Thalita Alves
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25 Top-Tier Portuguese Online Courses to Reach Fluency in 2023
Gone are the days when Portuguese learning was confined to a physical classroom.
You can transport yourself to the streets of Portugal or Brazil with just a few clicks!
In this post, we’ll outline exactly which Portuguese online courses are the best as of 2023.
But who are we, why should you listen to us?
We’re a team of language learners who have been using and building language apps since 2011. Our founder is fluent in 4 languages, and collectively we speak more than 10—we can spot a good course from a mile away.
Read on to discover everything you need to know about these top-tier Portuguese courses, so you can get started on your journey to Portuguese fluency!
Contents
- 1. Babbel
- 2. FluentU
- 3. Pimsleur
- 4. Udemy
- 5. Memrise
- 6. Speaking Brazilian
- 7. Rocket Languages
- 8. PortugesePod101
- 9. Busuu
- 10. Mondly
- 11. LingQ
- 12. Verbal Planet
- 13. CoLanguage
- 14. Preply
- 15. Portuguese Connection
- 16. LingoDeer
- 17. Michel Thomas Method
- 18. MIT Open Courseware
- 19. Polly Lingual
- 20. Practice Portuguese
- 21. Live Lingua FSI Project
- 22. EasyPortuguese
- 23. Professor Jason
- 24. Learn Portuguese with Rafa
- 25. Tá Falado
- Frequently Asked Questions
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. Babbel
Price: $14.95/month, discounts available for longer subscriptions
Best for: Practical learning
Summary: This is a practical course with well-structured lessons aimed at beginner and intermediate learners of Brazilian Portuguese.
Babbel is an immersive platform that consists of a varied selection of online Portuguese courses for beginner-level learners of the Brazilian dialect.
The platform’s main offerings include six beginner lessons, Portuguese grammar exercises and a special “Country and Traditions” module that focuses on travel-based and everyday vocabulary that would be useful in all kinds of interactions.
Though it may seem pricey to some, Babbel is worth paying for. Read our full review of Babbel here.
2. FluentU
Price: $11.99/month billed yearly or $29.99/month billed monthly; free trial available
Best for: Immersion-based learning
Summary: FluentU turns authentic videos into immersive language learning lessons through interactive subtitles and other learning aids. Because it exposes you to the language as it’s spoken by native Brazilians, you’ll pick up more natural-sounding Portuguese.
FluentU will help you learn Brazilian Portuguese with short, authentic videos, such as music videos, movie trailers, commercials or inspiring talks. This gives you access to natural speech, including native pronunciation, and enables you to improve your listening comprehension through immersion in content originally aimed at Brazilian speakers.
Each video comes with interactive subtitles which provide contextual information about the vocabulary used. You’re even able to see how words are used in different contexts.
Learning doesn’t end there, though: FluentU features interactive exercises to enable you to review vocabulary with multimedia flashcards or personalized quizzes, as well as offering speaking activities and writing practice.
3. Pimsleur
Price: $575 for the full course (5 levels) or $150 per level
Best for: Speaking practice
Summary: A traditional audio-based course that places more emphasis on spoken language, Pimsleur is a great resource for learning Brazilian Portuguese.
Pimsleur is an old name in the language-learning world, providing well-structured courses for a huge number of languages.
It places emphasis on spoken language to help you become more confident with your speaking—in fact, you’re encouraged to speak Portuguese from the very beginning. This does mean that reading and writing take a back seat, so you might want to supplement the course with additional resources.
That being said, the course is still highly effective and practical—and hands-free, which is always convenient. There is also a lot of reinforcement in the lessons, which aids in memorization and long-term retention.
Choose between learning Brazilian Portuguese or European Portuguese (psst: the Brazilian course is said to be the better of the two!). Read our full Pimsleur review here.
4. Udemy
Price: $10-$30 (approx.)
