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italki and HelloTalk are online platforms that make it possible to find a tutor or exchange partner to practice a new language. italki primarily offers tutors for language learning, while HelloTalk matches native speakers with those learning their language for a different take on the learning experience.
Preply is an online educational platform that matches tutors with students. There are tutors on Preply offering instruction in a wide range of languages and other subjects. As a learner, you can find a tutor that works best for you by browsing their demo videos and filtering by price and rating. Each tutor’s teaching style is their own, but they all receive teacher trainings and resources to improve their style.
Quality 4.5
★★★★
★
★
A little bit of everything. There are trained professionals with years of experience and tutors trying it out for the first time.
Thoroughness 4.5
★★★★
★
★
The platform is easy to use, and tutors who specialize in subjects beyond languages, such as math and music are available. Lots of supplementary resources help reinforcement of lessons.
Value 4.5
★★★★
★
★
There’s a huge range of prices and scheduling options, and tutors offer tailored lesson plans adapted to each student’s objectives and preferences.
I Like
The number of available tutors is massive
Searching for a tutor is easy
Many tutors are very inexpensive
Finding a tutor with a schedule that works is easy
I Don’t Like
You have to purchase a package of hours ahead of time
Teachers aren’t paid for trial lessons
Price
Each tutor sets their own price, but for most popular languages the average hourly price is around $15.
Exclusive 50% discount for ALR readers! Make sure to use our link to receive it.
With nearly every language-learning resource I’ve used, I run into the same problem. I don’t feel like I’m getting adequate speaking practice. I know from experience that learning a language academically and using it in the wild are two very different beasts.
Fluenz is a language learning software that is available on most devices and offers offline functionality. Its primary objective is to simulate the one-on-one tutor experience with the use of video tutorials that break down the language you’re learning. There are ample explanations of language concepts in English, and the instruction is very thorough. It’s designed for the user with a bigger budget that’s looking for an in-depth and serious learning experience.
Quality 4.0
★★★★★
The activities are easy to use and very effective, but they can be a bit dry.
Thoroughness 4.5
★★★★
★
★
Extremely thorough. Frequent video tutorials and podcasts provide in-depth explanations and lots of practice.
Value 3.5
★★★
★
★★
Maybe not the fastest way to learn a language, but there’s a great deal of content. Made for those who prefer an academic approach.
I Like
I found the thorough explanations to be very helpful.
The video tutorials were engaging and added a lot of value.
The podcasts are great for more passive practice.
I Don’t Like
The pace of the activities can be slow.
Some of the activities feel too repetitive.
It’s expensive.
Price
Except for Mandarin, each language is available in five levels of difficulty. The full five-level course is $408 (currently discounted at $378). The Mandarin course contains three levels of difficulty and is available for $322 (currently $308). For each language, you can buy a smaller bundle of levels based on your ability.
Spanish with Paul is a video course that has over eighty hours of content to work through. The in-depth explanations will certainly give you a great foundation and understanding of Spanish grammar, vocabulary and sentence structures. While the course is not that fun and you don’t get any speaking practice, I’d say it is definitely an effective way of learning the language if you are a serious and dedicated learner who doesn’t get bored easily.
Quality 3.5
★★★
★
★★
The videos look a bit basic and aren’t all that fun to watch but the audio is perfect and the concepts are clearly explained.
Thoroughness 4.5
★★★★
★
★
Very in-depth explanations on everything from grammar and vocabulary to sentence structure and pronunciation.
Value 3.5
★★★
★
★★
Not the cheapest or most exciting option but there’s a lot of good content.
I Like
Paul gets you to think and engage with how Spanish is spoken so you understand how to use the language.
He goes into great depth on all of the grammar points that come up as well as the texts or stories which he asks you to translate.
The course gradually progresses in difficulty and towards the end gets pretty advanced.
I Don’t Like
It isn’t all that fun to work through and every single video is almost identical to the one before it.
You are not asked to produce much Spanish other than by saying words or phrases out loud to yourself.
There are no native speakers featured in the course and lots of English is used throughout – even at the highest levels.
Price
For one year access, the ‘Course Only’ is $99.95 and ‘Course + Weekly Updates’ costs $199.95.
We’ve had a few readers ask about our opinion of the Spanish with Paul course. So, naturally, and several months later, I’ve finally gotten the chance to try out his course.
I’m not here to teach you how to learn a language. There are millions(?) of people more qualified to do that than me.
