Babbel Alternative for Speaking English: Speakle

At a glance

Babbel is best for understanding how English works. Speakle is best for using what you understand in real time.
Where Babbel is strong: Well-made lessons.
Where it puts its weight: Its speaking practice is mostly repetition and recording against a model: you say a phrase, it checks the phrase.
The research: speaking improves by producing language, not only recognising it; the figures below show what the published studies measured.
Sources: 9 references, including Babbel's own public pages, checked 2026-09-26.

Our verdict

The short answer

Speakle turns the grammar you know into English you can say. 49 grammar chapters, 112 vocabulary collections and a course from A1 to C2, all explained in your own language, and every part ends with you speaking out loud while Speakle notices which rules slip and brings them back. Babbel teaches lessons to read; Speakle gets you talking.

Babbel is best for: Understanding how English works
Speakle is best for: Using what you understand in real time

Looking for a Babbel alternative?

Looking for a Babbel alternative that gets you speaking? Speakle is a full English course from A1 to C2 where every unit ends with you talking. Grammar comes in 49 chapters explained in your own language, vocabulary in 112 collections, and every mistake you make out loud is brought back until it sticks. The free plan includes a scored speaking session every day, so you can start today.

Take the free speaking test Start free

Babbel and Speakle side by side

6 things people compare, answered for each.

Babbel Speakle

TeachingLessons written by language-teaching specialists, with clear grammarGrammar chapters with quizzes, pointed at your own mistakes

Speaking practiceSpeech recognition on words and phrases, with live classes sold separatelyEvery session is spontaneous speech, scored

What comes nextThe next lesson in the courseWhatever your last sessions got wrong

Live teachersBabbel Live classes, a separate purchaseThrough a teacher or academy that uses Speakle; otherwise video conversation with other learners

Explaining a mistakeIn the language you learn fromIn ten native languages

Talking it through liveBabbel Live classes with a teacher, on a scheduleOn paid plans, a live AI video coach at any hour, for interviews, debates, travel and more, with a report after each call

The free speaking test shows how much of your grammar survives one unplanned answer. No account, no card.

The research: Babbel, feature by feature

We read Babbel's own website, help pages and app listings and wrote down what it publicly offers on each of the lines a speaking learner cares about. Each line links to the page it came from. Where we could not find a public statement the table says so, rather than guessing.

What Babbel and Speakle each offer, feature by feature

Feature	Babbel	Speakle
How you practise speaking	Speaking exercises are built into each lesson, using speech recognition to practise pronunciation and sentence building. ^[5]	Every session is spoken: you answer in your own words, and a live AI coach holds whole conversations with you.
AI conversation	Babbel Speak is an AI-powered, voice-led conversation feature that guides learners through real-life scenarios and dialogues. It launched in open beta in September 2025 for current subscribers learning English, Spanish, French, Italian and German. ^[6]	A scored speaking session every day on the free plan; on paid plans, a live AI video coach for interviews, debates, travel, IELTS practice and open conversation.
Pronunciation feedback	Uses speech recognition in lessons to practise pronunciation; the App Store listing describes practising out loud with speech recognition and Babbel Speak to improve pronunciation. ^[7]	Every sound scored with rhythm and intonation, on a path ordered by your first language, then checked in your own unplanned speech.
Course structure	Guided, self-paced lessons organised into levels; finishing a level earns a Babbel certificate aligned with CEFR standards. ^[5]	A course of 109 units from A1 to C2, where every step is a task you say out loud.
Human teachers	Not stated publicly	No tutors to book. Schools and teachers can run their classes on Speakle.
Other learners	Not stated publicly	Video conversation matches you with another learner at your level for about ten minutes, then coaches you both.
Help in your own language	The App Store listing supports 9 interface languages: English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian. ^[7]	Hints, corrections and explanations in Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese, Turkish or Portuguese.
Exam preparation	Not stated publicly	IELTS speaking practice under exam conditions with the live coach, with a report for each part (an estimate, not an official score).
Free access	Signing up is free, and the first lesson of every course can be tried for free; depending on the language, more free lessons are available. ^[8]	A free plan with one scored speaking session every day, with no card.
Languages taught	Teaches 14 languages, including English (American or British). ^[5]	English only.
Where it runs	Available on phone, tablet and desktop (iOS, Android and web browser), with progress synced across devices. ^[5]	Web and Android (Google Play), with the iPhone app in early access.

Babbel: read on its own public pages, checked 2026-09-26. Features change; the numbered sources show where each line came from. No prices are listed because they vary by country and change often.