Best for: Course variety
Summary: This platform is great for its variety—it has a large number of courses for all levels, covering both Brazilian and European Portuguese.
Udemy has become quite famous for its vast collection of online courses. In fact, the site hosts a series of lessons for Brazilian and European Portuguese learners of all levels.
Many of these courses are available at a fee, with prices ranging around $10-$30, but there are a few free gems lurking around, too, including this 3-minute taster.
Udemy’s materials follow a clear, structured path, usually combining a mixture of online videos, written notes and revision quizzes to get learners practicing and honing their skills at a steady pace.
5. Memrise
Price: $8.49/month, $59.99/year or $119.99/lifetime subscription
Best for: Beginners
Summary: App-based learning with elements of gamification to keep you engaged and motivated.
Memrise is a language-learning platform and app that offers courses for both European and Brazilian Portuguese. The short lessons, designed around real-life scenarios and themes like food or introductions, include key words and phrases to learn as well as videos and audio recordings from native speakers.
The app comes with learning games to help you memorize new material and enables you to record your pronunciation and compare it with that of a native speaker.
Read our full review of Memrise here.
6. Speaking Brazilian
Price: $497 + tax per course with live classes or $297 + tax without access to live classes
Best for: Structured curriculum with Zoom classes
Summary: The courses at Speaking Brazilian combine self-paced study using pre-recorded materials with live Zoom classes for a comprehensive learning experience.
Speaking Brazilian offers several courses designed by Brazilian teacher Virginia Langhammer. Upon purchasing a course, you’ll receive access to pre-recorded videos and other learning materials that follow a structured curriculum.
You’ll also be invited to online Zoom classes that take place every week for the duration of the course, where you’ll be able to interact directly with teachers and other students. The Zoom lessons are great for conversation practice!
The courses available at Speaking Brazilian range from beginner (A1) to advanced (C1)—but the site also offers crash courses for verb conjugation and for those traveling to Brazil.
Speaking Brazilian also includes free resources, such as YouTube videos, a podcast, and a mini-course in Brazilian pronunciation.
7. Rocket Languages
Price: $149.95, 6-month payment plan available at $19.00/month
Best for: Pronunciation practice
Summary: This comprehensive program is great for beginner and intermediate learners, with well-structured audio lessons and a stronger focus on pronunciation than many other courses.
Rocket Languages provides classroom-style teaching of Brazilian Portuguese, in a way that is supposed to inspire and make learning more enjoyable.
It’s packed full of useful, everyday Portuguese, taught through roughly 30-minute audio lessons. The lessons are structured like conversations between a native Portuguese speaker and a learner, which makes for less formal and more authentic-sounding dialogues. They can also be downloaded and used on-the-go.
The virtual voice recognition system can analyze your speech and identify problem areas, which is super handy for perfecting your pronunciation.
You can read our full review of Rocket Languages here.
8. PortugesePod101
Price: $8-$47/month depending on subscription level, discounts available for longer subscriptions
Best for: Dialogue-based learning
Summary: PortuguesePod101 offers a series of short audio and lessons for every level of ability.
PortuguesePod101 from Innovative Language comes with resources and materials for every learning style, although the majority of learning happens through themed audio and video dialogues that come with vocabulary lists and lesson notes.
After a free trial, users can decide between several paid subscription levels. Basic access will satisfy casual learners—though it’s worth noting that the more expensive subscription comes with one-on-one tutor access, personalized learning programs and assignments.
You can read our full review of Innovative Language here.
9. Busuu
Price: $13.95/month or $83.40/year
Best for: Community support
Summary: A language-learning app that gives you the option to record your answers and receive feedback on your pronunciation from native speakers.
Busuu combines language lessons with feedback from native speakers, enabling you to perfect your pronunciation as you build your vocabulary and grammar skills. Since you’ll be receiving encouragement, comments and improvement suggestions from real people, Busuu offers a sense of community support alongside speaking practice.