All Language Resources was created to make it easier to figure out which language learning resources are worth your time (and oftentimes, money) and which ones kind of suck.
I’m not some super polyglot that speaks 20+ languages. I do speak okay Spanish but that was more due to living in Latin America for a few years rather than anything I did right. During that time I was playing online poker (professionally, I guess) while living out of a backpack and traveling around.
After that, I moved to Beijing to teach English. At first, I wasn’t too excited about the prospect of learning Mandarin. I mean, Spanish was supposed to be easy, yet I struggled with it for a long time.
I decided to be a lot more proactive in my studying, instead of unrealistically hoping to pick it up by being immersed in the language. I started digging into the different resources available for learning Chinese and spent a lot of time searching everywhere for recommendations.
I found it frustrating how hard it was to find trustworthy information about the different resources to learn Chinese. It felt like everyone was recommending the same couple of products and they weren’t even particularly good ones.
Later, I realized, that the reviews for these products were so positive because they happened to be the companies that paid them the most.
Obviously, I couldn’t be the only one who wanted detailed and honest information about a language learning resource before committing a bunch of time and money into it.
So, I started this site.
How All Language Resources is different from other sites.
We recommend the best resource even when doing so costs us money.
Most sites only recommend resources that they can get a referral commission from.
There are tons of resources we recommend that are free or don’t pay us. In fact, we go out of our way to recommend free alternatives in place of paid resources. For example, we are an affiliate for FluentU and earn a commission on any sales that come from this site. But, I’m not a huge fan of their product so I recommend a free alternative instead. There are tons of examples like this.
We actually test all of the resources before writing about them.
It’s crazy that this isn’t the norm but lots of reviews on other sites are written by people that never tried the product. I’ve personally tested out hundreds of language learning resources. Any review starts with first trying out the product intensively for several hours (if not longer). I don’t think any person takes advantage of 30-day money-back guarantees as much as I do.
Most sites only talk about 5-10 (or less) different resources for learning a given language.
Usually, they only recommend resources that are available in many different languages. The problem is that resources available for every single language are rarely the best options. Typically, the best courses in any language are the ones developed by a teacher or a small team that are experts in teaching that one language. That’s why we recommend…
There are tons of lesser-known resources so it takes a ton of time to test them out and write about them. In doing so, we’ve also come across plenty of duds. The point is that, how can a site recommend a course, if they haven’t actually tried more than a handful of options?
It’d like saying that apples are your favorite fruit but you’ve never tried pineapples, grapes, or cherries.
When it comes to language learning resources, everything is relative to the other resources available. A course may actually be pretty good and priced reasonably, but there happens to be something better available. Again, we’ve actually taken the time to test out these lesser-known resources so our recommendations are much more informed than other sites.
Our writers don’t know which resources earn us money.
I started writing for this site but have since begun working with other writers. They’re typically more accomplished language learners than myself. When assigned a review, they’ll first test the product for several hours, read about it online, and then write about it. At no point are they told which resources we are an affiliate for. They’re given free rein to be as negative as they wish, even if it’s a company that we could earn money for referrals from. Our content is as unbiased as possible.
What are the criteria for our reviews?
There is a subjective element to each review. It’s unavoidable as people have different learning styles, preferences, and so on. It’s possible you’ll disagree with a review and I don’t think that necessarily makes either of us wrong. Our reviews thoroughly explain why we feel a certain way. That said, some resources are just clearly better than others. We rate them on the following criteria:
Quality
This covers aspects like usability and design as well as content quality. A 5-star resource would not only need to be easy to use but also teach the language well. If it’s amazing looking but the content is poorly thought out, then it’ll get rated poorly. Likewise, solid content that’s hard to use would take a hit in their Quality rating.
Thoroughness
This doesn’t mean that a resource needs to take you from beginner to fluent, quite the contrary, in fact. It needs to do what it sets out to do. If a resource only covers intermediate listening practice but does so excellently, it’ll receive a high score. If a resource covers every level from beginner to advanced but does so sparsely with important factors missing, it’ll get dinged on their thoroughness score.
Value
An expensive course can be a good value and a free course can be bad value. But, price does play an important role. Something that costs $100 per month better deliver a lot more than something costing $10 per month. If it’s free, that’s a big advantage, but time is valuable too. So, any resource that wastes your time or money will get a low Value rating.
