Mondly Review: Is Mondly Worth It? [Price and Alternatives]

Languages Available on Mondly:

Spanish, English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, American English, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Greek, Romanian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi, Hebrew, Polish, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Czech, Croatian, Finnish, Persian (Farsi), Afrikaans, Thai, Turkish, Bengali, Catalan, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Slovak, Tagalog, and Urdu.

Table of Contents

Mondly Overview

With over one million reviews in the App Store and Google Play, and over 100 million total users, Mondly is one of the most popular language learning apps available. It’s been around since 2014, and in 2022 was acquired by Pearson, a reputable education-focused company. Over the years, it has grown quite a bit. Today, they have a few different products that cater to different groups, like kids, schools, and businesses.

From your first time using the Mondly app, you’ll see that there is a large focus on technology. The app looks and feels futuristic. There are also other Mondly apps that incorporate augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) into language learning.

Mondly is a helpful app for beginners. It focuses on basic vocabulary and builds up the language in a natural progression. However, the vocabulary and language structures are the same for beginner, intermediate, and advanced level so it is not a very effective app for advanced learners.

That being said, I enjoyed the beginner levels and found that it was not too overwhelming. This is something I’ve experienced when starting a language with other apps, like Glossika or Clozemaster. There are also a lot of features included with the premium version to experiment with too.

Mondly Price

There are a few different Mondly subscription options you can choose from. A monthly subscription costs $9.99 per month and gives you access to one language. A yearly subscription is $47.99 for one language, or you can buy a lifetime subscription for $89.99 and have access to all 41 languages that Mondly offers. In general, the longer your subscription, the cheaper Mondly costs in the long-run.

The Mondly monthly price is similar to other apps such as Duolingo, Busuu, and Speakly. It’s a reasonable price and offers enough value to justify the price. If you only want to use it for a few months to prepare for a trip abroad or for another reason, the monthly subscription is your best option. If you plan to use the Mondly app for a while, I would recommend choosing the yearly or lifetime subscriptions. The lifetime subscription is the cheapest option available.

Mondly Free Trial

If you aren’t sure whether the Mondly app is a good fit for you, you can try the app for free for seven days. During the trial, you have access to all premium features. If you don’t want to enter any credit card information to access a trial, there are daily free lessons you can try.

Mondly Discount

If you’re a premium subscriber, you can also access discounts if there are multiple users in your friends or family. If you add one additional account, it costs $15.99/month (27% off), for three additional accounts you will pay $27.99/month (37% off), or 5+ accounts for $35.99/month (48% off)

You can also find a lot of Mondly discounts and offers throughout the year, so keep an eye out! I received a Mondly coupon code right after I signed up for the free trial.

Mondly Review: Getting Started & Features

Getting started with the Mondly app is really simple and straightforward. It’s free to download, and it only takes a couple minutes to create an account and start learning. After choosing your target language(s), you’ll dive right into your Mondly language course.

A lot of apps like Mango Languages and Lingodeer only let you learn your target language from English. This can be difficult if English isn’t your native language. But Mondly lets you learn from over 33 languages. The app offers quite a few different language pairs, too. It even includes some less-common ones, like Indonesian, Polish, Thai, and Urdu.

Mondly Free vs Premium

There’s a huge difference between Mondly free vs premium features. If you use the free version of Mondly, you can only complete one lesson daily, the first unit of your target language course (six lessons), one chatbot conversation, and one vocabulary section. You can’t choose the topics, the difficulty, or which words you want to learn.

The activities in the free daily lessons are similar to the lessons in the Mondly premium subscription. It’s a good idea to try a few daily lessons to give you a look at what the Mondly full version is like.

Mondly Premium Features

Mondly Premium offers some interesting features. There are a lot of lessons to choose from that cover a wide range of topics like romance, pets, grammar, banking, and entertainment. Premium also offers an offline mode and hands-free option so you can learn on the go.

There are also courses for certain professions, including flight attendants, restaurant staff, hotel receptionists, healthcare professionals, and shop assistants. I thought these professional courses were interesting because I haven’t come across courses like this in any other language app. They’re a unique selling point for Mondly if you work in one of these industries.

Overall, each Mondly language has the following features in the premium version:

• 250+ lessons per language for beginners to advanced learners
• New lessons continually added
• 33 chatbot conversations that cover daily life
• 36 vocabulary-building lessons
• Speech recognition technology to improve your pronunciation
• Conjugation and grammar tables to help you speak more fluently
• Access to the Mondly Kids and Mondly AR apps

Mondly Lessons

The Mondly lessons are similar to apps like Busuu and Memrise. You complete different activities to learn about a specific topic. The pace of the lessons felt slow and repetitive sometimes though. They were short and simple to complete, and you can easily jump around from topic to topic. This helped me stay engaged.

Overall, I think the lessons are farily standard, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If a lot of apps have lessons similar to these, they must work to some extent.

