If you’re hoping to learn French, but your schedule is too packed for even one class, this article is for you. We’ve rounded up the best of the best apps that teach you French from every perspective — reading, speaking and listening. All are free to download, but some offer an optional upgrade or in-app purchases.
Table of Contents
Best Apps For Learning French Free
Best for: native French video and audio, vocabulary, grammar explanations, reading, writing, listening.
If you’re familiar with French media, you may recognize TV5Monde: It’s a native French television channel that broadcasts TV shows and news in France and all over the world.
Using its repertoire of videos, TV5Monde offers a well-rounded French learning app that allows you to learn the French language completely from native French speakers.
The app has four levels of French starting at the Common European Framework of Reference for Language’s A1 level (complete beginner) up to B2 (high intermediate). Each level has dozens of videos featured native French audio on an array of topics such as everyday life, news stories, history, cooking and fashion.
Each video comes with complete subtitles in French and transcriptions to follow along. This transcript also comes with a translate feature, allowing you to translate from French to English or to another supported native language such as German, Arabic, Korean or Vietnamese.
After each video, there are also a number of exercises to check your understanding as well as help you to grow your vocabulary and grammar skills. Such exercises include multiple-choice questions, fill-in-the-blank questions and crosswords. In fact, the app itself boasts of having 3700 exercises across its four levels.
FluentU
Website: FluentU French
iOS / Android
Price: Free trial available; then, pay monthly or annually for a full subscription.
Best for: listening, native French videos and audio, pronunciation practice, flashcards.
FluentU immerses learners in French through authentic videos like movie clips and talks with interactive subtitles. The aim is to teach you the language as it’s spoken by native speakers while also surrounding yourself with the culture.
Subtitles are available in French and English, but you can choose if you want one or the other, both or neither. As you watch, you can “hover” over any word in the captions and see an in-context definition, a pronunciation guide, further video examples and an image.
If you want to practice new words, you can save them as flashcards for later review through personalized exercises or use the quizzes that come with every video to test your knowledge. You can even practice your pronunciation skills with new speaking exercises.
Videos are categorized by skill level and genre. If you want to watch a video using a specific word or phrase, you can search for it to find all the videos that use it.
Tandem French
Website
iOS / Android
best apps for learning frenchPrice: Basic functionality is free. Full features unlocked with in-app purchases.
Best for: speaking and listening, language exchange with native speakers.
Tandem has been described as the “Tinder of Language-learning Apps,” but don’t let that label make you think that people on the app aren’t taking learning seriously. Tandem is a French conversation app that allows you to practice French with native speakers and to build meaningful, long-term language-learning partnerships (“tandems”) with people all over the world.
The premise is simple: Tandem acts as a matchmaker service for finding language partners. Simply fill out your profile (a picture of you and a short description of your goals is often enough) and scroll through the scores of other profiles of people with similar language aspirations as you!
In an ideal situation, you’ll find a native French speaker, and you’ll spend time practicing French in exchange for letting that person practice English (or another language you speak!) with you. Learners have the option of conversing through the in-app messaging functionality or taking their exchange off-app and using an audio or video calling service such as Skype or Hangouts.
But Tandem’s features don’t end with a simple language exchange. To help learners make the most of their experience, the app also has an in-app translation feature, voice messages and personalized tutors that can be purchased at a per-lesson price.
The written messages come with message correction capabilities, meaning that your French partner can edit the written messages you send them. This is great for partners to help each other speak more naturally and correctly.
You can read our review of Tandem here.
500 French Conversations
iOS / Android
best apps for learning frenchPrice: Basic functionality is free. In-app purchases and ad-free content is available at a price.
Best for: conversation practice, listening and speaking, everyday French expressions and vocabulary.
The basic premise of this app is simple and quite self-evident: 500 French Conversations is an app that offers, well… 500 authentic French conversations!
The conversations are short and to the point, and they’re perfect for beginners and intermediate learners looking for speaking and listening practice.
