20 Best Apps to Learn Portuguese in 2026 (Free, Tested)

The best app to learn Portuguese depends on which Portuguese you need and what you want from it: Babbel for Brazilian grammar, Practice Portuguese for Portugal, Praktika for an AI tutor in either variant, Duolingo for a free start, Pimsleur for the car, and Slova for Brazilian Portuguese built around your own goals and interests.

Portuguese comes in two main varieties, and most apps teach only one. Brazilian Portuguese has far more speakers, so it gets far more apps, shows and songs. European Portuguese, spoken in Portugal, shares the same grammar core but sounds different: vowels shrink, tu is common where most Brazilians say você, and everyday words change. Learn Brazilian and move to Lisbon, and people will understand you, but you will struggle to understand them at first. So the first question for any app is simple: which Portuguese does it teach?

We looked at 20 apps and services, from free audio to human tutors, and put the variant in every entry. This is not a ranking from worst to best. Someone moving to Porto, someone with a Brazilian partner and someone who wants to follow bossa nova lyrics need different tools, so each app has a "best for" line. We rechecked every price in US dollars and every free plan in October 2026.

Comparison table

✓Yes◐Partly✕No

Brazilian or European: pick before you pay

Choose Brazilian Portuguese if your goal is Brazil, Brazilian friends or family, or Brazilian music, series and football. It is also the easier start: there are far more apps and courses, and most learners find the vowels clearer. Choose European Portuguese if you are moving to Portugal, working with Portuguese colleagues or have family there.

The written language is close in both. The spoken one is not, and the differences show up in small things you use every day.

Now the question that decides your app: which variant does each one teach?

If you started with Brazilian and now need European, do not start again. Grammar and most vocabulary carry over. Spend a few weeks on listening with a European course, and add a European tutor.

How we tested

From September to October 2026 we gave every app on this list the same three tasks. First, learn to introduce yourself and order food, out loud wherever the app allows it. Second, listen to a short exchange at natural speed and say what was said. Third, make a planned mistake with the two verbs for "to be", saying eu sou cansado where a Portuguese speaker would say estou cansado, and see what the app does about it. For each app that offers both varieties we ran the tasks in both.

We scored each task from 0 to 2: nothing useful happened, it worked but you needed to know what you were doing, or it worked and told you why. Then we added a score for value, meaning what a month costs and what the free plan really gives you. The scores decided who got a full entry and who went into the short list near the end.

• Clear about the variant. We checked which Portuguese each app teaches, and put it in the entry.
• Nasal sounds out loud. Words like pão, mãe and bem need your voice, not your thumb.
• Grammar that goes somewhere. Ser and estar, two past tenses and the personal infinitive arrive fast. Are they explained in plain English?
• Real Portuguese. Do you hear natural speed and several voices, not only slow studio audio?
• Price and free plan. What does a month cost, and where does free stop?

The best apps to learn Portuguese

3

Slova

Best for learning Brazilian Portuguese through your own life and interests

Slova starts with one sentence about why you are learning Portuguese, and its Portuguese course is Brazilian. Your reason can be a goal, a passion or both: a career step like a job with a team in São Paulo, a life goal like moving to Florianópolis or talking with your partner's family in Recife, and something you love, like samba, football or Brazilian cooking. From that sentence Slova builds a path of lessons around your life and interests, and the path keeps changing as your goals, interests and level change.

Behind the path sits a real curriculum from A0 to C2, built by language learners and computer scientists, with visual lessons. Every lesson can be done two ways: as interactive slides with pictures, audio and quick checks at your own pace, or out loud with our AI tutors, who listen to your answers and correct you with the reason. You learn by speaking, from the first lesson, and the nasal sounds of pão and mãe get your voice early instead of your eyes.

Because the path comes from your own life, the word you learn today is a word you use tomorrow. If your reason is samba, o pandeiro, o cavaquinho and o violão turn up in the song you play that night. If it is football, o escanteio and o impedimento turn up in the match you watch on Sunday. If it is a move, your first conversations are about flats, phone plans and the market. That is why results come quickly and why you keep coming back: the Portuguese is yours. A typical correction: you say eu gosto de samba muito, and the tutor gives you eu gosto muito de samba, with the reason that muito sits right after the verb it strengthens.