One thing I did notice was that there isn’t much difference between the beginner, intermediate, and advanced lessons. I chose beginner lessons in Bulgarian and advanced lessons in Spanish, and completed very similar lessons in both languages. However, I’ve spoken with Mondly, and now that they’ve been acquired by Pearson, they’re working on updating this content. We’ll update the review when there are changes.

Because of this, I don’t think Mondly is the best language app for high intermediate to advanced learners. It’s better for complete beginners to low intermediate language learners.

Mondly Chatbot Conversations

Another Mondly premium feature is the chatbot conversations. After you finish the lessons in each topic, you can complete a chatbot conversation that helps you practice using your new vocabulary in a full conversation.

I didn’t find the chatbot conversations to be particularly helpful. The conversations were interesting, but there was too much help and guidance during the conversation. You choose your responses from multiple choices. After you listen to the audio, you pronounce each phrase of the conversation using Mondly’s speech recognition technology.

Like the lessons, these chatbot conversations can be really helpful for beginners and low intermediate users. The conversations do have some interesting topics. You can have a business meeting, make an appointment at the doctor’s office, and learn to make new friends.

Grammar and Conjugation Tables

Another Mondly premium feature are the grammar and conjugation tables. It’s difficult to learn verb conjugations in any language, but Mondly’s tables make it easier. The tables show the conjugation in your target language, in your native language, and you can listen to the pronunciation. You can easily scroll through different tenses to get familiar with the conjugations.

You can access the conjugation tables in the lessons by clicking on the verbs. I thought this was a helpful way to include them because you can practice saying the example sentence in different tenses and with different conjugations. This was probably my favorite feature in the Mondly premium app.

Mondly VR App

Mondly is the first popular language app to offer virtual reality (VR)! It gives you an immersive experience by using chatbots and speech recognition. You can download the Mondly VR app through Oculus or Steam, but you will need a VR headset to access the content. Right now only 30 of the 41 languages are available.

Check out the video below to see how it works:

This is meant to complement what you have learned on the app though, not replace it. Topics are similar to those on the app, such as ordering dinner in a restaurant and checking into a hotel. It seems like the experience is not a perfect one yet, but I will be keeping an eye on this to see how it improves in the future.

Mondly AR App

The Mondly AR app is a part of the premium subscription. AR stands for augmented reality, and the Mondly AR app is the first language learning app I’ve seen that incorporates this technology. AR seems to be a growing trend in the app world, so it’s interesting to see it used in language learning.

AR apps use the camera on your phone and overlay digital animations on top of it. The best aspect of the Mondly AR app is that you don’t need to be tech savvy to use it. It’s user-friendly and easy to set up.

The Mondly AR app currently has 10 different lessons you can complete, as well as three conversation activities. The lessons are pretty simple. Like the regular Mondly app, the pace is also slower than what I would like. The app seems to be in its early stages, so it doesn’t offer a lot of content right now. It’s a cool addition to the premium subscription, but I wouldn’t pay for it on its own.

The Mondly AR app is fun to play with, but you won’t really learn a lot from it. At least not right now. It includes all of the same languages that the regular Mondly app includes, so it’s worth trying out. I’m excited to see how the Mondly AR app develops in the future!

Mondly Kids App

Another addition to the premium subscription is the Mondly Kids app. Kids language apps are starting to become more common, which I think is great. Signing up for the Mondly Kids app is very similar to signing up in the regular Mondly app. You choose your original and target languages and the level. The Mondly Kids app offers language lessons for preschool and school-aged children.

The languages in the Mondly Kids app are also the same as the other Mondly apps, which means you can learn as a family. The activities and topics are also very similar, too. The main difference between the regular app and the Mondly Kids app seems to be the design. Similar to the Mondly AR app, the Mondly Kids app is a nice addition to the premium subscription. I don’t have kids, but if I did, I don’t think I’d pay for the Mondly Kids app on its own.

Mondly Languages

With a Mondly monthly subscription, you only get access to one language. But with the lifetime access subscription, you will have all 41 languages available. All language courses have the same topics such as planning a vacation and restaurants. The app also has grammar topics, but they are also taught in the same way even though grammar varies so widely between the different languages.

Mondly Arabic Review

Mondly Arabic teaches helpful phrases, but it’s more effective if you know the Arabic alphabet first. If you don’t, the app includes a switch where you can toggle back-and-forth between the Arabic alphabet and the phonetic pronunciations.

This course was great for beginners because you truly start from the beginning, learning phrases like “how are you” and “my name is____”. It’s one of the best apps to learn Arabic, but you’ll need to use others once you reach an intermediate level.

Mondly Spanish Review

The Mondly Spanish course is a solid choice for beginners or lower-intermediate learners. The lessons completely leave out the importance of accent marks in Spanish, which I don’t like at all. The accent marks sometimes change the meaning of words (nado=I swim, nadó=he/she swam), so it’s important to use them correctly.

Outside of that, Mondly is a fantastic introduction to Spanish. You’ll need other Spanish apps to become conversational though.