Use a Babbel lesson to understand a structure and a Speakle session to use it the same day.On using Babbel and Speakle together

Which one should you choose?

Choose Babbel if

You prefer to learn by reading lessons at your own pace and you are not in a hurry to speak, or you want to learn one of the other languages it teaches alongside English.

Choose Speakle if

You want grammar you can use while you are talking. Speakle has 49 grammar chapters with explanations in your own language, and then it does what matters most: it listens to you speak, notices which rules slip, and brings exactly those back until they stick. Knowing the present perfect is good. Saying it right in a meeting is the goal.

Start with the free speaking test, which needs no account. Then create a free account: the free plan includes a scored speaking session every day, with no card, and the first one takes five minutes.

What Babbel is, and what it does well

What Babbel is

Babbel is a course-based app with lessons written by language-teaching specialists, organised around practical conversation topics. It includes speech-recognition exercises that check your pronunciation of words and phrases, and offers live teacher-led classes as a separate product.

What Babbel is genuinely better at

Well-made lessons. Babbel’s courses are written by language-teaching specialists, the grammar explanations are clear, and the dialogues are practical. For reading about how a language works, lesson by lesson, it is a carefully produced product that has helped a lot of people.

Where its design puts its weight

Its speaking practice is mostly repetition and recording against a model: you say a phrase, it checks the phrase. That is useful, and it is not the same as producing your own sentences in response to something you did not expect. The live classes are the answer to that and they are a separate purchase and a scheduled commitment.

What you get with Speakle

109course units, A1 to C2
112word collections
49grammar chapters, explained in your language
12world accents to train your ear
9native languages for explanations

One course, every level

A1A2B1B2C1C2

Approximate guided learning hours to reach each CEFR level, counted from the start

Approximate guided learning hours to reach each CEFR level, counted from the start
Item	Value (h)
A1	90 to 100
A2	180 to 200
B1	350 to 400
B2	500 to 600
C1	700 to 800
C2	1,000 to 1,200

Cambridge English estimates that each level takes roughly another two hundred hours of guided learning. The hours vary with the learner and with how much they practise between lessons, which is why a little speaking every day matters more than an occasional long session.

Source: Cambridge English (2026) Cambridge describes these as a guideline only.

Grammar in Speakle is aimed at your own mistakes. Each chapter has quizzes and explanations you can read in your own language, and the chapters you are pushed towards are the ones your speaking got wrong. When you chat with the AI coach, by voice or by typing, a mistake is corrected in the reply, shown against what you wrote, and followed by a prompt to use the right form straight away. Then it is kept as a rule and tested again in later sessions on topics you were not expecting, until you have produced the right form three times without being prompted.

Speakle · the English practice app for fluency and confidence

One app for everything that gets you speaking

Most apps train one piece: words, sounds or a chat window. Speakle puts the whole road to fluent, confident English in one place, and every part of it ends with you speaking.

Live coachFace to face with an AI coach, on videoJob interviews, debates, travel, IELTS speaking or an open conversation. The coach stays in role for the whole call and nothing is scripted.
ReportsA report after every callAn interview ends in a hiring decision, a debate is won or lost, a trip earns a stamp at each stop.
Every sessionYour speaking, measuredPronunciation, fluency, grammar, vocabulary and coherence, with a CEFR level and the one thing to fix first.
PronunciationPronunciation from your first languageSounds your language merges come first; sounds it already gives you are skipped.
PeopleReal learners, on videoTen minutes with another learner at your level, then coaching on what you both said.
CourseA course where every step is spoken109 units from A1 to C2. Each step is a real task you say out loud, not tiles to tap.

Start with the free speaking test See every feature

Using Babbel and Speakle together

Use a Babbel lesson to understand a structure and a Speakle session to use it the same day. Understanding the present perfect and using it correctly while you are thinking about something else are different achievements, and the gap between them closes fastest when the two happen close together. Learn it in the morning, then try to use it in an unrelated spoken answer in the evening. If it does not come out, that tells you exactly what to go back over.

The short version of the argument

Recognising

Tap the right option
Match the pairs
Repeat a sentence you were given

What most practice trains

Producing

Find the words yourself
Say them out loud
While someone waits for you

What speaking needs

Recognising the right answer and producing it are different skills, and most practice trains the first. Tapping the right option, matching pairs and repeating a sentence you were given can all be done without finding a single word yourself, which is why people who understand English well still freeze when they have to speak it. We call this the recognition trap. The way out is spoken practice, short and daily, answered in your own words. The full explanation, with the memory research behind it, is its own page.