The conversations themselves cover topics such as school, work and daily life, but with a library of 500 conversations, there’s no topic out of reach. The conversations are in no particular order, so you don’t need to complete preceding conversations to skip ahead and unlock the conversation you actually want to study.
The script for each conversation is available in French and in English, and after listening, learners can practice with useful fill-in-the-blank exercises to test their listening and speaking skills. 500 French Conversations would be a great addition to a French speaking app like Tandem.
MindSnacks
iOS
best apps for learning frenchPrice: Free with in-app purchases.
Best for: vocabulary building, listening, reading.
MindSnacks is a beautifully designed iOS app for French learners. Even though the app is geared toward students, I suspect you’ll find the iOS French app to be highly enjoyable in helping you learn new French words.
Widely acclaimed for its game-oriented approach to learning and revising words, MindSnacks helps you learn new words through nine games. The app is divided up into different units of vocabulary like food, jobs and transport. For each vocabulary set, you can use these games to help learn and strengthen new words.
In one game, a word flashes on the screen, and you have to match it to the drawing. Get as many correct as you can every round for high scores. In another game, a bunch of French words and English words appear as balloons. Your challenge is to match as many pairs as possible.
With over 50 vocabulary sets available, you’ll find that these games will help you get through most of the heavy lifting in an entertaining way, helping you comb through the basics in no time.
MosaLingua
Website
iOS / Android
best apps for learning frenchPrice: One-time low price to install, plus in-app purchases.
Best for: listening, conversation practice, everyday vocabulary and phrases, flashcards.
MosaLingua is a platform that’s a good blend between an interactive French app and an audio phrasebook.
What makes MosaLingua unique is its use of the Spaced Repetition System (SRS) when presenting new words. Basically, SRS is a way to calculate when words should be presented for you to revise just before they’re about to be forgotten. That way, in the long term, the words you learn will stick with you a lot longer.
With over 14 categories and 100 sub-categories, all with conversations and audio files to boot, and covering over 3,000 phrases in its audio phrasebook, MosaLingua is designed to help you absorb all this material (and keep it!) in the shortest possible time.
MosaLingua has received largely positive ratings for its iOS French app and its Android French app. Overall, MosaLingua French is a great course to check out.
Brainscape Learn French ASAP
Website
iOS / Android
best apps for learning frenchPrice: First level (level 0) is free. Additional levels at a cost to unlock.
Best for: pronunciation explanations, grammar tips, reading, listening, flashcards.
At first glance, you may be thinking, “what’s so special about French flashcards?” but let me tell you, these flashcards are pretty special.
For starters, each flashcard comes with native French audio, so you can hear exactly how a French word or phrase is pronounced in order to perfect your accent.
Secondly, these flashcards are completely in context. They don’t just present French words and translations by themselves. Instead, they include words that are in complete sentences for relevance.
Further, each flashcard comes with in-depth explanations of grammar points, so you’re learning new words and how to fit them into your existing French at the same time.
Add in a Spaced Repetition System that uses your brain’s memory patterns to present learned words for regular review, and this flashcard app definitely offers more than meets the eye.
In fact, as an added bonus, there are four complete French levels from zero (no knowledge of French) to four (intermediate knowledge of French) as well as a collection focused on French verbs. At the end of all five courses, you will have mastered more than 15,500 cards, which will definitely provide you with a robust French vocabulary.
Mondly
Website
iOS / Android
best apps for learning frenchPrice: Free. Premium features for a price.
Best for: vocabulary building, listening, conversation practice (with a chatbot).
Mondly is a pretty well-rounded app for learners who want to get a broad introduction to the French language. While Mondly is a little lacking on the grammar end of things, it’s definitely good at effectively teaching new and useful vocabulary for French learners.
Mondly claims to have 1000s of lessons to help you learn all the French you need for conversations with French native speakers.
It hosts lessons based on topics such as food and drink, school and travel, and within each lesson, learners do a variety of activities to learn the words and phrases that go with each topic. Such activities include matching, fill-in-the-blanks and sentence building. Repetition really is key here, and you get loads of it with Mondly!
But Mondly doesn’t use simple flashcard-based activities: you can practice using actual French with a real French speaker. A French chatbot, that is!
