24+ Free & Cheap Spanish Apps You’ve Never Heard Of

You don’t need a course or the big-name apps. You need the dinky little ones. The “appcitos” if you will.

Let’s cut to the chase — you can go the route of a course or an ‘all-inclusive’ app but you’re going to spend a lot and you’re probably not gonna get what you pay for. As I’ve mentioned in past articles, learning Spanish is not something someone can do for you, no matter how much you pay them or how good their ads are.

That’s why I’ve compiled a list, in no particular order, of what I’m calling appcitos — little apps that cost nothing or almost nothing and actually will help you improve Spanish, regardless of your level.

Reword ($7.99 one-time fee)

The king of appcitos, nobody knows about this app. The beauty of it is that it stays in its lane as a no-frills flashcard app, strictly focused on vocab. The beauty of it is that it uses spaced repetition, which means words are repeated at increasing intervals, starting with hours and continuing to months. This is how your brain actually memorizes words.

I used this app twenty minutes a day to memorize ~5000 words in about nine months. By then, I was fluent. Even if you memorize just 1000 words and practice using them, you’re going to be conversational.

italki (insanely cheap)

Between Reword and italki, you can become conversational with nothing else. italki is an online platform that connects students with teachers, ranging from $4–10 per hour for a one-on-one conversation with a tutor, regardless of your level. I’ve completed 141 lessons to date and about 120 hours of conversation with tutors from many different countries. That 120 hours cost me less than $1000 in total, none of which I had to pay upfront. If you think a traditional course is better than this, you’re out of your mind. Use my affiliate link and you’ll get $10 off.

Additionally, they offer language exchange, where you can find a pen pal to text or talk with for free.

Also, a lot of people assume they need to learn enough to speak, so they avoid italki. I’m gonna call this what it really is: fear. If you know enough to say hello, your name, and where you are from, you know enough to start talking with a real person. You must speak in order to learn, and if you can’t find the courage to do it, what’s the point?

To that point, I have six teachers who are just normal cool people in different countries. I call them my ‘friend-teachers’ and I know that if I went to their cities in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina, I would have local friends to hang with.

Tandem (free)

Tandem is like italki but focused purely on the language exchange aspect. I used this in the early days of learning and had hours of free conversation in Spanish in exchange for the same amount of time speaking English with my pen pals. The app design sucks and the experience can feel like a chat roulette creep-fest, but sifting through the nonsense will yield great connections with real Spanish speakers trying to learn another language, just like you.

Voice Memos (free)

This is just built into your phone. Use it to hear yourself talk in Spanish and listen to it. Essentially, this allows you to practice your accent without judgment. Sounds silly, but then again, so do all appcitos. And yet it works. De-gringo your accent and have fun talking to yourself, loco.

ConjuGato (free or one-time $5.99)

If you’ve read my other stuff you know that I hate grammar. Well, this appcito for practicing verb tenses might just change that (not really but it sounds catchy, ya know?). It is a beautifully designed flashcard app whose free version has the present and past preterite tenses, and whose cheap premium version has 1000 verbs over 18 tenses in 3 moods. If you took German or French in high school and now realize you should have been force-fed Spanish grammar instead, this app’s for you.

BBC Mundo (free)

BBC Mundo is the Spanish-language branch of the British news agency of the same name. If you like the news and need to practice reading comprehension, check this one out. Set up the push notifications too, it’ll force you to read short catchy Spanish blurbs daily. This is better suited for advanced beginners and above.

Numeranto (free)

This is an appcito strictly focused on numbers comprehension. And yet, I love it. Why? Because when I went to Mexico this year I would have an hour long conversation with a local with no problem, walk into a store, buy some food, and be all “deer in the headlights” when told the bill because I had no idea what the number was. Numbers in Spanish are very hard, even if you’re fluent. The number 8749 for example, has fifteen syllables. Numeranto simply recites numbers and prices and you have to plug them in quickly. It is perfect for this simple yet very important part of Spanish.

Radios Mexico (free)

Get access to Mexican radio through this appcito. Simple and good for natural listening intended for native speakers. A search in your app store of Guatemalan Radio or Chilean Radio will probably yield similar results for those countries. You could probably do the same with a bigger radio streamer like iHeartRadio as well.

Google Translate (free)

Alright, alright, I know you know this one. But still. Can’t not mention the king of all free apps in the language world. You know what it does.

Linguee (free)

Google translate might have staying power as a fast translator, but Linguee blows it out of the water as a translator with its robust scanning abilities, essentially providing a long list of translations directly from scraped sources. Even cooler, it has the ability for you to highlight text in other apps or on a browser and search them directly into Linguee without the typical copy-paste nonsense.

Unuhi (free)

This appcito provides bilingual children’s books. Great for beginner-level vocab and reading comprehension.

Beelinguap (free or $39.99/year)

This made it onto Shark Tank and is awesome when it comes to vocab, reading, and listening. It serves up stories in a bilingual manner and reads them aloud to you and rates its stories based on level. There is no doubt it will push you for the not-so-cheap yet not unfair premium.

SpanishDict (free)

Another titan that you’ve probably heard of, this is still the top dog of grammar. Whenever I need to check grammar or have a question about it, this is where I go. Turn on the word of the day push notification too.

