5 Best Apps To Learn Polish As A Beginner [2025]

Polish has this wonderful complexity that makes it incredibly rewarding to learn. Yet despite being spoken by over 30 million people worldwide, Polish often gets overshadowed by the usual suspects: Spanish, French, and German. Walk into any language section of a bookstore, and you’ll find dozens of Spanish courses compared to maybe two or three Polish ones.

The app world reflects this same imbalance.

Sure, plenty of language apps claim they support "50+ languages," and Polish usually makes the list. The question is whether these platforms actually deliver meaningful Polish instruction or just pump out AI-generated content with questionable accuracy.

After testing various options and spending months with each, I've found five apps that genuinely help beginners build a solid foundation in Polish. I'll walk you through what works, what doesn't, and the features that make each one worth your time—plus the areas where they could definitely improve.

Criteria For Evaluating The Best Apps To Learn Polish

I tested each app based on what actually matters for learning Polish:

• Native audio quality – Polish has sounds that don't exist in English, so clear recordings from native speakers are essential
• Grammar explanations – Polish uses seven cases that change word endings, and apps need to teach this properly
• Practical vocabulary – Learning useful everyday words instead of random nouns
• Cultural context – Knowing when to be formal versus casual in Polish conversations
• Real progress tracking – Measuring actual skill growth, not just streaks and badges

Polish is challenging enough without apps that skip the fundamentals. The best ones help you understand how the language actually works, while weaker apps leave you memorizing phrases you can't use in real situations.

Best Apps To Learn Polish

Lingopie

Lingopie is a comprehensible input platform that transforms Polish TV shows, movies, and YouTube videos into interactive learning experiences. With it, you can watch authentic Polish content while clicking on dual subtitles for instant definitions, pronunciation guides, and grammar explanations. This immersion method simply exposes you to natural speech patterns, colloquialisms, and cultural context that textbook Polish never covers.

Best Feature: Interactive Subtitles with Real Polish Content
Rating: 4.5 on Trustpilot

Babbel

Babbel takes a more traditional approach to language learning, with structured lessons that explain Polish grammar rules upfront. Each lesson focuses on practical conversations you might have in Poland, from ordering food to asking for directions, and the app does a better job than most at teaching both formal and informal speech patterns.

Just note that the lessons in Babbel are longer than Duolingo’s. However, the good news is that they feel more substantial, and you’ll understand why Polish sentences work the way they do rather than just memorizing words.

Best Feature: Grammar Explanations with Real Examples
Rating: 4.4 on Trustpilot

Duolingo

Duolingo remains the most popular free language learning app, and its Polish course covers the basics through bite-sized lessons that feel more like games than studying. The app uses spaced repetition to help you remember vocabulary and introduces grammar concepts gradually through pattern recognition rather than explicit explanations.

While it won't make you fluent, Duolingo does a decent job of building foundational vocabulary and getting you comfortable with Polish sentence structure, especially if you're completely new to the language.

Best Feature: Stories and Audio Lessons
Rating: 1.6 on Trustpilot

Preply

Rather than following a set curriculum, Preply lets you work with a native speaker who can adapt lessons to your specific needs and answer those "why do Poles say it this way?" questions that regular apps can't handle. You'll also find real tutors from Poland charging anywhere from $5 to $30 per hour, and many offer trial lessons so you can find someone whose teaching style clicks with you before committing to regular sessions.

One of the things I love about Preply is that your tutor can focus exactly where you're struggling. In my case, I had a wee bit of trouble with pronunciation, and so my tutor provided special drills for me and immediate feedback on pronunciation.

Best Feature: Personalized Learning with Native Speakers
Rating: 4.1 on Trustpilot

Memrise

Memrise built its reputation on helping you memorize vocabulary through spaced repetition and clever memory techniques, and its Polish course delivers exactly that. What sets them apart is the video clips of real Polish people saying words and phrases in different contexts. In fact, you’ll see the same word pronounced by teenagers in Warsaw, older folks from Krakow, and everyone in between.

Best Feature: Real People Video Clips
Rating: 2.1 on Trustpilot

Why Use Language Learning Apps for Polish?

Apps offer advantages that traditional methods struggle to match for Polish learners. Convenience tops the list since you can practice cases during your commute or work on pronunciation while waiting for coffee. Polish requires consistent exposure, and apps make daily practice realistic.

The Interactive feedback you can get from apps also helps with immediate error correction. Polish grammar mistakes compound quickly, so getting instant feedback on case endings or verb conjugations prevents bad habits from forming. Most apps also provide spaced repetition systems that help you retain vocabulary longer than cramming with flashcards.

Cost effectiveness matters too. A semester of Polish classes can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. Quality apps typically run $10-15 monthly, giving you access to structured lessons, audio from native speakers, and progress tracking for a fraction of traditional course costs.

Polish language apps also remove the intimidation factor. Making mistakes with cases or struggling with pronunciation in front of classmates feels embarrassing. Apps let you repeat lessons, practice speaking without judgment, and build confidence before real conversations.

So You Want To Learn Polish?

While these apps provide solid foundations for Polish learning, they all follow traditional lesson-based approaches. If you want something different, consider Lingopie!

Lingopie is the gold standard for content-based learning as it teaches Polish through real TV shows and movies with interactive subtitles. With it, you can learn grammar and vocabulary naturally rather than through artificial exercises. The cultural immersion you get from actual Polish media also beats any textbook explanation of when to use formal versus informal speech.

So what are you waiting for? Give Lingopie a try today!