The best app to learn Korean, once you stop drilling the alphabet
Korean starts with a gift: Hangul is a designed alphabet you can genuinely read within a weekend. The trap is that apps keep you drilling it for weeks because it demos well. The actual difficulty arrives later, in verb endings that change with who you are talking to, and that is where the apps separate.
We make Vocabloot, one of the five below. We have been direct about what it does not do, and for a complete beginner we recommend starting elsewhere.
Five Korean apps, and who each suits
Duolingo
- Best for
- Building the habit after Hangul
- Price
- Free with ads, around $7 a month without
- What it does well
- Free, persistent, and fine for a first few hundred words once you can read. The Hangul introduction itself is serviceable.
- Where it falls short
- The Korean course is one of Duolingo's weaker ones: sentences turn odd early, grammar is never explained, and politeness levels are used without ever being taught.
LingoDeer
- Best for
- Grammar explained properly from zero
- Price
- Around $15 a month, less on longer plans
- What it does well
- Started life as a Korean and Japanese app and it shows. Verb conjugation, particles and the polite endings are laid out in real explanations, which is exactly what self-taught Korean lacks.
- Where it falls short
- Paid only, and it winds down around upper-beginner. Studio audio throughout, noticeably slower than any Korean drama.
Anki
- Best for
- Vocabulary retention at scale
- Price
- Free, except $25 once on iPhone
- What it does well
- Best in class for retention, with solid shared Korean frequency decks, many carrying native audio.
- Where it falls short
- No teaching, and Korean's sound-change rules mean a word in isolation often sounds different in a sentence. Cards alone will not warn you.
Drops
- Best for
- Five-minute vocabulary top-ups
- Price
- Free for five minutes a day, around $10 a month for more
- What it does well
- Attractive, quick, and every word comes with clear native audio, which matters for Korean vowels English speakers merge.
- Where it falls short
- Vocabulary only, from a fixed list, with no grammar. Korean without verb endings is a pile of nouns.
Vocabloot ours
- Best for
- Someone with basic grammar who wants everyday vocabulary
- Price
- Free during early access
- What it does well
- Point the camera at anything and it gives you the Korean word with pronunciation and an example sentence, so new words arrive attached to your own kitchen and street rather than a word list.
- Where it falls short
- No grammar teaching, so it will not explain politeness levels or why 하다 keeps changing shape. Use it for vocabulary alongside something else, and expect early-access rough edges.
Politeness levels are the real syllabus
Every Korean verb ends differently depending on whether you are talking to a friend, a stranger or an audience. Textbooks teach the formal forms first; K-dramas run on the casual ones; most apps mix them silently and let you wonder why nothing matches.
You do not need all the levels at once. You need to know they exist, learn the polite -요 forms as your default, and recognise the casual forms when you hear them.
Only LingoDeer on this list actually teaches this. Whatever else you use, get the explanation somewhere, because it is the difference between sounding learner-polite and accidentally talking down to someone.
The honest recommendation
Starting from zero: learn Hangul first from any free source in a weekend, then LingoDeer if you can pay, Duolingo if you cannot.
Watching K-dramas and wanting the language to attach: keep watching with Korean subtitles once you can read, and feed the words you meet into Anki or Vocabloot.
Comfortable with basic endings but short of words: Anki or Vocabloot. Pick Vocabloot if you would rather learn the words for what is around you than work through a frequency deck.
Everyone: real Korean audio early and often. The gap between studio pronunciation and spoken Korean's sound changes closes only through volume.
Try the camera approach
Snap anything and learn the word for it, with pronunciation and an example sentence.
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