Spanish Crosswords (free)

This is the classic crosswords game but in Spanish. You can adjust settings to help with the difficulty. It assumes you know Spanish, so it’s good for intermediates and beyond in strengthening vocab, especially if you like to break a mental sweat.

Lirica (7 days free then $7.99/mo or $29.99/year)

This is a great appcito in that it combines Latin music with learning. I love this. Whether it is Latin pop, reggaeton, or otherwise, there is so much good Latin music out there. This app takes those songs and breaks them down in a way that fits your level so you can learn vocabulary and comprehension. It is much more fun than other ways of doing this.

Learn Spanish for Beginners (free)

This appcito ain’t winning any awards for creativity. Its logo is just a green app background with the word “Spanish” in white letters, and on the iPhone homescreen it is titled “Spanish”….anyway, poor marketing aside, this app is actually quite useful for you Type-A competitive types out there. It is a surprisingly robust and well-organized library of reading and listening quizzes across various levels and categories. Don’t bother with the vocab element of it as there are better apps (Reword) for this.

Your Podcast App (free/already paid for)

This is such a great place to go. There are great podcasts and stories out there for listening comprehension. I recommend the following:

Beginners:

• Spanish Obsessed Beginner
• Coffee Break Spanish
• Story Learning Spanish
• Easy Spanish

Intermediates:

• Duolingo Spanish Podcast
• Spanish Obsessed Intermediate/Advanced
• Españolistos

Advanced:

• Se Regalan Dudas
• Ted en Español
• Tom Segura en Español
• Podcast search by country and find what interests you
• Stand-up comedy of your choice

Language Learning with Netflix (free)

This plugin to your Netflix account will make your shows have bilingual subtitles of your favorite shows. Awesome for comprehension and binging.

PrendeTV (free)

This app gives you access to all sorts of content, in the form of cable streaming in Spanish. When I downloaded it, I couldn’t believe it was free. I’m pretty sure it is from Univision, so they must make money off the ads. If only I could stream football this easily.

Speak & Translate — Translator ($2.99/month and up)

This app goes beyond appcito status with 250k reviews and a 4.5 star rating. It offers text to text as well as speech to speech translation.

Telemundo (free)

Y’all already know what it is…our beloved Telemundo, in app form. Watch telenovelas and Spanish TV on your phone. What a time to be alive.

Wannalisn (free)

This appcito is pretty useful for practicing your listening comprehension. It takes snippets of movies and shows and turns them into engaging lessons and quizzes. If you like the traditional form of most learning apps but find the content boring, this is a great app. Plus it helps train your ears which is way more important than training your eyes to read.

Quizlet (free)

Quizlet is not only focused on languages, as it is a crowdsourced flashcard app. You can find some Spanish decks here. It is clean and easy to use. Worth a look.

Anki (free for Androids, $25 one-time for iPhone)

Anki and Quizlet are two peas in a pod when it comes to crowdsourced flashcards. If you have an Android, check it out. I have an iPhone and prefer my much cheaper Reword appcito for this kind of vocab work.

Honorable Mention & Such

• Lupa ($99.99/year): This appcito takes interesting stories of all levels and turns them into lessons. It’s a little steep but worth checking out.
• Duolingo, Babbel, Rosetta Stone (free): Ugh. I’m mostly putting this here so you know my thoughts on the most well-known Spanish app, since everyone always says, “oh you learned Spanish, did you use Duolingo” to which I respond, “no, it is garbage.” However, many without a rudimentary high school Spanish background disagree with me. Beginners can find it valuable in the early stages of figuring out grammar. But make no mistake, this app is gamification to a tee, and if you’re using it for more than three months, you’re just procrastinating on actually learning Spanish. You are not learning words on Duolingo beyond your short-term memory, so it is just good for grammar at the end of the day. I’d also group Babbel and Rosetta Stone into this category as heavy hitters that can help you learn the structure of Spanish but cannot do much else, despite heavy advertizing spend.
• Memrise (freemium): I almost grouped this with the other heavy hitters, but Memrise does have some decent video content. I used it for my early stage learning when I was in the advanced beginner stage. This was 18 months ago, and at the time it lacked focus and was still figuring itself out. I don’t know what it is like now, but if you feel inclined to go the Duolingo/Babbel route despite my advice not to do so, choose Memrise instead.
• Drops ($70): Mostly short burst vocab-focused, this appcito gets honorable mention only because it isn’t even close to free. However, it has a very enticing structure: you are only allowed to use it five minutes a day. The theory is that “you always have five minutes” which I agree with, so if you’re ADD and want to improve, check this out.
• Falou ($149/year): Great for AI-based conversations. Screens ain't the real thing, but this is good for getting your confidence before speaking on italki. Costs a lot.
• Pantaya ($5.99/month): No doubt not free, but an appcito for telenovelas deserves to be on the list. Great for intermediates and anyone who loves drama.

If you are not sure where to begin:

1. Download Reword and use it daily to start stuffing words into that cabeza.
2. [Complete Beginners Only] Download Conjugato and use it daily for no more than 6 weeks.
3. Look at your calendar and pick a date within the next 3 weeks — yes, that soon — to speak to someone live on italki (this affiliate link will get you $10 or so in credit). No speaking = no learning.

All said, what matters is that you use apps that work for you and keep your learning diverse. Focus on speaking, vocab, listening, reading, writing, and I guess grammar, in that order. Do it every day and keep it fun. You’ll be a speaker in no time!