Mondly’s chatbot allows you to have French conversation in a safe, in-app setting. Make a mistake? That’s okay. The chatbot will do its best to help you so that you don’t make the same mistake with a human native French speaker.
Check out our review for Mondly here!
Drops
Website
iOS / Android
best apps for learning frenchPrice: Monthly subscription fee; the price comes down when buying a yearly plan.
Best for: vocabulary building, repetition, spelling, listening.
Surprisingly—or not—the idea behind this app is actually in its name! Learners quite literally master the French language one drop at a time.
Each drop is a word or a short phrase, and learners practice this word or phrase’s meaning and its usage by dragging it around the screen in various activities. These activities can be picture matching, true or false and word and sentence building.
This app is so gamified that it’s easy to forget that each drop is growing your bucket of French fluency.
Drops focuses on practical vocabulary and doesn’t weigh the learner down with tedious grammar rules and explanations. The vocabulary revolves around words and phrases that are most useful to the learner at the beginner and intermediate stages of learning: food, shopping, transportation and many others.
french learning app for beginners
- Brainscape certified French flashcards
Naturally, we’re a little biased but we really do believe we have the best supplementary study tool for mastering the French language!
Brainscape’s collection of adaptive French flashcards is the most effective way to drill yourself on the essential building blocks of the language, from vocabulary and verb conjugations to numbers, commonly-used phrases, and more. Each flashcard even contains an audio file of the correct pronunciation, so you can get it right from the beginning.
Brainscape best app to learn French
Brainscape’s certified French flashcard collection also includes a Sentence Builder component that allows you to build up your mastery of grammar through the constant translation of increasingly advanced sentences (with each card supplemented by a grammatical explanation). And we’ve added flashcard decks for listening comprehension, French history, and pop culture.
With its sophisticated spaced repetition algorithm, expert-curated content, and the ability to study anywhere, anytime, and with any device (even offline), Brainscape really is the best way to learn French more efficiently.
- Duolingo French language app
If a gameified learning experience is more your speed, Duolingo is a great app to learn French. With this free, fun, and easy-to-use language app, you can learn vocabulary, conjugation, reading, writing, pronunciation, and listening skills on the app in a way that is competitive and fun.
Screenshot of learn French app Duolingo
Just be aware that while Duolingo may be fun, making learning a competition (with prize badges and everything!), the app isn’t all-that-great for really learning grammar or retaining what you learn. It’s great for casual learners just starting out, but if you really want to drill yourself hard on French, and learn efficiently, you’ll need to supplement Duolingo with other French language practice.
- Learn French with Busuu
Busuu is a French learning app with more functionality than Duolingo. While it has similar French practice activities as Duolingo, it also has a great community, allowing you to connect with native French speakers and vice versa. It also allows you to specify the purpose of learning your chosen language (business or tourism) and this ability to customize the app makes it better than Duolingo in certain ways.
Busuu best app to learn French
While Busuu’s program is more comprehensive than Duolingo’s, it’s also more expensive. You can start using the app for free, but for the real features, including speaking with native speakers and more advanced activities, you need to purchase a membership.
Another downside is that it focuses mainly on grammar exercises and traditional ways of teaching French, whereas Brainscape applies cognitive science principles to helping students to learn languages way more efficiently.
Having said this, Busuu can be useful, particularly for beginners and for those who want the option to interact with native speakers.
- Classics2Go Collection (French)
Reading in a language you are trying to learn is a must. That’s why the free French Classics2Go Collection app is so great: it has a large selection of fairy tales and other simple, classic children’s stories that you can read at an early stage in your French learning.
Classics2Go Collection best free app learn French
The Classics2Go Collection is one of the best ways to find native French texts to practice reading.
Not only are these stories familiar, which makes it easy to absorb new vocabulary and grammar concepts, but Classics2Go even cross-links with its English app so you can read the versions side-by-side for a refresher. Plus, once you are becmoing more fluent, you can easily explore the library for some more complex books like Les Trois Mousquetaires or Madame Bovary.
