Pros & Cons
-
- Effective, high-quality lessons unique to each language
- Caters to experienced learners
- Straightforward interface
-
- Total amount of content varies by language
- Exercises can be dull
- No longer offers live classes
Babbel Specs
| Average Duration of Lesson (Mins) | 5 |
| No. of Languages Offered (Not Incl. English) | 13 |
| Price Includes | Subscription |
| Style of Program | Exercises |
Babbel is most appropriate for picking up a language related to one you already know. If you speak German, for example, and want to learn Dutch, the language learning app will give you enough of a challenge, thanks to its rigorous (though sometimes boring) lesson content. Babbel no longer offers live classes for individuals, however, which is a vital component of advancing your language comprehension. If you're interested in that type of learning, look to Editors' Choice winner Lingoda, which has some of the best small group classes you can find. Our other Editors' Choice winners include Duolingo, which is superb for free, daily practice, Fluenz, which provides classroom-like instruction, and Rosetta Stone, which helps you build foundational grammar and vocabulary knowledge.
Pricing: Somewhat Expensive
Before you pay for a Babbel membership, you can try a minuscule part for free. It's not much, though. A seven-day trial exists, but you have to pretend you're going to pay for the app and then change your mind for the option to appear.
Getting the exact price of a subscription is confusing because it differs across the mobile app and website. It further depends on whether you choose one language or all languages. The pricing chart doesn't always clearly say how many languages you get. Here's what I've been able to suss out:
- $17.95 for 1 month, all languages (website)
- $45.75 for 3 months, all languages (website) or $53.99 (mobile app)
- $80.70 for 6 months, all languages (website) or $80.99 (mobile app)
- $107.40 per year, all languages (website) or $107.99 (mobile app)
- $299 for Lifetime, all languages in-app and on the website (the website lists $599 as the price, but it is perpetually marked down to $299)
The Lifetime membership sounds compelling, but you can get a similar all-languages lifetime subscription to Rosetta Stone for $399 (regularly on sale for $219), which includes nearly twice as many languages (23). As mentioned, Babbel no longer has live courses for individual learners.
(Credit: Babbel/PCMag)Lingoda's pricing also requires several paragraphs to break down, but you can expect to pay anywhere from about $12.49 to $22.49 per class, depending on the type, how many you buy at once, and the language.
What Languages Can You Learn With Babbel?
Babbel has programs in 13 languages, assuming your language of instruction is English. You can learn Danish, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish (Latin American or European), Swedish, and Turkish. There's also a course for learning English with instruction in French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, or Ukrainian.
Getting Started With Babbel
I've tested Babbel multiple times over more than a decade, looking at its courses for Dutch, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish. In my most recent tests, I poked at Polish, a language that I don't know at all. If you have prior experience with the language you want to learn, you can take a brief placement test in the app before you get started.
You wouldn't know it from trying just one of Babbel's courses, but the material is unique for each language. For example, in the Dutch program, there's an exercise that involves a French woman speaking, and another person says to her in Dutch, "I don't speak any French." In the Netherlands and Belgium, that's a phrase you might actually use. The Dutch lessons also expose you to the names of cities in the Netherlands and teach you their local pronunciation. In the German program, you get a lesson fairly early on with all kinds of words for drinks: beer, coffee, lemonade, juice, mineral water, tea, and wine. In the Russian program, the early lessons focus a lot on helping you learn Cyrillic.
(Credit: Babbel/PCMag)The fact that each Babbel course is unique is notable. Rosetta Stone is notorious for using the same images and core vocabulary no matter what language you're learning. Do enough Rosetta Stone, and you'll be able to say "the dog eats rice" in 20 languages, but you'll never learn how to pronounce Groningen (a city in the Netherlands) like a local, the way you do with Babbel.
How Is Babbel Organized?
Babbel has a reasonably clear structure, though it takes a minute to figure it out. Levels contain courses, which contain lessons. Unless you have prior experience with the language and want to jump ahead, you should do them in order.
The amount of content in the courses varies by language. The level numbers appear to follow the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for Language standard. If you come to Babbel from another program that uses the same standardized scale, you know where to start without taking a placement test. Beyond the CEFR courses, you have additional course material based on other things, such as Business Language, Daily Life, Travel Essentials, and so on. Each level contains multiple courses, and the number varies by language.
