I love that this exists. You can learn at your own pace as the app guides you through or you can do it your own way. They give you all the lessons and categories that you can skip around on depending on what you want to learn. The goal setting and tracking, helps to keep you learning. NOTE: This WILL NOT work if you don’t make an effort to do at least an exercise a day. Sometimes the tracker doesn’t always seem to update properly, which has affected my streak. That’s can be annoying, but I like that I get 2 streak freezes on Monday, so I don’t always have to learn over the weekend. I am learning Polish, it is a super difficult language and it seems that some of the sentence structure or phrases are a little outdated.The variety of phrases and vocabulary available to practice and sort through (make your own flash card categories) is really amazing! Very helpful to practice and use what you already know. I love that you practice listening, speaking, flashcards, and writing through each lesson, but you can also pick which category you would like to review out of the 4 to hone in whatever you’re struggling with or want to test yourself on. I like that the lessons are not very long and that this app is constantly being updated to work better and perform better for its users.I have not used any other language app. I bought the life subscription when it was on sale. Best purchase I could have ever made!

I recently started hanging out in a Spanish speaking Latino community and decided it would be good to learn español to communicate with them better. After briefly considering a class at a community college, I decided an app would be better for learning at my own pace. I read several reviews of language apps before making a decision and Babbel came highly rated as the one with the most educational pedagogy behind it, as opposed to DuoLingo which is cartoony and gamified. Upon creating my account and selecting a membership option I noticed an option for a lifetime subscription and selected it after mathing it out. At $299 it covers the cost of the yearly plan for 3 years and then you have it for the remainder of your earthly existence, or 100 years, whichever comes first. I have been very happy with my decision so far as I feel I have made more progress in a few weeks than several quarters of Spanish 101 & 102 back in college. With the lifetime subscription I may even venture into another language once I’m comfortable with Spanish. Having native speakers to converse with is also helpful.I have one minor complaint about the latest update. The notification badge on the practice tab used to display the number of practice items, but is now just an orange dot. Could an option to display the number be added back in please? Otherwise I am very happy with the product so far.

This app is amazing!!! I’m learning French, which as you probably know is not the easiest language to learn. I’ve used other language apps such as Rosetta Stone and Duolingo, but Babble is by far the best!! A big factor for me especially when learning something like a language is the aesthetic of the app and/or website. I love the appearance of the Babble site! It’s a nice, calming, chill aesthetic ideal for language learning! Babble also provides many different ways of learning the same language! You can listen, write, speak, and even use digital flash cards of words and phrases. Babble provides you with daily vocabulary reviews, and keeps you motivated by giving you a learning streak.You can take your time with Babble. I don’t feel pressured to go fast and do a bunch of lessons. The lessons are short, the longest taking 30mins to complete. Similar to other language apps, Babble uses pictures to help you visually learn words and phrases. It divides your learning based on your knowledge of the language. For example, I started learning French a month ago, so Babble put me at Newcomer level 1. When you sign up you can select what level of learning you’re at, and let them know your goals.(learning to fluency, writing the language, grammar, speaking) Overall, Babble is a fantastic app!! I would absolutely recommend getting it! Au revoir! 🥐🇫🇷🥖

I finished the first lesson and learned a few words! I am doing french just to pass the time, its not like i am going to france or anything and need to learn it. Since there is no true NEED for me to learn french and i was just doing it for fun, my mom would not let me pay for lessons. In ads or commercials i have seen, it says it is free. I did the first lesson, didn't have any problem with anything, and I really love the way it teaches you! The only thing is I wont be able to learn anything beside, hello, goodbye, and how are you? Since im not aloud to buy anything. At first i thought it was an add, but then i clicked away from it and tried to re enter the lesson, and it still didnt work! It really is a great app, but maybe you could give like the first tenn lessons free or something, and then you can give the option to buy the next ten lessons with money, and every time you get a question right you could get like stars or something and buy a lesson with stars. Im just saying this for people like me who dont want to spend their money on this app if they are not using it for anything, they should still have the option to learn! Also, you should add a few more languages. I was signing up and noticed thst there was only like six. The real reason I downloaded it was so i could learn greek. Definetly would be the best app ive ever tried to learn a language with if not for the price! God bless!

This app is one of the best for learning languages, because it actually gives you context for the phrases unlike Duolingo and gives you speaking practices and listening with native speakers. My two complains are this: it’s expensive, but it makes sense for the quality of the app. And two: it’s really bad at accessing level. I am currently at a Spanish two level, and I wanted to use babble to improve my skills. It had me answer a few questions, using concepts like ir + a + infinitve, and preterite. After I answered them, and I’m pretty sure I got them all right, it placed me in unit 1, where I was learning basic concepts that I learned a long time ago. I tried to retest, but I could not find an option to. This was quite frustrating, since I wanted to be adequately challenged based on my skill level. I have been learning Italian as well for a few months, and I am far from fluent, but I tested for my level as well, and I am fairly sure I got most questions right, but it still placed me in unit 1 lesson 1, learning things like “ciao!” . But I have given up my frustration on this one, since there is still so much I don’t know, but I will no longer be using babble for Spanish, and only for languages I know basically nothing in, since that is clearly what it does best. Fix this please.