Mondly French Review

The Mondly French course made me feel like I was ready to take a trip to Paris! Because most of the topics (for all the languages) revolve around travel, I think that Mondly would be a good app for anyone preparing a trip to a foreign country.

As with Spanish, accents are important in French, but Mondly ignores this. It’s a really small detail, but could be important if you are trying to become an intermediate or advanced speaker. Overall, Mondly is an excellent place to start, but some other French apps can help you become more fluent.

Mondly Japanese Review

As with Arabic, the toggle switch in the Mondly Japanese course lets you go back-and-forth between phonetic spellings and kanji (Japanese characters).

If you truly want to learn how to write Japanese, you will need to use other Japanese apps. Mondly is definitely helpful for learning important phrases. It also has limited content for more intermediate and advanced speakers.

Mondly Review: Overall Learning Experience

So, is Mondly worth it? With the Mondly AR and Kids app, as well as the other premium features, I think a premium subscription is worth it for beginners. It’s not a good fit for everyone though. The features may not justify the cost depending on how you want to use the app.

The language lessons that come with a Mondly premium subscription range from basic vocabulary to job-specific courses. Because of this, it’s important to compare your language goals to what Mondly offers. Personally, I thought that the job-specific courses were very helpful. If you work in the service or tourism industries, a Mondly subscription could be beneficial for you.

For beginners and new language learners, Mondly can build a great foundation because it starts from the beginning with very basic concepts. For more intermediate or advanced learners, you may not learn a lot of new material in the Mondly app, but it may be able to fill in some holes in your vocabulary.

Mondly Review: Areas of Improvement

While you have the freedom to choose between different lessons and topics, the Mondly activities are all the same. If you’re someone who likes variety, Mondly is not a good choice for you. You can check out other apps like Babbel or Yabla for that. However, if you like structure and learn best through repetition, you should give Mondly a try.

One feature that Mondly misses out on (as well as a lot of other language learning apps) is learning new alphabets. Languages like Chinese and Bulgarian use a different writing system than English, so if you’re learning a language that uses a different alphabet or character system, you’ll need a separate language app that teaches you how to write the characters. Drops is a perfect choice for this. You can also practice this with a tutor on italki or Preply.

The pace of the lessons and chatbot conversations seemed slow, and there’s a heavy focus on translating. There’s an ongoing debate in the language community about whether or not this is an effective way to learn, but for me, it’s not effective. I prefer immersive apps like Lingopie and LingQ.

If your goal is to become more conversational in general, I don’t think Mondly is particularly helpful with conversational skills. Mondly can help you achieve a certain level of fluency, but you’ll need to find other language learning apps to continue learning more intermediate and advanced topics. The best way to speak more fluently is to work with a tutor. Baselang is the best option if you’re learning Spanish, and language schools like Lingoda offer a few more languages.

Mondly Alternatives and Competitors

If Mondly isn’t the right app for you, there are many others to consider. A similar app with better content is Babbel, which also offers a free trial. Rocket Languages and Pimsleur will give you a more comprehensive understanding of your target language, but they may not be as engaging as Mondly. If Mondly seems too structured and you want more freedom in how you learn, there are apps like MosaLingua and FluentU that you could try instead.

Mondly vs Duolingo

Duolingo and Mondly are two of the most popular language learning apps. The main difference between the two is that Duolingo is completely free, but you can pay for Duolingo plus to have unlimited access. While that sounds great at first, it’s important to compare the quality of the content in addition to the price. Duolingo offers a lot of content, but the lessons are too repetitive for me, and the phrases it teaches aren’t always useful. The activities are similar in the Mondly and Duolingo apps, but I found the content in Mondly to be more useful in the real world. Read more in our complete Mondly vs Duolingo comparison or a detailed Duolingo review.

Mondly vs Memrise

Memrise is a really popular language app, and its main focus is vocabulary. Mondly tries to teach a more well-rounded approach to your target language, so their goals are a little different. With real-world videos recorded by native speakers and chatbot conversations, it’s possible to learn more than just vocabulary with Memrise. The prices are very similar too. Although the grammar lessons in Memrise aren’t very helpful (the grammar tables in Mondly are a lot better), it’s a decent choice if you want to increase your vocabulary quickly. Learn more about it in this Memrise review.

Mondly vs MosaLingua

The main difference between Mondly and MosaLingua is the structure. In MosaLingua, you can direct your own learning. There are a huge amount of topics you can choose from, and you can work on whatever you want. The Mondly app is more structured and follows a course format. MosaLingua is by far the cheaper option too. Depending on what type of learner you are and what your goals are, MosaLingua might be a better fit for you. Read more about it in the MosaLingua review.

Mondly FAQ

About This Mondly Review

This is an independent Mondly review, and the company has not sponsored this article. To write this review, I purchased a one-month subscription to the app and used it for a few hours to thoroughly test its content and features. I also found additional information on the Mondly website to verify my findings.