The best AI apps to practice speaking French

What you need to practice speaking French

Lots of people did French at school. They can still read a menu. Then the waiter answers at full speed, and it’s gone.

French isn’t the problem. It’s one of the easiest languages for English speakers (2,969 effort points in our ranking of 67 languages), and thousands of English words came from French. What’s missing is speaking time, with someone who adapts to your level and tells you what you got wrong. And to have something to say, you need plenty of French coming in too.

• Lots of French you understandSpeaking activates the words you have. New words come from input: videos, podcasts and texts where you already understand most of it.
• Spoken French, not just written FrenchFrench on the page and French in the street are far apart. Half the letters are silent, and words run into each other. You need to hear a lot of it, and slow it down when it’s too fast.
• Hours of speaking, not minutesA cap of 3 or 30 minutes a day is fine for a habit. It won’t give you the hours it takes to speak with ease. So check what “unlimited” costs.
• Corrections on what you actually sayAvoir or être in the past. Le or la. Tu or vous. The subjunctive. You want to see what changed and why, without the conversation stopping.
• A way in if you’re starting from zeroOpen conversation is tough when you don’t have the words yet. A course that gets you saying full sentences first makes the conversations possible.

A complete fluency system, not just a speaking app

Our speaking practice is the heart of Teacher AI. But speaking alone won’t make you fluent, and neither will input alone. You need both, and you need to see it working.

So Teacher AI is a complete fluency system. Input grows your French. Speaking activates it. And we track every word along the way, to get you to real fluency as fast as we can.

1. Step 1Input grows your vocabularyWatch any French YouTube video or podcast, and read stories written at your level. You always see how much you already understand, and every word you tap becomes a flashcard. How Watch and Read work.
2. Step 2Speaking activates itUnderstanding a word isn’t the same as using it. Talking with your teacher, for as long as you like, is how words move from “I know that one” to “I just said it”. Every mistake gets fixed, with a Why?.
3. Step 3We track every wordYour passive words are the ones you understand when you read or hear them. Your active words are the ones you’ve used yourself. You see both grow, how your time splits between input and output, and how many words to your next level.

Starting from zero? The beginner track gets you to the point where all of this works.

Starting from zero? The French beginner track

Talking about anything is great, once you have some words. Before that, most people freeze, fall back on English, and quit after a week.

So for French we built a beginner track: a guided course from zero that Lucas and I made by hand. Lucas, our co-founder, speaks over 20 languages, and he coaches you through every lesson. We call it the Brick Method. You say full sentences from lesson one, and once you can hold a simple conversation, you move on to talking about anything.

• Bricks, not word listsNo colors and animals first. Every brick is a word or a short chunk, picked because it combines with the ones you already have. After the first three lessons, you can already say Oui, je veux apprendre le français and Je veux apprendre le français et l’anglais.
• Every word has a storyLots of French words hide inside an English word you already know. parler, to speak? Think of parliament: a place where people come together to speak. And ne… pas, not? Pas is a step, like pace. French said “not a step” so often that it became the word for not.
• Out loud, from the first minuteYou hear Camille, a native speaker from Paris, say it. Then you say it yourself and compare. The app is forgiving about your accent and strict about the meaning.
• A walk through ParisYour lessons are stops on a real map of the city. Lesson 1 is at the Eiffel Tower. Along the way: quick checks, short spoken missions, and your first real conversations, with only the bricks you know.
• It doesn’t let you forgetBricks come back after 10 minutes, a day, 3 days, a week and 3 weeks. And a checkpoint at the end of each part makes sure you’ve got them before the road opens.
• Listen anywhereEvery lesson is also a short audio episode. Camille says each sentence, and you repeat it in the pause.
• French from FranceThe course teaches the French of France. Once you move on to the Fluency track, you can also talk with teachers from Belgium and Switzerland.
• One free lesson every dayEvery day, a new lesson opens for free. Sign up on the web app, and on your first day you can even do three. Want to go faster? Go Pro and do as many as you like. Already know some French? Take the placement test and skip ahead.

Over 100 lessons, on the web app, and coming to iPhone and Android in November 2026. And when you’re ready, flip the switch at the top of the sidebar to the Fluency track. Your course stays where you left it, so you can do both.

What it looks like in French

Here’s what it looks like. You answer out loud, your teacher replies, and if you made a mistake, your own message gets marked up.

Meet your French teachers

Pick the person you’d like to talk to. Most are from France (Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux). Claire is from Brussels, and Gabriel is from Switzerland. Every teacher has their own voice, accent and personality.