First off, this language app is far superior to any other language app out there. I used it for three years while living in Germany and had a yearly plan for German. I just moved back to the states and hadn’t been using the app for awhile due to the move preparations and process. Today I tried to use the app and consider switching to Spanish but all my German data was gone and it said my access was only limited. However, when I look at my subscriptions in my phone settings, I still have my annual German language subscription; yet when I go into the app and try to restore purchases there are none to be found.Tried to find a way to contact a human through the app and their website, but couldn’t find anything. I suspect the problem lay in the fact when I moved back to the States and got a new phone and US number it messed with my subscription somehow. But if I am unable to contact a customer service person, how am I able to troubleshoot on my own. My annual subscription was set to renew in 3 days so there’s not much time to figure it out before I get hit with another annual charge for something that doesn’t work. So i cancelled my (non-functioning) subscription via Apple, deleted the app and came straight here to review. So take my fresh emotions tirade for what it’s worth. This app was great while it worked, but todays prices for the subscription I already had is now twice the price.

This app uses a very traditional teaching model. Grammatical rules followed by exercises. It is more or less like a digital text book. I much prefer and believe that intuitive learning through immersion is much better. Here there is far too much explanation and technical grammar. If that is your thing, great, you will love this. But, if you are like me and find this far too boring and confusing because you don’t even know the nomenclature for grammatical concepts in your native language - and most people who have learned just by speaking don’t know the nomenclature - you will not like doing these exercises. Do you know what the subjunctive is? I don’t and I have a law degree and a masters in education. Consequently, I think a more intuitive, immersive, non-explanatory, game like system will do a better job of teaching you a language. If you are a grammar nerd, go for it. On the good side, I do like the Babbel podcast and stories. They are great for listening and assimilating the language. The speaking and listening practice are decent but too limited in that they do not involve dialogue. All in all, for what you get, this app is way too expensive. I unless there are major improvement to make it engaging and fun, I will be dropping it when my subscription expires. Instead, I will be talking to my Chat GPT friend and using the competing D app. Sorry, I really wanted to like it.

Overall I like the app. It has taught me things I didn’t know before and I continue to learn from it. I’ve been learning German every day for two years now and started this a few months ago. I like the speaking part, though I’m not sure why I have to hold my finger on the screen the whole time I’m talking. The word and phrase reviews are helpful. I’m not sure I’m a fan but the word scramble is OK. I love the stories. What frustrates me the most is that I am expected to remember perfect spelling of words I just learned and there is no room for any sort of mistake. Imagine visiting the home of someone that speaks a foreign language and you missed the slightest thing and get slapped with a ruler. Wrong. Any wonder why you might want to stop talking? I mean I spelled Waschmaschine as Waschmachine. Wrong? Yes. And the app is happy to tell you that. Pretty discouraging. I also don’t know that I agree with them using a non-Apple keyboard input because many mistakes I find are due to that keyboard versus Apple’s. I like the app and continue to use it. I just disagree with the beat down and I am frustrated enough to write about it. Babel tells me I’m supposed to go to Babbel wish board for any suggestions yet clicking on go to wish board does nothing. Makes sense.

Be sure what language you would like to practice bc you are locked into that language. I paid for a 1 month subscription and wanted to study 2 languages. You cannot toggle languages and must pay for 1 subscription per language. It’s my own fault for not carefully reading the terms and conditions. Had I done so I would have gone with Rosetta Stone, which offers more flexibility in choosing languages. Its an excellent app otherwise and would have rated it 5 stars had I not been asked to pay for 2 subscriptions. I suggest using Duolingo to try out languages before subscribing to this app, unless you know for sure what language you wish to learn. I must learn French AND German for work and knew this from the get go, but was under the impression I could switch back and forth for my study regimen (MWFSu-Fr, TThSa-Gr). However, on my second day using the app I was prompted to resubscribe. I personally like Rosetta Stone as a viable alternative and would have gone with them, just bc you have more flexibility. Altho, the functionality and quality of the Babbel app is superior, in my opinion. If you need to study one language and are positive on what language you want to commit to, I recommend Babbel. If you aren’t sure or need to study more than one language, I definitely recommend another app, unless you are willing to pay for 2 subscriptions.

I’m editing my review since I felt I was a bit too harsh the first time. I purchased a lifetime subscription and I’m a little let down that more effort hasn’t been put into the Babbel app. Their UI is a little clunky making it confusing to navigate. Your progress and the next lesson is presented in a way that’s kind of confusing and doesn’t make me feel accomplished. I moved to Babble from Duolingo and I really like that it has toned down gamification- especially that guilt tripping green owl. But I want some of that polish and well thought out UX back. Babble’s widget is boring on my Home Screen. The lessons could use more engaging mechanics and I feel the bland stock photography inserted to “help you remember” plays heavily into my aversion; stock photos aren’t effective and actually comes off as low effort and frustrating as it never relates well in the lesson. Overall, I think the groundwork is solid, it’s no frills which may be effective for some people, and you will learn a language doing the lessons while using other learning sources. I have ADHD and want to be engaged a bit more to keep me coming back. I think adding more/ better learning mechanisms would help the repetitiveness. Video, animations, back and forth conversation talking rather than just writing in answers. I’m glad I have babble to use as an extra tool for learning.