VerbamorGuides
Practical answers for adults learning Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian or German: which app to pick, how to keep what a tutor teaches you, and how to review so the words stay.
I build Verbamor, so I have a stake in some of these answers. Every guide that recommends an app names the reader who should buy something else, and every price carries the date I checked it.
Which app or method should you pick?
Start here if you haven't committed to anything yet. The general guide ranks apps by what they make you do: recognize a word or produce it yourself. The language guides put a cost next to each pick, with the date I checked the price. Each one names who should pick something else.
How do you keep what a lesson teaches you?
For people who already pay a tutor, on italki, Preply or anywhere else, and lose most of it by the next lesson. The first two cover why it fades and what to do in the hour, the night and the days after. The rest compare the tools that record, transcribe and turn a lesson into cards, plus the manual method if you'd rather build them yourself.
How should you review?
Spaced repetition explained without the jargon: what an interval is, and how SM-2 and FSRS differ. Then the one alphabet on the site that needs learning before any words, all 33 Cyrillic letters in the order to learn them.
What if your language app gets in the way?
Each guide here starts from a complaint in the 1 and 2 star App Store reviews of 30 language apps. Hearts run out, ads interrupt, sentences are useless, and one missing accent marks an answer wrong. Each guide says which apps fix the problem, what the fix costs, and who should keep the app they have.
Which app fits your situation?
These guides start from your situation. You're past the beginner level, you want to talk with a partner's family, or you have a trip or a move coming. Each guide names the apps that fit and says when they don't.
Flashcards, one language at a time
What cards cost in each language, in money and in hours, and where the words should come from. Each page lists the prices I could confirm, with the date I read them, and the one thing that language needs on a card: the 33 letters before Russian words, a variety picked before Portuguese ones, conjugated forms in sentences for Spanish verbs.
Looking for a head-to-head between two apps? Those are on the comparisons page. The research behind every claim is on the science page.