The total score combines these three scores and puts in on a five-point scale. After 35 reviews for Spanish language resources, an average score is 3.5/5.
StudySpanish.com has some useful free materials on their website, but their paid products should be avoided. Their Camino del Éxito audio course is a near exact copy of the free FSI Basic Spanish Course. They also have a separate subscription plan but none of the extra materials found within it are very useful and definitely not worth paying for.
Quality 2.5
★★
★
★★★
Their vocabulary lessons in the subscription are especially bad.
Thoroughness 3.0
★★★★★
It’s a thorough course but not their own.
Value 0.5
★
★★★★★
Same material is available for free but their recordings are higher quality.
I Like
The audio recordings are better than the FSI course.
They have a lot of helpful free materials.
I Don’t Like
They’re charging $200 for a course that’s available for free.
None of the materials included in the subscription plan are much better than what they give away for free.
It just feels so sketchy to call it your course when it was created by others. At least be honest about it.
Price
Subscription starts at $9.99 monthly or $119 for a lifetime subscription.
StudySpanish.com is a resource that lots of Spanish learners come across, in large part, because they offer a ton of free materials – much of which is quite good.
We’ve tested tons of resources for learning Spanish to help you figure out which ones are worth using and which ones should be avoided. These are our top choices.
Coffee Break Spanish offers some really good free lessons available as podcasts. Additionally, they sell premium courses with extra materials on their website. For most people, there probably isn’t enough extra material included in the premium lessons to make it worth paying for the courses as they’re pretty expensive. This review will look at the free audio lessons, as well as the premium content.
Quality 4.0
★★★★★
It feels like you’re sitting in on a Spanish class.
Thoroughness 4.0
★★★★★
Takes you from the very basics to at least an intermediate level.
Value 4.0
★★★★★
The free lessons are amazing value but the paid courses are a bit expensive.
I Like
They offer a comprehensive, well-structured, and free audio course.
Lots of detailed explanations of vocabulary and grammar with lots of explanations.
The lessons start fairly slowly but build up to where a lot of Spanish is used in later seasons.
I Don’t Like
I wish there were more extra materials included or the price were lower for the paid courses.
It’s primarily an input based course and you’ll need to practice speaking and writing Spanish more on your own.
It doesn’t have a lot of the interactive exercises as some other resources.
Price
The audio for all of the lessons is completely free but the extra materials cost money. The 40 lesson package is $124.
Fluencia is one of the better online Spanish courses I’ve come across. The course content is very well designed including tons of detailed explanations and exercises to practice what you’ve learned. While some similar courses are more gamified and less challenging, Fluencia is more challenging and less game-like. While I like Fluencia quite a bit, you’ll probably want to get more speaking practice elsewhere.
Quality 4.5
★★★★
★
★
It’s obvious that a lot of thought and planning went into making these lessons.
Thoroughness 4.5
★★★★
★
★
The cultural and grammar lessons stood out as being exceptionally thorough.
Value 4.0
★★★★★
It’s a good course and affordable for most.
I Like
You’ll have actually needed to have learned the content to answer the exercises correctly.
Everything is explained clearly with a lot of attention spent on the details.
Recordings are done by native Spanish speakers with various accents.
I Don’t Like
You’ll want to get more speaking practice by working with a tutor.
You may also want to supplement your learning by listening to Spanish podcasts.
Synergy Spanish is an often-recommended course, but I found it to be old, overpriced, boring, and not as good as competitors. The good side is that their lessons force you to start speaking right away. Even with a limited vocabulary, you’ll be able to express a lot of different things. Still, I wouldn’t recommend using it.
Quality 3.0
★★★★★
Fairly well structured but feels outdated.
Thoroughness 2.5
★★
★
★★★
It may not be meant to be the most comprehensive course, but I’m shocked at some of the things that weren’t included.
Value 1.5
★
★
★★★★
I don’t think it’s as good as cheaper alternatives.
I Like
Start speaking Spanish from the first lesson.
The content builds upon itself pretty well.
If you use it, you’ll learn quite a bit.
I Don’t Like
The platform and some of the content taught in the lesson feels outdated.
The content is among the most boring I’ve seen.
It’s more expensive and not as good as competitors in my opinion.
Price
Synergy Light costs $67 and includes the audio lessons.
Synergy Video costs $97 and adds in video lessons and email coaching.
Synergy Video + CDs costs $145 and adds in CDs and printed out pdf.
