3 Best Free Android Apps For Learning Another Language (Other Than Duolingo) – BGR

Learning a new language is still fun and useful, despite Google Gemini helping with real-time translations when needed. Thankfully, studying a new language is more accessible than ever, thanks to apps on our phones. Android users have access to many great language-learning apps, including the famous Duolingo.

Duolingo is one of the most popular language-learning apps available. Its mascot, Duo, is a green owl that guides (or guilts) you into coming back if you skip too many lessons. The app has a big emphasis on completing exercises that force you to think in the new language, and everything in the app is gamified, giving you a feeling of progress. For example, to get you to use the app daily, Duolingo has a daily streak that grows every consecutive day you log on. The higher the streak, the more you feel like you’re progressing, and the harder it is to stop since you don’t want to break your hard-earned streak. Since you can add your friends and see their progress, having a higher streak is also a matter of bragging rights.

While it’s fun, Duolingo is not for every learning style, which is why it’s great that there are other apps. To create the following list of the three best free-to-download Android apps for learning another language, we looked at user reviews and researched online for the top options. While these apps can be downloaded for free, they require a subscription to unlock their full potential.

Preply is very different from most other language-learning apps. It doesn’t rely on pushy mascots, flashy software, or AI to teach you another language. Instead, Preply uses actual tutors. The service has 100,000+ tutors from more than 180 nationalities teaching over 120 subjects. There are over 33,000 English teachers on the app, by far the most of any language. In addition, there are tutors for other popular languages, including Chinese, French, Japanese, Italian, and Spanish — so you can watch some Spanish-language Netflix series with subtitles off.

Unlike other language-learning services, the business model of Preply is also different.  Prices vary depending on the tutor, with more experienced tutors charging more per lesson. There is a subscription model that lets you pay in advance for a certain number of lessons per week or month. Preply is not free to use, and there are no free lessons, but you can sign up for a trial lesson, where you can set up future lessons and discuss your expectations. And if the tutor isn’t to your liking, you can request a free tutor replacement. 

How Preply works is simple. You sign up, find a tutor that’s right for you, follow the lesson plan they develop, and keep doing that until you’re confident in your language skills. If you’re more about teaching than learning, you can also sign up to be a tutor within the app. It’s a great way to earn money on the side, or to jump-start your career as a language tutor abroad. The app has a 4.7 rating on the Google Play Store, which is great. If you’re tired of flashcard-style learning that prioritizes memorizing random words, this could be the service for you. That’s why we recommend it if you’re trying to learn a new language.

Busuu is a language-learning service that prioritizes the social aspect of learning a new language. The app, which has a 4.7 rating on the Google Play Store, teaches over a dozen languages, including English, Spanish, French, Japanese, and Korean. The app offers a free tier that provides access to lessons with frequent ads. If you don’t mind that, then you can learn any of the languages at your own pace, though you won’t have access to the grammar and vocabulary review feature, which is useful for diving deeper into topics or referencing previous lessons.

Much like other language-learning services, Busuu uses the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) to develop its courses. The CEFR stages go from the beginner level A1 to the fluent level C1. One drawback of Busuu is that it only offers the advanced C1-level courses for English learners. If you’re learning another language, like German, you’ll have to use another tool or service when you reach high levels of proficiency. 

Busuu, at its core, is not much different from other services. You have one lesson at a time, at your own pace, and complete vocabulary and grammar quizzes until you’ve grasped concepts. What is different with Busuu is that its community can give feedback on your assignments and even correct your work. For many, getting feedback from real native speakers is very helpful since you get a clearer picture of what people who speak the language actually say. In other words, you won’t sound like you learned the language from a textbook. There are over 120 million registered Busuu users, and in 2024, the community contributed a combined 105 million interactions on the app. If mixing a language-learning app with social media sounds like your cup of tea, Busuu is worth checking out.

If memorizing is the part you struggle with the most when learning new languages, take a look at Memrise. This app has a 4.5 rating on the Google Play Store from 1.5 million reviews. As you may have deduced from the name, Memrise is all about memory. One of the company’s co-founders has won the U.S. memory championship, so he knows a little about memorizing.

Memrise’s platform is simple. It relies on memorization techniques to speed up the rate of learning a new language. The other thing that makes it special is that it has video clips of native speakers talking in the language you’re trying to learn. For those who struggle with pronunciation, this is a big help and one of the quickest ways to sound natural. A lot of times, hearing from a native speaker can correct your speech early on so you don’t struggle with it later. 

The app has a free plan that includes courses for 23 languages, native speaker clips, language quizzes, and personalized review plans that help you get ahead. It’s not so much different from other apps in that way, though its free version is generous. The Pro Plan gives you access to it all, plus access to all learning features with no advertisements. The cost for the Pro Plan comes out to $40 per month, or $99 per year. You can also sign up for the lifetime Pro plan, which costs $330 or $115.50 when on sale, which is a bargain. Whether you choose the free or pro plan, Memrise is a viable choice if you need help with memorizing words and grammar above all else. 

There is no shortage of language-learning apps, which makes it tough to choose the one that’s right for you. For this list, we looked for the best-rated language-learning apps on the Google Play Store, selecting those with the most reviews and with a rating of 4.5 or higher. We also read user comments to find what made the apps so enjoyable. Additionally, we narrowed down the list by choosing apps with free features. While Preply stands out because it doesn’t have a free version, it made the list because it’s a free download with a trial lesson.