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The 19 Best Apps to Learn French in 2023
If you app-solutely want to learn French in 2023, you’re in the right place.
I’ve spared you the guesswork by testing these 19 French-learning apps out myself and writing a review of each to help you find one that works for you!
In this post, you can discover the best French learning app for you based on your interests and needs.
Contents
- 1. Best for Guided TV: TV5Monde
- 2. Best for Audio-Visual Learners: FluentU
- 3. Best for New Vocabulary: Rosetta Stone
- 4. Best for Advanced Learners: Français Authentique (Authentic French)
- 5. Best for Phrasebook-Based Learning: MosaLingua
- 6. Best for Enhanced Flashcard Studying: Brainscape
- 7. Best for Conversation Practice: Mango Languages
- 8. Best for Having Fun While Learning: LingQ
- 9. Best for Study Time Flexibility: Mondly
- 10. Best for Translating: French English Translator
- 11. Best for Short Study Sessions: Drops
- 12. Best for Language Exchanges: Tandem
- 13. Best for Feedback from Natives: Busuu
- 14. Best for Game-based Learning: MindSnacks
- 15. Best for French Stories: Frantastique
- 16. Best for Fun Exercises: Duolingo
- 17. Best for Listening Skills: 500 French Conversations
- 18. Best for Learning Useful Words: Memrise
- 19. Best for Travel: SpeakEasy
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
1. Best for Guided TV: TV5Monde
Summary: TV5Monde turns TV broadcasts from France into French lessons.
Best for: Native French video and audio, vocabulary, grammar explanations, reading, writing, listening
Price: Free
TV5Monde is a native French television channel that broadcasts TV shows and news in France and all over the world.
In addition to its broadcasts, TV5Monde offers a well-rounded French learning app that allows you to learn the language completely from native French speakers.
The app has four levels of French from beginner to high intermediate. Each level has dozens of videos featuring native French audio on a wide range of topics.
Each video comes with complete subtitles in French and multilingual transcriptions to follow along.
There are also a number of exercises such as quizzes, fill-in-the-blanks and crosswords to check your understanding.
2. Best for Audio-Visual Learners: FluentU
Summary: FluentU is a virtual immersion platform with a wide variety of video content to learn French.
Best for: Listening, native French videos and audio, interactive subtitles, flashcards
Price: Free trial available; pay monthly or annually for a full subscription
Other sites use scripted content. FluentU uses a natural approach that helps you ease into the French language and culture over time. You’ll learn French as it’s actually spoken by real people.
FluentU has a wide variety of great content, like interviews and web series, as you can see here:
FluentU brings native videos within reach with interactive subtitles.
You can tap on any word to look it up instantly. Every definition has examples that have been written to help you understand how the word is used.
For example, if you tap on the word "crois," you'll see this:
Practice and reinforce all the vocabulary you've learned in a given video with FluentU's adaptive quizzes. Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning and play the mini-games found in the dynamic flashcards, like "fill in the blank."
As you study, FluentU tracks the vocabulary that you’re learning and uses this information to give you a 100% personalized experience.
It gives you extra practice with difficult words—and reminds you when it’s time to review what you’ve learned.
Start using FluentU on the website with your computer or tablet or, better yet, download the FluentU app from the iTunes or Google Play stores.
3. Best for New Vocabulary: Rosetta Stone
Summary: Rosetta Stone teaches you new words through pictures instead of translation.
Best for: Immersion, listening, reading, speaking, vocabulary building
Price: Free trial available; subscription required for full access
One of the oldest and most popular learning methodologies around, Rosetta Stone sets itself apart by offering a completely immersive experience.
From the very beginning, it teaches French purely through French—there’s not a word of English in the course.
By doing this, Rosetta Stone simulates the environment that it believes is most conducive to learning a new language—when we were young children learning to speak our mother tongues.
You’ll be taken through a well-sequenced program where you’ll be exposed to words, sentences and phrases that build on top of what you’ve already learned.
By linking concepts and objects directly to French words (instead of their English equivalents), Rosetta Stone is an extremely effective method.
4. Best for Advanced Learners: Français Authentique (Authentic French)
Summary: Français Authentique provides study materials for upper-intermediate and advanced French learners.
