Want to learn Spanish? These apps and online courses are here to help.

Lengalia has 24 different self-paced online courses, and all the courses follow the Common European Framework for Languages, a standard certification program. While most sites stop at an intermediate level, Lengalia offers advanced courses as well, with class options for every learner from beginner to expert. When you finish your selected course, Lengalia will give you a certificate of proficiency, which is widely accepted at jobs around the world. 

The website looks pretty dated, and stock photos litter the lessons, so they might not be as engaging as some other updated sites. But if aesthetics aren’t important to your Spanish education, Lengalia has some great content like podcasts, videos, a vocabulary trainer, a verb conjugator, a virtual teacher, and more. Among the 24 different Spanish courses, there are over 280 lessons available, over 32,000 exercises, and over 25,000 vocabulary words, so there's no shortage of material here. 

You can choose between having the site guide you through your lessons, or focus on your interests, strengths, and weaknesses to customize your learning plan. All the courses are self-paced, so you can complete them on your own schedule, no hard deadlines required. There’s also a two-day trial, so you can try it out before you commit to the subscription. 

Like most sites, you save money if you pay for more months at a time. You can usually get 50% off a year subscription, bringing the cost to just over five bucks per month. It’s pretty inexpensive for a certification program, and the site is full of different types of content, so it’s likely to fit however you learn.

Babbel is an app built for those who don’t have enough time in the day to sit down for a full language course. Users can practice at their own pace with short, expertly crafted lessons and develop real-life conversation skills with native speakers. You can even pick interesting topics, such as business or travel, that will teach you relevant vocabulary and help you hone in on the area of your choice. Speech recognition technology is also utilized to build confidence faster and help you speak your new language sooner.

edX gives you the option of taking some courses for free, but the catch is that you just lose your progress after four weeks. It's plenty of time to finish, but if you want a certificate for your LinkedIn account saying that you completed the program, you'll have to fork out forty to fifty bucks to learn without the time limit, and you get the official certificate at the end.

Each chapter combines reading and hearing Spanish, which is so important. If you don’t always read things in your head with correct Spanish pronunciation, edX gives good practice should you ever travel to a Spanish-speaking country and don't want to totally embarrass yourself in front of the locals. 

The courses definitely feels like school, not a game or a fun pastime, with few really engaging features. The lessons are chopped into small pieces, though, so it works for short attention spans. There are a few different course options, from Basic Spanish 1 through Basic Spanish 3, plus more fun Spanish topics like "A travel by Spanish America: Spanish for beginners" and "Spanish for beginners: Learn in Paradise." Each course is also taught by a university, so you can even take classes from universities in Spanish-speaking countries.

The hardest part of the Spanish language is verb conjugation. With enough practice, it’s a grammar rule just like “there,” “their” and “they’re” (assuming you got that down). My favorite exercise on Conjuguemos makes verb conjugation a little less intimidating with fun, interactive conjugation exercises.

Conjugemos teaches the Spanish basics similar to how you would learn them in an actual classroom. Go to the textbooks tab and find “Breaking the Spanish Barrier 1” for beginner vocabulary. There’s also vocab by theme, and you can practice with flashcards, quizzes, and games.

Despite the elementary graphic design, the site is most useful for those with some elementary experience with the language. There are exercises for grammar concepts, including the subjunctive and indicative moods, plus all the tenses — something neglected by apps like Duolingo. Conjuguemos doesn’t have pronunciation exercises, but you can practice listening with listening activities videos from native speakers. Accents change with each region, just like someone from Mississippi sounds differently than a Bostonian, so the variety of speakers will help you to better understand all Spanish accents.

The site can be accessed for free without even creating an account, but you won't be able to save your progress or record your grades. With a free account, you'll be able to do those two things, plus get access to all of the public games, activities, and printable worksheets. 

Yes, it’s another animal that wants to teach you a language. Oh deer.

LingoDeer lets you purchase lifetime access to the lessons for $99, so if your resolutions are a bit inconsistent, you won’t lose money. If you'd rather pay monthly, you can do that for $12 per month.

Unsurprisingly, the site is a lot like Duolingo. There’s lots of fill-in-the-blank questions accompanied by bright graphics. But it teaches grammar and pronunciation in conjunction with vocabulary. The story function lets you use your device’s microphone to respond to questions, which gives you pronunciation and speaking practice. The stories teach cultural knowledge, too, which is important to travel and fluency. 

You can access the site through the web app, or on your smartphone from the iOS/Android app. LingoDeer brings users to an intermediate level — 600 class hours of work — so once you learn the basics, you’ll have to find another site to try.

HelloTalk connects you with native speakers in an app that’s a lot like Facebook Messenger. It's like having pen pals, but through instant messaging, and speaking different languages. The goal is to get help with Spanish while teaching others English at the same time. You can write journal-like entries to your profile, and users edit it to improve your grammar. Then, you can take a red pen to others’ posts too.

The app knows you’re learning, so it has features to make communication easier. Press on the message for the app to translate it into English for you. This way, you can stay off Google Translate. There are text, voice, and video chat options in the chats, for ultimate speaking and listening practice. The free version of the app lets you learn one language and teach one language at a time, translate five times per day, and initiate up to five new chats per day. The paid version loosens up those restrictions quite a bit.

Look for people around your age or users with similar interests tagged in their profile, so you'll have more to chat about. With over 25 million members on the app, you might find a friend or two along the way as well. There are also learning games and immersive lessons in the app available for an additional fee, if you want to supplement your chatting practice. 

News in Slow Spanish combines journalism with language education. The site produces around 20 news articles a week with beginner, intermediate, and advanced vocabulary options — so you can read about the daily happenings while advancing your language skills.

But multitasking comes with a price, with monthly memberships priced at just under $23. It’s quite expensive for the few formal lessons available, but the site is a novel idea. Some articles and basic Spanish lessons are free on the site, so you can try them out before you buy the membership.

If you don’t have a ton of free time, but want to keep up with today’s news and learn Spanish, this site will save you some time. It's also real, relevant content, instead of the fake conversations you read and participate in on other sites. Each article has both text and audio, so you can follow along and see the words as you hear them. Difficult words are highlighted and translated when you move the mouse on them.

You could always just read Spanish news outlets, but they probably use vocabulary beyond your level. News in Slow Spanish will help you build up to reading the regular newspapers.

If you're looking for a language experience that mimics a semester of a college class, Coursera is the best pick. Coursera offers courses and specializations through universities, with curriculums designed by academic professionals. This class is a specialization, meaning that it's made up of a series of courses, and is offered through the University of California Davis. 

The classes are geared towards beginning Spanish learners who have little-to-no previous knowledge of the language, and will help you build up your vocabulary with 1500 of the most commonly used Spanish words and phrases. Courses are completely online, and the schedules are adaptable, allowing you to set flexible deadlines to work at your own pace. Coursera really works like a college class — at the end of each course, participants will complete a written assignment and an oral presentation that will be graded by their peers to apply the grammar and vocab skills learned through the course. There's also a final project that will have you write up a detailed travel plan (in Spanish, of course) for an imaginary business trip or vacation to a Spanish-speaking country. 

Coursera recommends that you dedicate around five hours per week to the courses — at this pace, you'll complete the entire specialization in about five months, with a certificate to prove it. If you've been thinking about shelling out money to take a class at the local college, Coursera will give you basically the same experience for much cheaper. After the seven day free trial, this course on its own costs $49 per month, or you can get access to it with a Coursera plus subscription for $399 per year. If you're having trouble paying for your language course, Coursera also has a financial aid program that students can apply to.