The course comes in the form of an app that enables you to schedule your study time and sends notifications to remind you of your goals and keep you on track. Comprehension checks let you verify your progress.
You can read our full review of Busuu here.
10. Mondly
Price: Base content free, premium content $9.99/month or $47.99/year
Best for: Innovative features
Summary: Mondly takes interactive learning to the next level with AR, VR, chatbots, and competitive leaderboards.
The Mondly app offers short, daily lessons that employ a range of methods, from classic typing or listening exercises to augmented reality games and activities. The app also comes witha chatbot that Portuguese learners can use for conversation practice.
The Portuguese course is intended to cater to learners of all levels, although the advanced content is relatively limited. To make the course engaging and keep you motivated, Mondly features weekly and monthly challenges and other gamification elements.
Read our complete Mondly review here.
11. LingQ
Price: From $7.99/month up to $39.99/month
Best for: Authentic learning materials
Summary: LingQ is a plaform that turns authentic materials in Portuguese into language lessons.
LingQ features an extensive library of materials in Portuguese—primarily texts with accompanying audio. Most of the audio files were recorded by native speakers, and the platform gives you the option to slow down or speed up audio to suit your level.
The course makes texts interactive by enabling you to click on every Portuguese word to see a translation and other helpful notes. It’s even possible to upload your own content and have the platform turn it into an interactive text that you can use for language practice.
You can read our full review of LingQ here.
12. Verbal Planet
Price: $20 for a 40-minute lesson (on average), loyalty discounts available (up to 15%)
Best for: Finding flexible tutors
Summary: This site can help you learn Portuguese at every level by connecting you directly with tutors for one-on-one online lessons.
Verbal Planet is a website that connects students of all levels with native Portuguese-speaking tutors.
It’s an incredibly flexible option for Portuguese learners who want to build up fluency in a highly interactive manner—after all, having live conversations is a great way to immerse yourself in the language!
While the site’s options are pretty easy to customize—you can test the waters with a single Skype lesson or plunge all the way into a complete course—this is a great option for letting someone else take charge of your learning.
13. CoLanguage
Price: $13-$55 per hour, depending on the tutor
Best for: Structured Skype lessons
Summary: This site is good for those wanting to work with tutors, with lessons based on the CEFR (plus the opportunity to gain a certificate).
CoLanguage is a tutoring site that offers a rather structured approach and accommodates any level. Both individual and group sessions are available.
After signing up, you can schedule Skype lessons with real tutors, including native speakers of Portuguese. They base their lessons on the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) levels, so you’ll get regular feedback based on these standards. You can even work to obtain a certificate in a CEFR level if that would be useful for you.
The Portuguese teachers you’ll find here are pre-screened and lessons come with a quality guarantee.
14. Preply
Price: $3-$40 for a 50-minute lesson, depending on the tutor
Best for: 24/7 tutor access on-the-go
Summary: Preply is another platform that enables language students to connect with Portuguese tutors and native speakers with quick, easy scheduling.
Preply offers access to over 840 Portuguese tutors, many of whom are certified teachers and/or native speakers of either European or Brazilian Portuguese. Lessons are tailored to your level and needs, with some tutors specializing in certain levels or types of vocabulary, such as corporate or travel communication.
This platform is unique in its accessibility—there are apps for both iOS and Android, which means you can take part in lessons anywhere, anytime.
15. Portuguese Connection
Price: $320/10 hours of individual lessons, $100/10 hours of group lessons
Best for: Individual or group classes
Summary: Online classes for individuals and groups offered by a language school located in Portugal.
Portuguese Connection is a Lisbon-based Portuguese school which offers in-person classes on location and online language courses. The online courses are held via Skype and can take the form of either individual tuition or group classes.
The school offers courses in both European and Brazilian Portuguese, and you can even enroll with friends for a group discount. You’ll also get access to interactive materials and receive an official diploma upon successful completion of the course.
