Rosetta Stone vs Babbel Comparison Comparison

Providing courses for more than 20 languages, Rosetta Stone is available on both desktop and mobile. It offers an immersive learning experience from the get-go that forces students to learn without using their native language as support. In other words, lessons are written in the language being learned, and users acquire new vocabulary by association.

The courses are well structured and display a clear path to follow, but students can jump around the program as they see fit. The app tackles reading, writing, listening, and speaking exercises, but since it teaches through repetition, it can become tedious over time. Fortunately, Rosetta Stone offers extended learning games as well as the option to schedule live sessions with native teachers, so there are different learning experiences available that make the process more entertaining.

The software is extremely easy to use. Sadly, the price is not as user-friendly. Quarterly installments are the shortest billing cycle available, costing $11.99 per month and giving access to only one language course. To get full access to all the language courses with only one subscription, students have to get at least the yearly plan, which costs $7.99 per month. Furthermore, there’s also the option to get a lifetime subscription for $199.

Babbel offers language-learning programs for 13 different languages. Although this is a smaller number than some of its competitors, the company covers the most popular ones, and it’s available for desktop and mobile. The app also builds up to an immersive experience where English indications slowly fade away throughout the course.

The Babbel Method consists of real-life dialogue and spaced repetition. Lessons offer some cultural context, and users juggle between writing and speaking while learning vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Although there’s a designated path, Babbel students can decide what course structure they want to follow, and there are class bundles focusing on specific themes such as work or traveling. There are also extended learning options to make the process more enjoyable, such as podcasts, review exercises, and videos with learning tips.

A separate subscription is necessary to unlock each language program. The billing cycle can go from monthly to yearly installments, and as usual the longer the user commits, the cheaper the service becomes. In this case, while a monthly plan with Babbel costs $12.95, the yearly one costs $6.95 per month, which translates into a 46% price drop.