The best AI apps to practice speaking German

What you need to practice speaking German

German is a step up from Spanish or French. In our ranking of 67 languages it’s the 52nd hardest for English speakers, at 4,255 effort points. That’s harder than Dutch (3,422) and Italian (3,244), but far easier than Russian (6,067) or Japanese.

Lots of words are close to English: Haus, Wasser, Freund. What makes German hard is the grammar you have to use at full speed, in a real conversation.

• Der, die, dasEvery noun has a gender, and you can rarely guess it: der Löffel, the spoon, die Gabel, the fork, das Messer, the knife. Even das Mädchen, the girl, is neuter. So you learn each word with its article.
• Four cases“The” and “my” change with their job in the sentence. Ich sehe den Mann, I see the man. Ich gebe dem Mann, I give the man. Mit always takes the dative: mit meinen Freunden. Knowing the table is easy. Getting it right while you talk takes practice.
• The verb goes where?In a main sentence, the verb comes second: Gestern bin ich, not Gestern ich bin. After weil or dass, it goes to the very end. And some verbs split in two: Ich rufe dich morgen an.
• Germany, Austria or SwitzerlandIt’s one written language, but you hear the difference. In Austria, January is Jänner and a tomato is a Paradeiser, and people say Servus. So pick a teacher who sounds like where you’re going.
• Lots of German you understandSpeaking activates the words you have. New words come from input: videos, podcasts and texts where you already understand most of it.
• Lots of speaking timeGerman takes more hours than the easiest languages, and most of them should be spent talking. A few minutes a day won’t get you there.

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 German. 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 German YouTube videos and podcasts, and read stories written at your level. You always see how much you already understand, and every word you tap becomes a flashcard, with its article. How Watch and Read work.
2. Step 2Speaking activates itKnowing a word isn’t the same as using it, with the right article, the right case and the verb in the right place. 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.

Brand new to German? Start somewhere else first. Teacher AI works best from about A2, once you can handle simple everyday sentences. Before that, you just don’t have enough words yet for open conversation. So learn the basics with a course like Duolingo (free), Babbel or Pimsleur, and come back when you want to talk.

What it looks like in German

Here’s what a moment of practice looks like. You answer, your teacher replies, and if you made a mistake, your sentence gets fixed right there.

A card for every word you tap

Tap any word, in a conversation, a video or a story, and you get its card: what it means, its article and plural, its forms, and an example with a translation. Tap play to hear it.

An illustration of three word cards, rebuilt for this page. On the real card, the wording depends on the word. Below: real screenshots of the web app.

Meet your German teachers

Fourteen teachers. Germans from Berlin, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart and Rostock, and two Austrians with Austrian voices: Astrid from Vienna and Mia from Salzburg. Anna from Berlin has a realistic face, so you see her speak as you chat.

And German teachers you might know: Julia from Lingster Academy, Levi from Learn German with Herr Antrim, Astrid from the podcast Deutsch aus Österreich, Flemming from Natural. Fluent. German, David from LinguaThor, Andy from AndyGM Academy and Muryel from Alemão com Muryel. Plus language people you might know: Benny Lewis from Fluent in 3 Months, and our co-founders Olly Richards and Xiaoma. They learned many languages themselves, so they know where you’ll get stuck.

Austrian teachers, with Austrian voices

• 
  Astrid Dressler

  Vienna · Austrian
• 
  Mia Schneider

  Salzburg · Austrian

Teachers from Germany, and well-known polyglots

• 
  Andy GM

  Berlin · German
• 
  Anna Müller

  Berlin · German
• 
  Benny Lewis

  Travels the world · Irish

  Fluent in 3 Months
• 
  David Krüger

  Düsseldorf · German
• 
  David Allen Martin II

  San Diego · German
• 
  Flemming Goldbecher

  Rostock · German
• 
  Julia Brodt

  Stuttgart · German

  Lingster Academy
• 
  Leon Schmidt

  Stuttgart · German
• 
  Levi Antrim

  Illinois, USA · American

  Learn German with Herr Antrim
• 
  Muryel Ovidio

  Curitiba · Brazilian

  Alemão com Muryel
• 
  Olly Richards

  Devon · British

  StoryLearning
• 
  Xiaoma

  New York City · American

  Xiaomanyc

Input: German to watch and read, at your level

Here’s the input side up close. New words come from lots of German 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 German 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, within a monthly allowance.
• Suggested for youWatch suggests videos by topic, from channels made for learners, like Easy German, Dein Sprachcoach and Deutsch mit Marija, to comedy, food and the news. Each one shows the share of words you’d understand.
• Stories written for youRead writes German texts at your level, from A1 to Native, about anything you like, and suggests ideas from what you talk about with your teacher. There’s today’s news, too.
• How much you know, before you startTeacher AI keeps a list of every German 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 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.
• 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 start German 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 Langua · Teacher AI vs Babbel · Teacher AI vs Praktika · Teacher AI vs Talkpal · Teacher AI vs Duolingo. All comparisons.

Other languages

SpanishSpain and Latin AmericaFrenchFrance, Belgium and SwitzerlandMandarin 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 ItalianoEuropean 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