16. LingoDeer
Price: $14.99/month or $79.99/year
Best for: Starting immediately!
Summary: LingoDeer is a highly engaging, beginner-friendly course that’ll start teaching you basic Brazilian Portuguese vocabulary in minutes.
Visit the LingoDeer website, and you’ll be learning basic words before you even realize it. The course features an intuitive, user-friendly design, gamification elements, and varied exercises that will keep you engaged and entertained while you learn Brazilian Portuguese.
LingoDeer is best-suited for beginners looking to dive right into the language. It’s a great course for learning vocabulary and basic grammar, but it doesn’t feature audio recording options—so you’ll need another tool if you want to check your pronunciation.
Here’s our full review of LingoDeer.
17. Michel Thomas Method
Price: $152 for the full course (up to intermediate level), $11.99-$100 for individual levels
Best for: Audio-based learning
Summary: This practical audio course is excellent for getting you speaking Portuguese from day one.
The Michel Thomas Method focuses on learning Portuguese through active use, thereby making word retrieval much easier when you’re faced with actually speaking the language.
The approach is quite unique in that it gets you speaking Portuguese from the very beginning, something that not many courses do—but that is very beneficial to your learning!
Because it’s entirely audio-based, it makes for easy listening on-the-go: No books or pens required! While it’s on the pricey side for an audio course, it’s still very effective for some learners.
18. MIT Open Courseware
Price: Free
Best for: University-style learning
Summary: These free MIT courses are university quality, without the university price tag.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has quite a rich open courseware catalog. If you’re trying to get your head around Brazilian Portuguese, MIT has undergrad study materials available to download for free.
Make sure you take a close look at the full list of courses so that you can select the level that best matches your current abilities. In a nutshell, materials cover levels from beginner to advanced, mostly consisting of lecture notes and supplementary resources that can be used for wider reading.
There’s also an accelerated introductory course offered for those who have a background in Spanish.
19. Polly Lingual
Price: $2.99/month or $9.99/year
Best for: App-based learning with access to tutors
Summary: Interactive online lessons with the option to connect and practice with native Portuguese speakers.
Polly Lingual is a neat, cross-platform app that offers interactive lessons for beginner, intermediate, and advanced Brazilian Portuguese learners, focusing on both vocabulary and grammar.
Many of the lessons include videos uploaded by tutors—called “Polly Ambassadors”—to explain key concepts. For an added fee, users can connect with Polly Ambassadors and schedule private lessons.
Polly Lingual also features specialized Portuguese courses for medical and business professionals.
20. Practice Portuguese
Price: $16.49/month
Good for: European Portuguese
Summary: Authentic European Portuguese presented in the form of hundreds of listening, speaking and grammar exercises.
Practice Portuguese aims to introduce learners to Portuguese exactly as it’s spoken in Portugal. It does so via short lessons featuring interactive exercises and activities, including pronunciation practice. The lessons progress to more difficult language over time, with the full course catering to beginner, intermediate, and advanced learners.
The lessons in this course come with video and audio recordings of native speakers from different regions of Portugal in order to expose learners to different accents used across the country.
21. Live Lingua FSI Project
Price: Free
Good for: Textbook-based learning with audio files
Summary: If you don’t mind slightly old-fashioned audio, these courses offer a great overview of the Portuguese language.
Live Lingua’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI) project offers free-to-access, public domain courses across 40 different languages. This includes a handful of beginner to intermediate lessons for both Brazilian and European Portuguese learners.
Each course consists of e-books and most come with audio files. Learners also get access to an online sound-recording tool for pronunciation practice.
22. EasyPortuguese
Price: Free
Good for: Reference and review
Summary: EasyPortuguese is a no-frills website offering a trove of educational material for beginner-intermediate Brazilian Portuguese learners.