Practice has no limit. Describe a place, say a roda de samba in a small bar, and Slova draws it and labels every object in Portuguese. Ask for a podcast, an audio lesson or a story at your level on your topic, with a transcript that moves with the audio. Role-play the other person in a conversation and get corrected as you speak. Every word you meet, from images, audio and the texts you read, goes into one list, the Lexicon, with where it came from and how well you know it, and it comes back for review.

GoodBrazilian Portuguese built around your goals and your interests, spoken from the first lesson, with one list that remembers everything you meet.

Watch outBrazilian, not European, and newer than the big names, with 12 languages today rather than 40. If you only want a quick drill with no goal behind it, a lighter app is simpler.

• 12 languages: English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, German, Italian, Russian and Turkish
• A0 to C2 curriculum
• Lessons out loud with our AI tutors
• One Lexicon for every word

More apps worth knowing

Eight more tools that earn a place in a study plan. None of them is the only app you need, and several cost nothing.

• Preply (best for comparing many tutors). A tutor marketplace like italki, with 2,609 Portuguese tutors on its Portuguese page and a dialect filter, European or Brazilian. Classes start at $3, with an average of $17 on that page, a 25 or 50-minute trial lesson, and two free tutor switches if the first does not fit.
• Michel Thomas (best for audio that builds sentences). A Foundation Portuguese audio course of about 20 to 30 hours, taught in a live-style lesson with a teacher and two students. The publisher says it teaches a universal Portuguese with European pronunciation and includes a section on the differences with Brazilian [18]. Choose it if Portugal is your goal.
• Drops (best for vocabulary in short bursts). A visual vocabulary game with European and Brazilian Portuguese among 55-plus languages. Free sessions are short, and Premium gives unlimited time.
• Clozemaster (best for words in real sentences). Fill-in-the-gap sentences for Brazilian Portuguese, built for learners past the beginner stage. Pro costs about $9 to $13 a month or $70 to $80 a year on the US App Store.
• LingQ (best for reading and listening to content you choose). Import a YouTube video, a book or a song and read it with the words you know highlighted. It has a Portuguese course and a library of audio lessons. The free plan saves 20 words and 5 imported lessons. Premium is $14.99 a month, or about $10 a month on the annual plan.
• HelloTalk (best for free chat with Portuguese speakers). A language-exchange app where you text and talk with native speakers. Free members get 10 translations a day. VIP is $12.99 a month or $79.99 a year on the US App Store.
• Talkpal (best for free daily AI chat). Voice or text chat with an AI partner in Portuguese. Free gives 10 minutes a day. Premium is $19.99 for a month, $49.99 for three or $119.99 for twelve (US App Store), with a 14-day trial. See our Talkpal review.
• Linguno (best for verbs and listening drills). A web tool with verb conjugation in context, adaptive listening exercises and flashcards, in both European and Brazilian Portuguese. Check the pricing when you sign up.

Best free apps to learn Portuguese

For most people the best free app to learn Portuguese is Duolingo, because the whole Brazilian course is free. For Portugal, add Memrise's free European course and Practice Portuguese's free podcasts. Here is where each free plan stops, checked in October 2026.

Babbel, Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone and Rocket Portuguese have no real free plan. Pimsleur offers a 7-day trial and Rocket a free trial without a card. A free start that works: Duolingo for habit, then a real conversation on HelloTalk, following our plan for learning Portuguese by yourself.

Best app to learn Portuguese fast

No app makes you fluent in a few weeks. What an app can do is get you speaking quickly, because speaking is the part that pays back soonest. Portuguese is one of the easier languages for English speakers, with thousands of words close to English.

The fastest setup we would build has three parts. One app that makes you speak every day: Praktika, or Slova on your own topic for Brazilian Portuguese. One audio source for your ear, like Pimsleur on the commute, because the nasal vowels need listening. And one tutor lesson a week on italki or Preply, to catch what apps miss. Our guide to the fastest apps to learn a language covers the method in general.

Speed comes from three habits: say sentences aloud from week one, learn the words of your own life first, and review what you met yesterday. Pick your variant on day one, because switching later costs weeks of listening.