Recall of a studied text, five minutes and one week later, by how the time was spent

Recall of a studied text, five minutes and one week later, by how the time was spent
Item	Condition	Value (%)
After 5 minutes	Read once, recalled 3 times	71
After 5 minutes	Read 3 times, recalled once	78
After 5 minutes	Read 4 times	83
After 1 week	Read once, recalled 3 times	61
After 1 week	Read 3 times, recalled once	56
After 1 week	Read 4 times	40

Students who reread a passage four times remembered the most after five minutes, and the least a week later. Students who read it once and then tried to recall it three times forgot far less. Pulling words out of your own memory, which is what speaking asks of you, is what made them last.

Source: Roediger & Karpicke (2006) Experiment 2: university students recalling prose passages; share of idea units recalled.

Words recognised later: read aloud versus read silently

Words recognised later: read aloud versus read silently
Item	Value (%)
Read aloud	76
Read silently	59.8
Never shown (wrongly recognised)	21.9

The same people read some words aloud and some silently. Afterwards they recognised the words they had said aloud clearly more often. Saying something makes it more memorable than only seeing it, one reason spoken practice beats silent tapping for anything you want to say later.

Source: MacLeod et al. (2010) Experiment 1, 44 university students. The benefit appeared when each person read some words aloud and some silently.

How much relearning time a memory still saves, from twenty minutes to a month

How much relearning time a memory still saves, from twenty minutes to a month
Item	Value (%)
20 min	47.2
1 h	37.3
9 h	27.6
1 day	31.7
2 days	23
6 days	16.8
31 days	4.1

A modern replication of Ebbinghaus measured how much faster a list could be relearned after each delay. Most of the benefit is gone within a day or two unless the material is used again, which is why a daily return to speaking matters more than a long session once a week.

Source: Murre & Dros (2015) One adult learning nonsense syllables; "savings" is the share of relearning time saved, not the share remembered.

Questions people ask

Is Speakle a Babbel alternative?

Yes. Speakle has a full course from A1 to C2, 49 grammar chapters and 112 vocabulary collections, with explanations in ten native languages, and every part of it gets you speaking out loud. If your goal is to use English in conversation, it is built for exactly that.

Which one teaches grammar better?

They teach it differently. Babbel teaches grammar lesson by lesson. Speakle teaches it in 49 chapters, explains it in your own language, and then aims your practice at the exact rules that slip when you speak, which is what turns a rule you know into one you use.

Can I use Babbel and Speakle together?

Yes. Understanding from one, using it at speed in the other, is a good combination and the two overlap very little.

Which is better for a complete beginner?

Speakle welcomes beginners. The course starts at A1, beginner vocabulary comes with meanings in your own language, and the first tasks are short, friendly and spoken from day one, so you never build the habit of understanding without speaking. The free speaking test places you at the right starting point.

More comparisons

Where to go next

Product names and logos are trademarks of their respective owners, shown only to identify the products compared. Speakle is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.

References

Cambridge University Press & Assessment. (2026). Guided learning hours. Cambridge English Support Site. support.cambridgeenglish.org/hc/en-gb/articles/202838506-Guided-learning-hours Checked 2026-09-26.
Roediger, H. L., III, & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249-255. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x Checked 2026-09-26.
MacLeod, C. M., Gopie, N., Hourihan, K. L., Neary, K. R., & Ozubko, J. D. (2010). The production effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(3), 671-685. doi.org/10.1037/a0018785 Checked 2026-09-26.
Murre, J. M. J., & Dros, J. (2015). Replication and analysis of Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve. PLOS ONE, 10(7), e0120644. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120644 Checked 2026-09-26.
Babbel, public page at babbel.com. www.babbel.com/how-babbel-works Checked 2026-09-26.
Babbel, public page at babbel.com. www.babbel.com/press/en-us/releases/babbel-speak Checked 2026-09-26.
Babbel, public page at apps.apple.com. apps.apple.com/us/app/babbel-language-learning/id829587759 Checked 2026-09-26.
Babbel, public page at babbel.com. www.babbel.com Checked 2026-09-26.
Babbel, public page at babbel.com. www.babbel.com/about-us Checked 2026-09-26.

Speakle vs Babbel: the Babbel alternative that gets you speaking

At a glance

The short answer

Looking for a Babbel alternative?

Babbel and Speakle side by side

The research: Babbel, feature by feature