It’s not a structured course, per se, but it’s perfect for those who are looking for a more self-guided approach to online learning. With vocabulary lists, verb conjugation tables, and handy grammar guides that explain key concepts, EasyPortuguese can feel more like a digital textbook than an interactive course.
The aforementioned vocabulary lists are its strongest asset. Words are categorized into a number of different themes, including food, nationality, Brazilian and Portuguese names and adjectives. This makes EasyPortuguese a helpful tool for quickly discovering new words and phrases or for hassle-free vocabulary reviews.
23. Professor Jason
Price: Free
Good for: Self-paced, free, lecture-style lessons
Summary: Professor Jason is a YouTube channel with lecture-style videos that teach Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.
If you’re after a conventional classroom Portuguese course that’s accessible online for free, Professor Jason’s channel might just be the perfect option for you. The channel features dozens of Brazilian Portuguese lessons for every level, sorted into playlists for easy access.
Professor Jason’s course is based entirely on these pre-recorded lessons, so there is no interactive element to learning Portuguese here. However, key grammar concepts are explained clearly and with plenty of examples, so this could be an excellent complementary resource for other learning tools.
24. Learn Portuguese with Rafa
Price: Free
Good for: Text resources
Summary: This website has lots of free written material covering a variety of topics, with courses available for both European or Brazilian Portuguese.
This course by Rafael Tavares (aka Rafa) taps into his experiences with speaking European Portuguese at home, growing up in South America and learning English in the United Kingdom.
The course steers away from dry academics and gives full insight into daily linguistic conventions. Over the years, the author has developed courses for both European and Brazilian Portuguese learners.
His website includes plenty of materials for beginners, including written guides on grammar, verbs, conjunctions and vocabulary, as well as a series of instructional videos that put all of these into context.
25. Tá Falado
Price: Free
Good for: Spanish speakers
Summary: If you’re a Spanish speaker, these free audio-based lessons are incredibly helpful for mastering grammar and Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation.
Do you speak Spanish? Well, you’re already halfway to speaking Portuguese, and Tá Falado is sure to help you get there.
These series of audio lessons are available courtesy of The University of Texas at Austin, aimed at highlighting differences between Spanish and Portuguese for those who already speak the former (though they can be helpful for everyone). They cover grammar and the ins and outs of Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation—in a lot of detail.
Professor Orlando Kelm breaks down the language concepts behind dialogues performed by Brazilians Michelle and Valdo, with native Spanish speaker José Luis offering a Spanish speaker’s perspective.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I choose the best course for me?
You could start with some simple elimination questions:
- Do you want to learn Brazilian or European Portuguese?
- Are you willing to pay for the course? If so, how much?
- Do you want to learn completely by yourself, or would you enjoy connecting with other people more?
- What’s your language learning style?
- Do you need Portuguese for a specific purpose, like business or vacation?
By writing down your priorities and expectations, you can narrow this list of courses down to just one or two options that would suit your needs. Keep in mind that most of the paid courses have free trials available, so you can try them out with no immediate financial commitment.
What’s the difference between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese?
European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese vary in terms of grammar, vocabulary use and of course, pronunciation.
Though both varieties of Portuguese are usually understood everywhere, if you’re planning on visiting a specific place or using Portuguese with speakers of a particular country, it may be worth sticking to learning Portuguese from that country.
Is Portuguese hard to learn?
While Portuguese isn’t the easiest language in the world to learn, it’s certainly not the hardest.
If you have experience with other Romance languages such as Spanish, French or Italian, then congratulations, Portuguese will come more easily to you! Spanish speakers in particular have an easier time as the two languages are very closely related—though Portuguese pronunciation is more challenging.
Don’t worry too much about whether Portuguese is “hard” or not. Ultimately, your motivation is what matters the most.
Online Portuguese courses are meant to be personalized experiences, so don’t be afraid to try out different options before settling on a resource that works for you.
Then, just keep practicing at your own pace and you’ll soon find yourself reaching new levels of fluency!
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