For beginners and adults

A beginner needs three things in the first month: the sounds, a few hundred useful words, and a reason to open the app tomorrow. Duolingo and Babbel both start from zero, and our Babbel vs Duolingo comparison shows how they differ. Pimsleur starts from sound, and Praktika starts with your voice. Our list of language apps for beginners covers the field beyond Portuguese.

Adults have a different problem from the teenager an app is often designed for. You have a job, a family and a specific reason, and fifteen to thirty minutes on a good day. Babbel and Pimsleur suit that: calm, structured, no leagues. Rosetta Stone is easy to start. Slova starts from your reason, so the first words are the ones you will use on Friday.

Three things trip English speakers up, so check that your app teaches them: the nasal vowels (pão, mãe, bem), ser and estar, and the choice between tu and você. If an app never mentions them by week three, add one that does.

Learning Portuguese in the car

Audio courses turn a commute into practice. Start the audio before you set off, use voice or steering-wheel controls, and never tap a screen while driving. Here are the audio-first options, with the variant each one teaches.

Slova's Audio Lab suits the desk before the drive: it writes a podcast, audio lesson or story at your level on your own topic, with a transcript beside the audio, so you can read it first and listen again later. For hearing Portuguese outside the car, see the TV and music options in our TV shows guide.

Best Portuguese conversation apps

The best Portuguese conversation app depends on whether you want a patient machine or a person, and on which Portuguese you want to speak.

Speak, which many people expect on this list, teaches Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Chinese to English speakers. Portuguese appears there only as a language for learning English [3]. Our full list of the best apps for speaking practice ranks the conversation tools across all languages.

Other than Duolingo

People leave Duolingo for Portuguese for the same reasons: too much tapping, no explanations, and the wrong variant. Duolingo says its course now reaches B2 [7], so the content is there. What changes is the kind of practice you need next. See our Duolingo alternatives for the general version.

If you already speak Spanish

Spanish speakers can read a surprising amount of Portuguese from day one, and that is both a gift and a trap. The gift is speed: you can skip many beginner lessons. The trap is portuñol, a mix of the two that feels right and sounds wrong, like saying pero for mas or mucho for muito.

The fix is to spend most of your early time listening and speaking, not reading. Pick an app that makes you use your voice, and give extra time to the nasal vowels and open sounds that Spanish does not have.

Moving to Portugal or Brazil

If you are moving to Portugal, start with European Portuguese from day one: Practice Portuguese for the course, Memrise EU for the ears and an italki or Preply tutor from Portugal for speaking. The entry-level official exam is the CIPLE, run by CAPLE, the Portuguese-as-a-foreign-language assessment centre at the University of Lisbon. It corresponds to level A2 and has reading and writing, listening and oral parts [19]. Rules for nationality and residence change, so check the current requirement with the authorities before you book.

If you are moving to Brazil, Brazilian Portuguese is the obvious choice, and Babbel, Busuu, Duolingo and Slova all teach it. Brazil's official exam for foreigners is Celpe-Bras, run by Inep with the Ministries of Education and Foreign Affairs, and it tests practical Portuguese for everyday situations in Brazil, with a written and an oral part [20].

If you are going on holiday to either, learn the polite basics in the variant of your destination and nothing more. Our guide to language apps for travel has the cross-language view.

Best app by goal

Which one should you pick

If you are heading to Portugal, start with Practice Portuguese for the real accent and add Praktika's European tutor for speaking. Pimsleur's European course and Memrise's European course help too.

If your goal is Brazil and you want a free start, Duolingo is the easiest first step. Babbel explains the grammar most clearly, Busuu adds real Brazilians who correct your writing, and Praktika gives you cheap talking time. In the car, Pimsleur fits that hour.

If you have a clear reason for Brazilian Portuguese, a job with a team in São Paulo, a partner's family in Recife, a move to Florianópolis or a love of samba and football, Slova is where we would start.

Conclusion

The best Portuguese app is the one that teaches the Portuguese you need. For Brazil, Babbel explains it best and Duolingo is the easiest free start. For Portugal, Practice Portuguese is the most focused, and Praktika is the rare AI tutor that speaks both. Pimsleur gives you the car, and italki gives you a person. If you want Brazilian Portuguese with the course, the speaking and your word list built around your own goals and interests, give Slova a try.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Written by Yiğit Karasu, founder of Slova