Some are AI versions of French teachers you might know from YouTube, like Elisa from French Mornings with Elisa and Ben Guez. We built those with them.

• 
  Ben Guez

  Los Angeles · French

  Ben Guez
• 
  Benny Lewis

  Travels the world · Irish

  Fluent in 3 Months
• 
  Charles Colonna-Césari

  Paris · French
• 
  Claire Dubois

  Brussels · Belgian
• 
  Elisa Azoum

  Bordeaux · French

  French Mornings with Elisa
• 
  Gabriel Thomas

  Zürich · Swiss
• 
  Jeanne Hodapp

  Paris · French
• 
  Lucas Bernard

  Paris · French
• 
  Olly Richards

  Devon · British

  StoryLearning
• 
  Pauline Martin

  Lyon · French
• 
  Xiaoma

  New York City · American

  Xiaomanyc

Input: French to watch and read, at your level

Here’s the input side up close. New words come from lots of French you hear and read, where you already understand most of it.

Watch and Read are on the web app for now. Words you read along with, without tapping, count toward your passive words. Every word you tap lands in your flashcards. And when you’re done, you talk about it with your teacher.

• Any YouTube videoPaste a link to a French YouTube video or an Apple Podcasts episode. We turn it into a page you read along with, new words in yellow. No subtitles? On a paid plan, we transcribe it for you.
• Stories written for youRead writes texts at your level, about anything you like, and suggests ideas from what you talk about with your teacher. Or import your own: an article, a book, a photo of a page.
• How much you know, before you startTeacher AI keeps a list of every French word you’ve met: the ones you use when you talk, the ones you read or hear, the ones you tap. It checks every word of a video or text against that list, names and numbers aside, and shows you the share you already know.
• The 80% rulePick videos and texts where you know 80% or more of the words. Then your brain fills in the rest from context. Under 70% is too much for now. 90% and up is easy and fun.
• Suggestions that fitNot sure what to watch? Suggested for you lists new videos from French channels we picked, by topic, each with the share you’d understand. Made for learners is a good place to start.
• Then talk about itOne tap on Talk about this starts a conversation about what you just watched or read. Retelling it is how new words become words you can say.

Teacher AI or Duolingo?

Lots of people learning French start on Duolingo. Good! So here’s how the two compare for speaking, with every Duolingo fact from Duolingo’s own pages.

The apps side by side

The apps, one by one

Where another app might suit you better

Head-to-head comparisons

Teacher AI vs Speak · Teacher AI vs Langua · Teacher AI vs Talkpal · Teacher AI vs Praktika · Teacher AI vs Duolingo. All comparisons.

Other languages

SpanishSpain and Latin AmericaMandarin ChineseSimplified or Traditional, with pinyinCantoneseHong Kong, with JyutpingThaiWith spaces between words, and Paiboon+ or IPAJapaneseWith furigana or romaji, and a kanji countDutchThe Netherlands and Flanders, with Flemish voicesBrazilian PortugueseWith Brazilian teachers and well-known polyglotsItalianWith Italian teachers from Podcast Italiano and Vaporetto ItalianoGermanWith German and Austrian teachers, from Lingster Academy to Herr AntrimEuropean PortugueseWith teachers from Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra and Faro, and Portuguese With LeoEnglishWith American and British teachers, from Espresso English to English Like A NativeKoreanWith teachers from Seoul and Busan, and every dropped 요 fixedRussianWith the stress marked above every wordTurkishWith Can from Turkishle, and every ending fixed as you talkArabicWith teachers from Cairo, Amman and Jeddah, and a straight answer on MSA or dialectPolishWith teachers from Warsaw, and every case ending fixedSwedishPitch accent, en or ett, and nobody switching to EnglishIndonesianWith teachers from Bali and Bandung, for the Indonesian people actually speakHindiWith teachers from Delhi, Jaipur and Mumbai, and every missing ने fixedRomanianWith teachers from Bucharest and Transylvania, and every ending explainedCatalanFor when Barcelona keeps answering you in SpanishVietnameseWith teachers from Hanoi and Sapa, and every tone, classifier and pronoun fixedUkrainianWith two teachers from Lviv, and every case fixed as you talkGreekWith teachers from Crete and Thessaloniki, and every gender and ending explainedHebrewFor Hebrew without the vowels, with two teachers from Tel AvivCzechWith Klara and Lukáš from Brno, and a Why? on every case ending