Where the other thing wins.
I sell one of the apps on these pages, so every comparison here names the kind of person who should pick the competitor instead. Not as a hedge. As a recommendation. The guides work whether or not you ever buy anything.
Head to head
Verbamor vs Anki
Anki is a superb engine with no content. The real axis is who builds the cards, and Anki wins outright if you enjoy building them.
Verbamor vs Duolingo
These barely compete. If you're not paying for lessons, Duolingo is the better purchase and mine is the wrong one.
Is Quizlet good for language learning?
What's actually gated, what Progress does instead of scheduling, and the millions of shared decks that are a real advantage.
Keeping your italki lessons
The competitor here is a Google Doc. If you reopen yours and test yourself from it, you already have the thing that matters.
Roundups
The best spaced repetition apps
Compared on the schedulers rather than the marketing. Which run FSRS, which run SM-2, and which run a fixed ladder that never adapts.
The best apps for learning Spanish
Sorted by your situation, not ranked 1 to 10. For most people arriving here the answer is Duolingo, Babbel, or a tutor.
The best apps for learning French
Built around the problem that actually stops people: spoken French sounds nothing like written French.
If you already have a tutor
Most language apps assume you have no teacher and replace one badly. What's worth running alongside real lessons.
Guides
Why you forget what your tutor taught
The forgetting curve applied to lessons you paid for, and the review schedule that interrupts it.
The hour after your lesson
Three touches on a clock: 6 minutes in the first hour, 4 before bed, 5 on day 3. About 15 minutes against an hour you paid for.
Turning a lesson into flashcards
The manual method in full: what to capture, what to skip, and how to phrase a card so it tests production.
Spaced repetition without the jargon
What an interval is, what makes a scheduler adapt to you, how SM-2 and FSRS differ, and what a deck won't do for you.