Busuu review: the prices nobody prints

I haven't used Busuu. I build a competing app, so a trial of mine would be worth nothing to you anyway.

Everything below comes from Busuu's own Terms of Service, Busuu's own App Store listing and Apple's published price list, each quoted with the date I read it.

Which turns out to be enough, because the thing a buyer most needs is the thing no review on this query prints.

Take the verdict now. Busuu is a reasonable buy if you want a structured beginner course with grammar taught properly, and you like the idea of strangers correcting your writing.

Skip it if you already have lessons or a tutor and your actual problem is forgetting what you were taught.

And whatever you do, buy it on the web instead of in the app, for reasons the table below makes obvious.

I build a competing app, so weigh this accordingly

I sell an iOS app that competes with Busuu for some of the same money. You should weigh everything here accordingly.

Here's why I'll still back myself on the facts. Of the three pages ranking above this one, two share an author, a price range and a template. So the top of this results page is one opinion wearing two hats.

The third carries a permanent "Test Winner" banner pointing at Mondly and affiliate links to every app it names, including Busuu.

My bias is at the top of the page in bold. Theirs is a button.

And the honest scoreboard on evidence: the TestPrepInsight review genuinely tested the product. It has screenshots of two courses, a named German lesson and a live lesson its reviewer attended.

That's the highest evidence bar in the results, and I can't match it. What I can do is read a contract.

Apple’s listing prices one year of Premium at $70.00 or $138.99

Busuu's own website won't tell you. busuu.com/en/pricing returns a 404, a page-not-found error.

The plan table on /premium renders in the browser after the page loads. That's why every automated fetch (including all three reviews, I suspect) comes back empty.

Apple's listing does tell you. Under In-App Purchases, Apple prints the product names Busuu gave it, with US prices.

Read on 18 October 2026:

Busuu in-app purchases, US App Store, 21 September 2026

Monthly Premium Plan $23.49 The dearest way in. More than 3x the cheapest monthly line on the same list.

Monthly Subscription $9.99 A second monthly price, sitting on the same listing.

Monthly Subscription $6.99 A third. Apple does not say who is shown which.

12 Months Premium $138.99 Listed 3 times, once spelled “12 Months’ Premium”. About $11.58 a month if you do the division.

12 Months Premium $70.00 Same product name, $68.99 less. About $5.83 a month.

12 Months Premium Plus $139.99 The upper tier, one dollar above the dearer Premium year.

14 Day Trial - Premium Plus $89.99 A trial with a price attached to it. Read that line twice.

Annual Subscription $79.99 Unlabelled by tier.

Two things fall out of that table, and both matter more than any score out of 10.

First, two products called "12 Months Premium" differ by $68.99. One year of the same named tier is $70.00 or $138.99, depending on which price Busuu decides to show you.

No review on this query mentions that a price is sitting there at half.

Second, there are 3 different monthly figures and the top one is $23.49.

The "$6 to $15 per month" both Roubinian reviews give you is a real number badly framed. The bottom of it exists, the top of it is $8.49 short, and neither page says which one lands in your basket.

talkREAL is the only page in the results that names the mechanism, and it's right: "These prices only apply if you buy via the website. If you purchase the subscription via the app, it's more expensive because Busuu passes on App/Play Store fees."

Apple takes a cut and the customer pays it. So buy on the web.

I can't print the web prices, because Busuu builds them in the browser and I won't publish a figure I haven't read myself.

Open busuu.com in a tab and write down what you see before you pay anything in the app. The gap between $70.00 and $138.99 is your budget for that 30 seconds of work.

The 14-day refund shrinks once you start studying

talkREAL calls the money-back guarantee "very fair indeed" and moves on. It quotes none of it.

Here's the clause, verbatim from Busuu's Terms of Service, version dated 30 September 2024, read 21 September 2026:

"You may also cancel any purchase of a Premium Service and claim a refund for any reason by notifying us or the app store (as applicable) no later than 14 days after the day on which the contract for the relevant Premium Service was formed".

