Rosetta Stone Reviews

Rosetta Stone offers more than 20 different language courses, including the most popular ones, such as English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Chinese (Mandarin), and Portuguese (Brazilian). The software also covers some niche languages, such as Farsi, Hebrew, and Tagalog.

It’s important to mention that the language learning app also addresses different dialects, having dedicated courses for American English, British English, Spanish from Latin America, and Spanish from Spain.

Repetition is key with Rosetta Stone. While it felt a bit tedious after a while, this repetition was what led us to progress and boosted our confidence through the Japanese course. All programs follow roughly the same routine and present the same images, which, unfortunately, means they lack cultural context.

Rosetta Stone is more than a conventional language course, providing an extended array of learning tools. Its audio companion lets you download all exercises in MP3 – perfect for listening offline during a commute, cleaning, or exercising. It also provides further opportunities to practice through its alphabet pronunciation tool.

Meanwhile, Rosetta Stone's ‘Stories’ section includes small texts read by native speakers that can be listened to while reading to help build the connection between the written and spoken word. Additionally, the ability to record ourselves reading aloud was valuable to get some objectivity on our pronunciation and accent.

Rosetta Stone also provides on-demand videos with interesting cultural topics that you can watch. However, the course we tested – Japanese – only had four 1-minute videos, which is hardly enough

Sometimes, you need a teacher to help you. With Rosetta Stone, it’s possible to schedule 25-minute tutoring sessions. These live classes are always in sync with what you’re learning, meaning that the teaching will always be at just the right level.

All teachers are native speakers to ensure the full immersion in the language continues. The classes can be solo or in a group, and you don’t need to show your face. Although the teachers use their webcams, students are only required to share their audio – nothing more. It’s important to mention that live tutoring is paid separately, with lessons costing between $14 and $19. The being said, the first class is on the house, so you can get a feeling if this added perk is worth your hard-earned money.

Joining a 25-minute live stream is also possible. Called live sessions by the company, these sessions are the perfect refreshers once you have already studied the topic. Keep in mind that both the live streams and tutoring sessions are only available in some languages, so we recommend checking the company’s support channel to see if the language you want to learn is on the list.

Rosetta Stone starts by building a 6-week tailored learning plan. The first thing students do is answer a small questionnaire. Depending on the answers, the language learning app creates a personalized plan considering your learning goals and proficiency level (beginner, intermediate, or proficient).

This tailored plan is then added to your ‘Home’ section, where you can clearly see an overview of what is to come. However, this plan is not mandatory, as Rosetta Stone, at its core, offers on-demand language learning courses. So you can learn the 12 learning units of the program at your own pace. Each has its own theme, like shopping and travel, and is divided into four different sections with lessons averaging 15 minutes.

Rosetta Stone uses deduction to teach by repeatedly showing you the same labeled picture. After a while, the app starts building phrases with these words, leaving you to deduce the meaning of the words you haven’t learned yet.

For example, right at the start, you learn to say ‘man’. You then are shown sentences like ‘the man is cooking’, and since you already know ‘man’, you’re able to identify ‘cooking’ in the sentence. Exercises get increasingly complicated, and by the end, you can confidently apply what you’ve learned.

It’s possible to access Rosetta Stone through its browser version or mobile app for Android and iOS. While they are interchangeable, we didn’t find the switching very practical, as we had to sign out of one device to log into another.

Its browser version occasionally takes a while to load when navigating its features, but overall, both versions are user-friendly and attractive, with an intuitive interface. It’s easy to scroll through the various exercises and understand what to do in each one.

If you plan on using a laptop, ensure you have a good microphone for the speaking lessons. Rosetta Stone struggled to correctly recognize our pronunciation on the computer, which wasn’t the case when we tested the mobile app.

Compared to other language learning software, Rosetta Stone is a bit expensive. The company provides three billing cycles: every three months, annually, and a lifetime subscription. In other words, you might reach your goals before the plan ends, which is not ideal.

With our affiliate discount, prices start at $10.50 per month on an annual plan. Although the 3-month doesn’t require such a big commitment, it costs $10.95  per month ($47.97 in total). It’s also possible to get unlimited access to all languages with a lifetime subscription. Its regular price is $399, but you can get it for $199 by taking advantage of our affiliate discount.

Rosetta Stone offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, seasonal discounts, and specific deals for some languages, so always browse the website before reaching out for your credit card. Finally, businesses and schools can request a tailored pricing plan for their needs.

It’s possible to contact Rosetta Stone's customer support team from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. (ET) on workdays via email, phone, or live chat. There’s also a handy FAQ and a support center, but the website itself doesn’t provide as much information as we wished for.

Although the chat feature only pops up on specific support pages, which isn’t practical, the reply times are surprisingly fast. Our experience with customer support couldn’t have been better. We made a mistake when choosing which course we wanted to test, and customer support promptly and effectively changed it to the correct one.

However, all of this is quickly forgotten once you go over the entertainingly broad range of activities and use the intuitive browser version and mobile app. Plus, the ability to download exercises to study while offline is convenient.

Although prices are slightly high, students who are committed for the long run should go with the annual plan or lifetime subscription to get an advantageous discount. We also recommend taking advantage of the 30-day money-back guarantee to ensure this language learning software is the right one for you and trying out tutoring by taking advantage of the first free class.