Best for: Listening, native French audio, vocabulary and phrases, transcripts and exercises
Price: Free
This app is based on the successful Français Authentique YouTube channel.
Français Authentique’s YouTube channel has over one million subscribers, and its host, Johan, has helped countless people improve their French through his French vlogs and podcasts.
Français Authentique’s YouTube channel is completely in French, as is the app.
This includes the actual in-app audio and video content as well as the descriptions and supporting materials. Because of this, the app is recommended for high beginner and intermediate learners.
The audio and video content revolves around podcasts produced in slow, clear French. Topics include common vocabulary and grammar topics, lifestyle vlogs, self-improvement and productivity.
New audio and video content is constantly added and PDF files can be downloaded from the app for learners to follow along.
5. Best for Phrasebook-Based Learning: MosaLingua
Summary: MosaLingua combines flashcards and phrasebooks to teach French efficiently.
Best for: Listening, conversation practice, everyday vocabulary and phrases, flashcards
Price: One-time low price to install, plus in-app purchases
MosaLingua is a platform that’s a good blend between an interactive French app and an audio phrasebook.
What makes MosaLingua unique is its use of the Spaced Repetition System (SRS) when presenting new vocabulary.
The SRS software uses an algorithm that has you review words at the most efficient time to maximize retention.
There are also audio recordings provided for the phrases so you can hear proper pronunciation as well as flashcards for review.
With over 14 categories and 100 sub-categories, MosaLingua covers over 3,000 phrases and helps you absorb all of them in the best way possible.
6. Best for Enhanced Flashcard Studying: Brainscape
Summary: Brainscape provides French flashcards optimized for the best learner experience.
Best for: Pronunciation explanations, grammar tips, reading, listening, flashcards
Price: First level is free. Additional levels available at a cost
At first glance, you may be thinking, “what’s so special about French flashcards?” but let me tell you, these flashcards are pretty special.
For starters, each flashcard comes with native French audio, so you can hear exactly how a French word or phrase is pronounced in order to perfect your accent.
Secondly, these flashcards don’t just present French words and translations by themselves. Instead, they include words that are in complete sentences to provide context.
Further, each flashcard comes with in-depth explanations of grammar points, so you’re learning new words and how to fit them into your existing French at the same time.
Brainscape also uses SRS and offers four levels up to intermediate. At the end of all five courses, you will have mastered more than 15,500 cards.
7. Best for Conversation Practice: Mango Languages
Summary: Mango Languages takes ordinary conversations and dissects them for ultimate French study and comprehension.
Best for: Listening, reading, flashcards, everyday vocabulary and phrases, travel vocabulary
Price: Free with some library memberships
Mango Languages French is one of the best all-around apps for learning basic French.
The primary Mango Languages French course has four units with five lessons in each. Each lesson revolves around a written and spoken French conversation.
The subsequent activities include dissecting the grammar and vocabulary used in the dialogue through a flashcard-based approach.
The Mango Languages French app also allows you to record your own French audio to accompany each French word and phrase.
This is great for comparing your recordings to native French speech and practicing the accurate pronunciation of French words and phrases.
Mango Languages French has great grammar and cultural explanations, and it uses Spaced Repetition System (SRS) technology to help you review words at regular intervals.
8. Best for Having Fun While Learning: LingQ
Summary: LingQ provides audio and written content on many subjects, as well as helpful learning features if you get stuck.
Best for: Vocabulary building, listening, reading, flashcards
Price: Limited features with a free account; full features for a monthly or yearly subscription plan
LingQ is based on learning French through content that you are interested in.
You are able to find written and audio content on almost any topic you want and then choose what you’d like to learn about in French.
The reading interface that LingQ provides is fully interactive—each word is clickable and will give you an instant translation.
You can also turn any word you want into a flashcard and review it with SRS later. The technique of instant translations and flashcard creation makes learning smooth and effective.
The endless supply of French content will keep you engaged at each stage of learning.
9. Best for Study Time Flexibility: Mondly
Summary: Mondly’s attractive app interface makes practicing French an enjoyable yet effective experience.
Best for: Vocabulary building, listening, conversation practice (with a chatbot)
Price: Free; premium features for a price
Mondly is a pretty well-rounded app for learners who want to get a broad introduction to the French language.
