post, we’ll take a look at Daily Review, which helps even more with building long-term memory.

Note: I completely forgot to turn off the narrator’s voice up until now in this Mango Languages review! From here on out, you’ll hear limited English and mostly Spanish. This is easily configured in the settings, in the upper right-hand corner.

Once you have the meaning down, Mango Languages has you actually practice the words and sounds.

So, if you’re an ultimate beginner in the language and have never studied any language before, Mango Languages definitely has a few decent options to offer!

And a lot of simple repetitions. This is, again, excellent for beginners. A lot of the time, there’s no easy way to learn something except seeing or hearing it as many times as it takes for your brain to catch on. Consistency is key, especially when it seems like a word is never going to stick!

Daily Review

Recently, Mango Languages has also included more tools to help baby language learners form a habit. With the mobile app, you can add and customize study reminders by day of the week and the time of day you want to receive your reminder. Very handy for even the busiest or most distractible language learners.

And even if you’re not using the mobile app, desktop users can access the review section at any time. Instead of going through the initial lessons over and over again, you can basically review the flashcards automatically created based on your past lessons.

Click the button, and you get those same options for self-study:

  • switch between “literal” and “understood” translation
  • listen to the audio
  • record yourself saying it

PLUS, unique to this section is the self-reporting buttons on the bottom and the option to take a card out of the deck in cases where you know that card like the back of your hand, so you don’t waste your time.

Self-reporting flashcards are my absolute favorite! They make it easier to get an accurate understanding of what you’re learning, instead of a resource assuming that you know any given term better or worse than you actually do.

I also love the power language learners have over what they need to review. Some language learning resources are much stricter about this, so it’s good to see this level of customization. There’s nothing more irritating than being forced to review terms that you already know.

Plus, it’s such an attractive interface! The only other resource that does this as well is Rocket Languages.

Mango Languages review: pricing and access

While Mango Languages is a paid resource, there’s a good chance you can find your way to free access through local institutions. They partner with public libraries, corporations, schools, and other public entities all over to provide free, unlimited access to all 70+ of their language learning courses at any time.

If you can’t find access through an institution, however, you can always opt for a paid subscription yourself. Fortunately, paid subscriptions are still very reasonably priced at less than $10/ month. Click here for updated pricing.

Who Mango Languages is for

For one, this Mango Languages review makes it clear that beginner language learners would benefit the most. As you grow in your language learning, the speed and repetition become unbearable, but it’s a very generous start for those who process slowly or are simply brand new to the language. This is also true concerning the content itself – it’s just for beginners.

It’s also pretty surface-level, meaning you’re not going to be able to find clear, tangible grammatical explanations to study. I mean, there are some tossed into individual chapters, of course, but it doesn’t suit grammar- and rule-focused learners. You’ll get a general feel of the grammar that you need to understand one particular phrase, and that’s it.

At the end of the day, if you want a simple, modern design with hand-holding through a collection of pretty simple phrases, as well as some cultural education (depending on the language) in a frankly huge variety of languages, I recommend you give Mango Languages a shot.

But for many language learners, Mango Languages will be much too slow. If this is the case, I might suggest uTalk for support in the less commonly learned languages or Glossika for a more advanced approach.