Good clause. Now the sentence immediately after it, which I haven't seen quoted anywhere:

"However, if you have used the Premium Service prior to exercising your cancellation right, then you must pay for the value of the Premium Service provided up to the date of cancellation."

So it's a pro-rata refund once you start studying, meaning you pay for the part you used. The way you find out how much a fortnight of Busuu is worth is by asking for your money back.

That's a normal consumer-law right and no scandal. It's still the opposite of what "14-day money-back guarantee" plants in a reader's head.

Two more mechanics from the same document, both worth knowing before you pay. Cancelling is done wherever you bought. On the web it's Settings, then Subscription. If you bought in the app, "you must cancel directly with that app store".

Busuu can't cancel an Apple subscription for you, and neither can anybody you email.

And every plan auto-renews "for the same time period that you initially purchased". A $138.99 year renews as another $138.99 year, silently, unless you turn it off.

The feature everyone praises is in the other tier

Both Roubinian reviews spend their warmest paragraphs on the AI speaking partner and the pronunciation practice.

Guide2Fluency is the only page that then tells you where those live: "You can also choose between their Premium plan and Premium Plus, which adds in more conversation tools like an AI speaking partner, pronunciation practice, and some exclusive content."

Busuu's Terms define the lower tier's scope as "full grammar reviews, full vocab reviews, unlimited speaking activities". The speaking partner isn't in that list.

So a buyer can read a glowing review of the AI conversation feature, buy the $70.00 Premium year the review's price range points at, and not have it.

On Apple's listing the Premium Plus year is $139.99, almost exactly double.

The deeper limit is the one the reviews circle without landing on. TestPrepInsight says outright that Busuu's lessons lack real conversational practice. It's right, and the reason is structural: it isn't a missing feature.

A scripted prompt always knows what you were supposed to say. A person doesn't, and the gap between those two situations is where most app learners stall.

Busuu's honest answer to this is its Community, where fluent speakers correct your written and spoken exercises.

That's real, and it's the most interesting thing about the product: 105 million community interactions in 2024, per Busuu's own homepage. A stranger who doesn't know what you meant is much closer to a conversation than any script.

Buy it to start from zero, and skip it to fix forgetting

Buy Busuu if you're starting a language from nothing and want somebody to sequence it for you.

It has 14 languages and a claimed 2,500 hours of material from A1 to C1, beginner to advanced on the European scale. Grammar is explained instead of guessed at, and the free tier stays free.

For a beginner that's a genuinely good deal at $70.00 a year, and better than what I sell, because past a starter deck of about 650 common words, I have no course to take anybody from zero.

Skip it if your problem is retention rather than instruction. If you've done 8 months of lessons and still lose Tuesday's vocabulary by Friday, another course won't fix that.

And Busuu's Smart Review will only hold the words Busuu itself taught you.

The one I'd point you at first costs nothing. Anki is free on desktop and Android, $24.99 once on iOS, and it runs a serious scheduler with no subscription attached to it.

If you'll build your own cards, it beats Busuu and it beats mine. That's the price talking.

What I build is the narrow thing. Verbamor turns the vocabulary from lessons you already had into fill-in-the-blank cards with audio and an image, in 5 languages: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian.

FSRS schedules the cards. (FSRS is an open-source algorithm that predicts when you're about to forget each card.) Outside that starter deck, it teaches you nothing new, and it doesn't find you a tutor.

$19.99 a month, or $129.99 a year with a 7-day trial on the annual plan, and no free tier at all, which is a real reason to walk past it. Both are US prices, read off the app's own plan definitions on 21 September 2026. The App Store sets a different number in other countries.

If you're picking between Busuu and me, pick Busuu. We answer different questions, and yours is probably the beginner one.

Changelog. Apple's price list checked 18 October 2026: all ten lines read that day. Terms of Service still carries the 30 September 2024 version line. busuu.com/en/pricing still 404s. Web plan prices remain unreadable without a browser, so none are published here.

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