While Mondly is a little lacking on the grammar end of things, it’s definitely good at effectively teaching new and useful vocabulary for French learners.
Mondly claims to have thousands of lessons to help you learn all the French you need for conversations with French native speakers.
It hosts lessons based on topics such as food and drink, school and travel. Within each lesson, learners do a variety of activities to learn the words and phrases that go with each topic.
Such activities include matching, fill-in-the-blanks and sentence building. Repetition really is key here, and you get loads of it with Mondly!
Mondly also gives you an opportunity to practice using French with a chatbot!
10. Best for Translating: French English Translator
Summary: Pro Language’s French English Translator gives you high-quality auto-translations with features that will help you learn French like a pro.
Best for: Speech-input and written translation, copy and paste functionality, French audio
Price: Free
Pro Language’s French English Translator is a translation app that supports both French and English input.
Whether you want to translate a single word or you want to copy and paste a full text from your device’s clipboard, the app offers an accurate translation between French and English.
In addition to its written-input functionality, the app also supports speech input. Simply speak in one language and get an instant translation into the other language.
Do you want to actually hear how the French sounds? Well, lucky for you, Pro Language’s French English Translator also includes text-to-speech technology.
11. Best for Short Study Sessions: Drops
Summary: Drops makes vocabulary acquisition fun and efficient.
Best for: Vocabulary building, repetition, spelling, listening
Price: Limited free content; monthly or yearly subscription fee
The idea behind this app is actually in its name! Learners quite literally master the French language one drop at a time.
Assuming you don’t have a subscription—you can only use the app for five minutes a day.
Each drop is a word or a short phrase, and learners drag it around the screen in various activities. These activities can be picture matching, true or false or word and sentence building.
Drops focuses on practical vocabulary and doesn’t weigh the learner down with tedious grammar rules and explanations.
The vocabulary revolves around words and phrases that are most useful to the learner at the beginner and intermediate stages of learning.
Best of all, Drops keeps track of your progress by linking it to a traveler’s proficiency level.
12. Best for Language Exchanges: Tandem
Summary: Tandem French matches you up with French language exchange partners.
Best for: Speaking and listening, language exchange with native speakers
Price: Basic functionality is free. Full features unlocked with in-app purchases
Tandem is a French conversation app that allows you to practice French with native speakers and build meaningful, long-term language-learning partnerships with people all over the world.
The premise is simple: Tandem acts as a matchmaker service for finding language partners.
Simply fill out your profile and scroll through the scores of other profiles of people with similar language aspirations as you!
Ideally, you’ll find a native French speaker to practice French with in exchange for practicing their target language with them, whether it’s English or another language you know.
Learners can chat in-app or take their exchange off-app and use an audio or video calling service such as Skype or Hangouts.
Tandem also has an in-app translation feature, voice messages and personalized tutors that can be purchased at a per-lesson price.
13. Best for Feedback from Natives: Busuu
Summary: Busuu provides French lessons with intermittent corrections from native speakers.
Best for: Listening, reading, writing, speaking, vocabulary building, practice with other learners and native speakers
Price: Free download with in-app purchases
Busuu French is a language learning app that really focuses on fostering an active community of users that help each other practice their language.
In each lesson, you’re given key vocabulary, the dialogue, a writing exercise, a practice speaking session with native speakers, a dialogue recording and a lesson review to close things up.
Busuu is very comprehensive in the topics it covers, and the exercises are designed around speaking, writing and listening. The app is based on the CEFR, so its material is highly certifiable.
Besides Busuu’s lessons, it also provides lots of ways to connect with other language learners or natives and communicate with them about your journey.
14. Best for Game-based Learning: MindSnacks
Summary: MindSnacks lets you learn French while playing fun games.
Best for: Vocabulary building, listening, reading
Price: Free with in-app purchases
MindSnacks is a beautifully designed iOS app for French learners that takes a game-oriented approach to learning and revising words.
MindSnacks helps you learn new words through nine games that cover different vocabulary units like food, jobs and transport.
In one game, a word flashes on the screen and you have to match it to the correct drawing. Get as many correct answers as you can in each round for high scores.
In another game, a bunch of French words and English words appear as balloons. Your challenge is to match as many pairs as possible.