This app is perfect for those that are looking for manageable reading material to practice their French on. It’s not a substitute for apps that actually teach the language but it’s a good addition to your French learning app set.
- French Translator Dictionary +
Any language-learner needs a solid dictionary companion to aid their learning and study tools. And as much as we love Google Translate, it’s not always reliable for the real meanings of words, particularly for slang and colloquialisms.
Our favorite French translation tool is French Translator Dictionary + by Vidalingua. The Translator provides accurate phrase translations that you can “star” (or tag) for offline viewing. It also includes a Dictionary feature that provides heaps of translations and examples for headwords, slang, and regional words.
Even better, you can tap on pretty much anything to hear it pronounced at the speed and in the accent you select!
Best French translation app
French Translator Dictionary + is the best app to use for French translations.
French Translator Dictionary + also includes a verb conjugator with over 400,000 verb forms, as well as quizzes and flashcards to help you build your vocabulary. This app is ideal for anyone: students who want to pass French, travellers wanting to communicate better, expats preparing for a date, or anyone follow a French recipe in their kitchen.
[Funny story, you might already be a little bit fluent in French! Check out: ‘The top 25 French words used in English’]
- Le Conjugueur French language app
To say that French verb conjugations are tricky is a massive understatement. If you ever learned it in school, you might remember being terrified by the French language grammar reference book Bescherelle. That’s what makes Le Conjugueur so helpful: it’s comprehensive without being overwhelming.
Le Conjugueur is one of the best apps to learn French grammar and conjugations.
This is a really useful app for learning French grammar and conjugations; it allows you to practice translating verbs and identifying the appropriate tenses to use in different scenarios. Again, it’s not going to teach you French, but it’s a really effective reference tool, which you can use supplement your verb practice.
- Rosetta Stone language app
It’s almost impossible to talk about language learning without mentioning Rosetta Stone. Not only has Rosetta Stone’s app been around for ages, but it also offers a balanced approach with plenty of speaking, writing, and reading practice for each skill level.
Rosetta Stone offers a completely immersive language learning experience, which means that you won’t find any English in this app. This has its advantages (such as learning like you would as a child), but it can be frustrating or even ineffective for some new learners, so think about whether or not this would work for you before committing. There are also some criticisms of not using your mother tongue to learn a new language.
Another downside is the cost—a whopping $179.99 for lifetime membership, which includes all the features. However, there is a 3-day free trial, so you can try it and see if it’s the best app for you to Learn French.
- Spotify
You might think of Spotify as an app for streaming music, but it’s also one of the best French language learning apps. Why? Because it gives you access to unlimited French listening texts! We’re talking of course about French music and podcasts, which is a great way to tune your ear into spoken, conversational French.
There are musical classics, like Edith Piaf, but there are also amazing modern artists like Carla Bruni, Angèle, and Jérémy Frerot. You can find all the lyrics on YouTube or on sites like Lyrics Playground.
Spotify screenshot of inner French podcast
You can find all kinds of podcasts on Spotify to help you learn French by listening to native speakers.
Spotify can also connect you with thousands of podcasts in French at all levels. Podcasts are a great way to learn a language and you can find them on just about any conceivable subject under the sun.
One of our favorites for beginners is Learn French by Podcast. They mix in both French and English to help you learn. If you’re at a more intermediate level, try Inner French. The host, Hugo, speaks about all kinds of different subjects that you’ll be interested in if you want to learn about French culture. He speaks only in French, but he speaks clearly and a bit more slowly than usual.
Just remember: Spotify by itself won’t teach you French, but it will provide you with all the listening practice you could ever want.
- Tandem French language learning app
One of the most difficult things about learning French is finding someone to speak it with. (Not all of us are living our best life picking grapes at a vineyard in Reims or working at a small start-up in Bourdeaux.)
Tandem, however, is the solution. It’s a language learning community, which you can join, select a preferred language, and then find a conversation partner. For example, you might look for a native French speaker who is learning English. Then you chat with them, helping them with their English while they help you with your French.
Conclusion
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