Babbel provides more of a challenge than most other language learning apps, so it's most suitable if you already speak a language related to the one you want to learn. For example, if you speak German and want to learn Dutch, Babbel is great, and its online Babbel Live classes are very useful and affordable. That said, Lingoda's classes are even more thorough, earning it our Editors' Choice award for group language learning. We also recommend Fluenz for video instruction alongside interactive exercises and Rosetta Stone for building a base grammar and vocabulary. Finally, nearly everyone should use the free Duolingo for daily practice.
What Languages Can You Learn With Babbel?
Babbel offers 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, Swedish, and Turkish. There's also a course for learning English with instruction in French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, or Swedish.
Live classes are available for English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish only.
How Much Does Babbel Cost?
Before you buy a Babbel membership, you can try a minuscule part for free. It's not much, though. A seven-day free 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.
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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:
$29.85 for 3 months, one language (website)
$53.99 for 3 months, all languages (mobile app)
$50.70 for 6 months, one language (website)
$80.70 for 6 months, all languages (website) or $80.99 (mobile app)
$83.40 per year, one language (website)
$107.40 per year, all languages (website) or $107.99 (mobile app)
$599.99 for Lifetime, all languages (regularly marked down to $299.99)—same price in-app and on the website
The Lifetime membership sounds compelling, but you can get a similar all-languages lifetime subscription to Rosetta Stone for $399 (regularly on sale for about $200), which includes nearly twice as many languages (23).
But wait! There's more. A membership to the online classes, called Babbel Live, includes access to the app. You can pay for group classes or private classes, and you get unlimited classes for the period mentioned at these rates:
$99 per month (group), $149 (private)
$177 for 3 months (group), $335.25 (private)
$294 for 6 months (group), $625.80 (private)
$468 for one year (group), $715.20 (private)
Those prices are exceptional, especially if you take a minimum of two classes per week. Just keep in mind that the rates are subject to change.
Lingoda's pricing also requires several paragraphs to break down, but you can expect to pay anywhere from about $10.50 to $20 per class, depending on how many you buy at once and for which language. The fact that Babbel lets you take as many classes as you want in your membership period is unheard of—if that sounds like something you want to do, jump on the membership now.
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 testing, I poked at Indonesian (a language that I don't know at all) and took a live class in Spanish (I've lived in a Spanish-speaking country, though I'm rusty and not fluent).
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 responds to her in Dutch, "I don't speak any French." In The Netherlands and Belgium, that's a phrase you might actually have to 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.
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're meant to do them in order.
The amount of content in the courses varies by language. The levels appear to be numbered based on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for Language. 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 Information
In the years I've been reviewing Babbel, its interface has come a long way. It doesn't have the same finesse as Rosetta Stone nor 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) sync up well, giving you nearly identical experiences no matter which device you use to do your language lessons.
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 in 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 is designed around Dr. Pimsleur's theory of language learning), and Duolingo makes research and studies about its efficacy publicly available.
Learning With Babbel
Babbel teaches reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Most of the exercises have you practice by filling in missing words from sentences, spelling words and short phrases, translating, and repeating words and phrases aloud.
I've never formally studied German, and I can only manage a few words and phrases. 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.
Remembering my prior experiences with Babbel, I grabbed a notebook and pen before I got started. In the past, I've failed exercises because I couldn't remember how to spell a long word exactly right. So, I decided to 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.
I can't get through even the first set of Babbel exercises without a notebook when trying to learn a language that's brand-new to me. Without my notes, I am forever swapping 'i' and 'e' or otherwise spelling words wrong. You never time out when you give a wrong spelling, nor do you get a hint. You can't even choose to reveal the correct answer. You just try and try and try in an endless loop. I wish it would give constructive feedback.
The exercises get dull quickly, but they're challenging, especially when you get a full sentence and have to type in a missing word. The sentences are not overly simplified and often expose you to a lot of new grammar. If you pick up languages quickly, this type of word exposure is probably beneficial. If you get frustrated easily, this challenge may be too intense.
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.
I dipped into the Spanish program, too. Similar to the German 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.
Generating Language in a Live Class
As far as I got with any of Babbel's self-paced learning, I never had to generate language. Language generation means thinking about what you want to say and then saying it without too much delay or mental translation. The live, online group classes close this gap. As mentioned, a Babbel Live membership gets you unlimited classes for the period of time you choose and the self-paced app. It's a stellar deal.
Group classes are limited to six students, and you must sign up in advance. Every class has a clear description and skill level. You can also see how many students have signed up so far, which I like. Lingoda does that, too. When it's time for the class, you log in to a Zoom call and participate remotely. Cameras are optional. The class I attended had only one other student and the instructor.
The instructor doesn't work off of a script but does have a PDF that they use to move the class along. The instructor asks each student to answer questions, read a section of the PDF aloud, or otherwise participate. My instructor was dynamic and didn't say much in English, but she was able to help when I dropped in an English word when I didn't know the Spanish equivalent.
Babbel's classes are 55 minutes long. Lingoda's are a full hour—and I've been in classes that went on longer with an enthusiastic instructor. The PDFs Babbel uses are fairly short at just a few pages. For Lingoda's classes, the PDFs are so long that I've never been in a class that got to the end of one (even though I've taken dozens of classes). Additionally, you can download the Lingoda class PDF in advance, which is really useful for reviewing challenging materials in advance. Lingoda also offers more information in advance about the instructor in case you want to look for someone who specifically speaks Mexican Spanish as opposed to, say, Argentine or European Spanish.
Although I like Lingoda's classes a little more, there's no denying that Babbel's are an incredible value—and they're very similar. Taking classes is an invaluable way to progress faster, especially for intermediate and advanced students.
Rosetta Stone also offers small group classes, which it calls tutoring. However, these classes offer only 25 minutes of instruction at a time and are not as helpful as Babbel's or Lingoda's overall.
Learn by Listening to Podcasts
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, thus 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 it came from and what it 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 are meant 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.
Verdict: Lessons Tailored to Every Language
The minds behind Babbel have clearly spent time crafting a learning program that's unique to each language. Some of the exercises can feel boring or repetitive, but the content is quite thorough and pushes your understanding. The online Babbel Live classes are a great experience even by themselves and a better value than those from Lingoda, though the latter remains our Editors' Choice because its sessions are a bit more comprehensive. If you're a beginner, meanwhile, we recommend Rosetta Stone and Fluenz, respectively, for building a base vocabulary and getting video instruction. We also recommend Duolingo, a free app that's unbeatable for daily practice.
Ideal for those who are adept at learning languages (or already speak a few), Babbel teaches phrases and vocabulary you'll actually use and offers excellent online classes.
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