With over 50 vocabulary sets, you’ll find that these games will help you learn vocabulary quickly, while having fun.
15. Best for French Stories: Frantastique
Summary: Frantastique dishes out daily French lessons about amusing fictional stories.
Best for: In-depth French lessons, French-only learning, vocabulary building, grammar practice, listening
Price: Monthly subscription fee with various levels of access
Frantastique is a fully functional platform for well-rounded French lessons delivered daily to your phone.
Each day, a new Frantastique French lesson arrives on your device that provides a story about aliens.
These cute aliens take us through various aspects of French culture from Edith Piaf to Victor Hugo, and they teach us loads of French along the way.
After listening to and reading a short scene about the aliens’ adventures in French, learners study various aspects of the French language presented in the aliens’ scene.
Oftentimes, learners practice newly introduced vocabulary and grammar structures, and there are plenty of practice exercises for reinforcement.
Best of all, after the learner completes their daily Frantastique lesson, it’s sent off to be marked by a native speaker. When it returns, all the errors are identified with accompanying explanations.
16. Best for Fun Exercises: Duolingo
Summary: Duolingo gamifies learning new vocabulary and sentence structures.
Best for: Listening, reading, speaking, writing, vocabulary building, grammar tips
Price: Free; paid monthly premium subscription available
Among all the apps here, Duolingo probably strikes the best balance between learning French, being well-designed and being fun.
Duolingo breaks down everything and chunks it all together into about 60 neat units.
One of the best things about using Duolingo is that it’s really quick to use. Lessons only take about five minutes and include fun exercises such as rearranging sentences, matching and pronunciation practice.
Duolingo has other great features including the ability to follow friends, XP to track your progress, a virtual currency store, a word meter that designs review lessons based on your familiarity with words and more.
Duolingo also has a sister program built into the app to assist with your French mastery: Duolingo Stories. This program uses words from the original course and helps you learn French through short, interactive stories.
17. Best for Listening Skills: 500 French Conversations
Summary: 500 French Conversations uses pre-recorded dialogs as lessons to boost your French listening skills.
Best for: Conversation practice, listening and speaking, everyday French expressions and vocabulary
Price: Basic functionality is free, in-app purchases and ad-free content is available at a price
The basic premise of this app is simple and quite self-evident as it offers 500 authentic French conversations.
The conversations are short and to the point, and they’re perfect for beginners to intermediate learners looking for speaking and listening practice.
The conversations themselves are in no particular order and cover topics such as school, work and daily life. You can study the conversations in any order you want.
The script for each conversation is available in French and in English and learners can practice with useful fill-in-the-blank exercises to test their listening and speaking skills.
18. Best for Learning Useful Words: Memrise
Summary: Memrise teaches useful words and phrases based on your learner level.
Best for: Flashcards, listening, reading, speaking, vocabulary building
Price: Basic app is free; premium subscription is available for additional features
One of the most innovative free apps for learning French words I’ve seen in a long time, Memrise is an excellent choice if you’re struggling to remember French words after a while.
Their staple French courses have been created by professionals, but you can also find courses created by everyday learners or amateur French teachers.
The professional flashcard decks focus on the most useful French words for all levels and include video and audio clips of native French speech.
Words are presented in batches of 15 centered around themes like verbs, thoughts, feelings and colors.
User-made decks may be missing video and audio (or both), but they’re fantastic for picking up where the professionally-made courses leave off.
Further, because they’re created by the community, they are constantly evolving with new content being added daily.
19. Best for Travel: SpeakEasy
Summary: SpeakEasy is an e-phrasebook that comes in handy for travel.
Best for: Vocabulary and phrases building, native speaker audio, flashcards, listening, reading
Price: Low one-time price to download
SpeakEasy is loaded with tons of words and phrases that you would need to travel to a French-speaking country.
Words come with translations and a recording of a native speaker saying the word so you can be sure to understand the pronunciation.
Some cool features of SpeakEasy are the slow playback feature and flashcards. These features will really make sure that you understand the words you want to work on.
Since SpeakEasy is so straightforward and available offline, it’s a fantastic option for the traveler as it’s convenient and easy!
Learning French through apps is truly a great tool for French learners, and now you have 19 great options to choose from!
Merci et bonne chance! (Thanks and good luck!)
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
