Is Babbel Worth It? Here’s Why You Might Want To Reconsider Free Language Learning Apps

Want the best value for your language education? A paid app subscription beats free apps and traditional classroom methods in multiple ways.

When is it worth paying for an app? When you need it to help you accomplish something big, like learning a language. You can study Spanish for free if you want to, but if you struggle to find the right words when it’s actually time to have a conversation, then you wasted your time, not your money. Babbel is one of the most efficient ways to learn a new language, offering premium-quality content, an ad-free user experience, data privacy and value for a low subscription fee. Is Babbel worth it? We think so. Here are a few reasons why.

1. It’s built by language experts

Our learning content is not user-generated or spat out by an algorithm. It’s expertly crafted by over 100 linguists and programmers working together at Babbel’s headquarters. That’s almost 2,000 years of educational experience under one roof! With that level of knowledge, we can customize every learner’s journey instead of just translating the same course into multiple languages. For example, an English speaker learning Spanish will need a different learning path than an Italian learning Spanish. Our linguists and engineers take these different needs into account. From seven display languages, you can learn 14 languages, which means 98 individually-tailored language combinations! That is a level of dedication, detail and craftsmanship that you just won’t find in a free app.

2. You’ll get the biggest bang for your buck

When it comes to price and price alone, the free app will always win. But as mentioned above, time is a commodity, too. You might save a couple bucks every month, but wind up wasting hours of your life instead. When compared to traditional learning methods like private tutors or classes, which can cost you hundreds per month, a Babbel subscription is a steal. Even if your budget is tight, doing a 15-minute Babbel lesson every day comes out to as little as 23 cents per day. Do more than one lesson daily, and the value is even better! And if you do have the cash to spend on a tutor or a class, Babbel is a great supplement to keep you engaged with your language in your private time. A Babbel subscription costs as little as $6.95 per month. That’s less than the price of a green juice in some places.

Test the first lesson of every course for free!

3. It’s proven to work efficiently

We knew we had a good product, but we wanted to prove it to ourselves (and to the world). So we commissioned an independent study. Researchers at the City University of New York and the University of South Carolina evaluated the overall efficacy of Babbel Spanish courses, tracking 325 randomly selected learners and assessing their knowledge of Spanish at the beginning and the end of the study. On average, users gained about 12.7 college-level test points per one hour of study. Even more incredibly, truly novice users with no knowledge of Spanish only needed an average of 15 hours of study over a two-month period to cover the requirements for one college semester of Spanish.

4. We protect your privacy

Many free online services like Facebook and Google make their money by selling their users’ data to third parties. As the blogger Andrew Lewis famously put it, “If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.” Our relationship with you is direct, transparent and simple. Thanks to our paid subscription model, we can invest in making our product better and better (and keep the lights on at Babbel HQ) without pestering you with ads or selling off your personal data.

If you want the most out of your language education, you can see that you get out what you put in, and that goes for the time and the money you invest. And for the best value, a paid app subscription is the perfect way to start.

Try Babbel for free before you buy!
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