The best app to learn Spanish, by what it makes you do

Most lists of Spanish apps compare features. Streaks, languages, offline mode, price. You cannot tell from any of that whether the words will still be there in a month.

You can tell from three things, and you can check them in the first five minutes of any app.

What is your answer? Typing a word from memory, saying it, or tapping it out of four options. The research on this is consistent: you recall more later when you produce an answer than when you recognise one. In Rowland’s 2014 review of the published experiments, the benefits were larger for recall-format practice than for recognition. If every answer is a tap, the app is easier and you will keep less.

What do you see? A real sentence with the meaning in view, a picture, or a lone word on a card. In a sentence you learn the word’s company. With a picture you are left guessing what it meant.

Who sets the timing? A fixed course path, or a schedule on which each word comes up again near the point you would lose it. Cepeda and colleagues went through 317 experiments: spaced practice is better than massed, and the right gap grows the longer you need the memory to last. On a course path the gap cannot change per word. On a memory schedule it can.

Here are the answers to those three questions for ten Spanish apps. Prices and store reviews were checked on 15 September 2026; each name links to a longer comparison.

The course apps

In these you go through a fixed path of lessons. They are the easiest to start, and with them you are the most likely to end up with lessons done and little to show.

Duolingo. Your answer is a tap most of the time, with some typing. You see word tiles and short sentences. The path is fixed, with review mixed in. Free with ads; with Super there are none. You will open it every day. Most of what you do in it is recognise the answer. You rarely have to produce it.

Babbel. Taps, flashcards, fill-in exercises, some typing and speaking into the microphone. A fixed course of lessons with a review section. Paid, in plans from one month to lifetime. More explanation than Duolingo, the same reliance on recognition.

Busuu. Taps and picks, plus writing that native speakers in its community correct. A course path with a review section and a leaderboard. Free tier with ads and paid. The community correction is real feedback, which most apps lack.

Memrise. Taps and some typing, with short video clips of native speakers. You do not choose what goes into a session. Free tier and paid. The clips are the best part. You do not pick what comes back.

The drill apps

In these there is no course, and you go straight to words or sentences on a memory schedule. Harder to start. You keep more of what you learn.

Lingvist. You type the word into a sentence gap. Words come in frequency order on a memory schedule. €9.99 a month or €79.99 a year. The closest in method to what the research supports. What it lacks is in our comparison.

Clozemaster. Multiple choice by default; typing is optional. Sentences with a gap, spaced repetition on the ones you have played. Free tier and Pro. A large sentence bank, and you have to switch typing on yourself.

Anki. Whatever is in the deck; most cards you flip and grade yourself. Spaced repetition on cards you build or download. Free on desktop and Android, $24.99 once on iPhone. A strong scheduler and no content of its own. You are the editor.

LingQ. You read and listen, tap and save words, then flashcards you grade yourself. Spaced repetition on what you saved. Paid. Strong for reading volume, weak for producing words.

The immersion apps

Rosetta Stone. Pictures and spoken phrases, no translation, and you are graded on your pronunciation through a microphone. A fixed sequence of units. €19.99 a month or €159 a year. You are never told what the picture meant, and whether you passed depends on the microphone.

Pimsleur. Audio first: a thirty-minute lesson a day, you answer aloud in the pauses. A fixed sequence with recall built into each lesson. Around $150 a level or $798 for everything, often on sale. Real speaking practice, no reading, no schedule beyond the lesson order.

Where Vozelu sits

We build one of these, so read this part knowing that.

Every review is typed from memory. You see a real Spanish sentence with the missing word, the English in view, and a recorded voice reading it. Each word comes up again on a memory schedule, timed from how you did on it. You also read real texts at your level, including news, for the same practice, and every word you look up can go into your next session.

There are 20 dialogues at beginner, intermediate and advanced level, such as a first date or a job interview. In each one you play one of the people. You say your lines out loud or type them. When you say a line, we check that we recognised every word. If we missed one, you say the line again. Then you can play your recording and the same line read by a recorded voice. There is no free conversation. Vozelu is Spanish only. It is new, and free right now.

How to choose

If you have never opened a Spanish app, start with any of them and come back to this list in a month, when you know what you want.

If you have months in a course app and cannot follow a conversation or read an article, the problem is what the minutes contain. Move to something where you produce the words and they come up again on a schedule. Lingvist, Anki with a good deck, or Vozelu are the candidates, and the difference between them is mostly whether you want to build the content yourself.

If you want to speak above all, Pimsleur or a tutor. You cannot replace a person answering back with a drill app.

Whatever you pick, apply the five-minute test: do you have to produce, do you see real sentences, and is the timing set per word. Two out of three is fine. If you get none of the three, you are unlikely to get there.