Interface and Ease of Use: Clear and Consistent
In the years I've been reviewing Babbel, its interface has improved greatly. It doesn't have the same finesse as Rosetta Stone or the gamification of Duolingo that makes that program compelling, but it's simple, straightforward, and easy to use. Babbel's website and mobile apps (available for Android and iOS) provide nearly identical experiences.
Something else Babbel does well is give you information about how it works. For example, it has a help page that explains what space repetition means and why it's important for learning a language. On this same page, you can read about a part of the Babbel program called Review to understand its purpose. Few language programs give you such deep insight into how language learning works. Pimsleur is another that does (the whole program revolves around Dr. Pimsleur's theory of language learning), and Duolingo makes research and studies about its efficacy publicly available.
Similar Products
Our Current Picks for The Best Language Learning Apps for 2026
Learning With Babbel: Rigorous Exercises
Babbel teaches listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Most of the exercises have you practice by filling in missing words from sentences, repeating words and phrases aloud, spelling words and short phrases, and translating.
(Credit: Babbel/PCMag)I've never studied Polish before, so I started at the beginning. When I tested the German course a few years ago, I took the placement test and got bumped up only a tiny bit, enough to skip the Newcomer material that teaches new sounds and letters, which seemed appropriate considering I had very little self-taught German.
Remembering my prior experiences with Babbel, I grabbed a notebook and pen before I got started. In the past, I failed exercises because I couldn't remember how to spell a long word exactly right, so I decided to take notes. As mentioned, Babbel is challenging. It doesn't try to be an "on-the-go" app you can pick up on a whim, like Duolingo. You need to sit with Babbel and take notes.
First, the app introduces a small set of words and phrases, and you repeat them or choose them based on a prompt. The same words and phrases appear with images, and you have to match the right word to its picture. Next up is spelling. After you see a picture and hear a word, you must then spell it using a bank of letters. In this exercise, you can either type or select the letters by clicking or tapping on them. That's helpful when it comes to special characters, like letters with diacritical marks. A little later, Babbel asks you to type words, eventually in the context of a sentence. Sometimes, you see English translations, too.
The exercises are a little dull, but at least they're hard. Babbel doesn't simplify sentences and often exposes you to a lot of new words and grammar. If you pick up languages quickly, this type of word exposure is probably beneficial. If you get frustrated easily, Babbel might be too intense.
(Credit: Babbel/PCMag)A Review section encourages you to do space-repetition learning. In other words, it tailors a review session to you based on what you learned and when. I still found it helpful to have my notes by my side for this part, but overall, it's a great feature.
While I was testing, I dipped into the Spanish program since it's a language I already know. Similar to the Polish course, the beginner content has explainers that actually teach you about the language, as well as truly useful words and phrases. In the more advanced areas, you get longer passages to read, though you still have to write words into blank spaces fairly often. You also get audio segments with multiple speakers who go at a natural pace. When you finish listening, you answer a question about what you heard. It's great content, especially for people who are ready to figure out words from context rather than learning them all through direct translation.
Podcasts: A Useful Supplement
Babbel has some bonus content in the form of podcasts. There are quite a few for people learning English, French, Italian, and Spanish. I listened to two to get a sense of what they contain.
A-Zero to A-Hero is Spanish for beginners. It's a conversation between two people who both use English to help guide the listener. The hosts discuss a simple conversation they might have in Spanish and talk out loud as they break down what they want to say in Spanish.
Palabras Bravas is for intermediate to advanced speakers. It's entirely in Spanish, giving you the opportunity to practice extensive listening and hopefully pick up a few new words in the process. The show I listened to was about language: One person introduced foreign words or phrases, and the other hosts guessed what language they came from and what they meant, all in Spanish.
Babbel isn't the only program with podcasts, however. Duolingo has podcasts for intermediate to advanced learners of Spanish and French. Unlike Babbel's podcasts, which focus on language, Duolingo's podcasts tell real stories (they're short radio documentaries, really), and each episode uses a mix of English and the language you're learning to take you along.
Rosetta Stone's bonus content includes videos that help teach you how to use the language in everyday situations. These videos are very much structured for beginners.
Games: Skip 'Em
Babbel has some games that aim to help you practice your language learning in a fun way, but they're all overly simplistic. One shows a train on the screen going along a track that's damaged, and you have to correctly complete a language exercise within a time frame to repair the track. The games are about as sophisticated as you might have expected them to be in 1980.