Best Apps to Learn Russian
Short answer: Russian has two hurdles, and almost every roundup spends its time on the small one. The Cyrillic alphabet looks like the wall and is not one. It is a fixed list of letters mapped to sounds, every product here starts you on it, and it ends. The hours go into the grammar behind it. So the useful question is not which app teaches Russian, because they all do, it is which one is still useful after week three.
What we would do. Start free with Duolingo for the alphabet and the first few hundred words. Buy a person for the grammar: italki has no ceiling and lists Russian teachers for beginners, business Russian and TORFL exam preparation. Mondly is the better self-study buy if English is not your first language, because it teaches Russian from your own. And know this before you spend: Babbel's own level table puts its Russian course at A1, its lowest, against C1 for European Spanish. Sources and dates are at the foot of the page.
How hard is Russian, in numbers rather than adjectives
The one neutral benchmark here comes from neither an app nor a blog. The US State Department's Foreign Service Institute publishes how long its own full-time students take to reach a working level, sorted into four categories. Russian is in Category III, "hard languages", at approximately 44 weeks or 1,012 class hours.
What makes that figure worth having is the comparison it enables, because we have written the pages either side of it.
Two honesty notes about that chart, because a number this quotable gets misused. These are full-time government students at 23 class hours a week plus 17 hours of self-study, working toward an integrated score of 3 on the Interagency Language Roundtable scale. It is not a forecast for someone doing fifteen minutes on a phone, and no app on this page will get you there on its own.
Read it as a ratio between languages: Russian costs you meaningfully more than German and nothing like Japanese.
It is also worth putting one marketing claim next to it. italki's own Russian page states that "if you spend 3 hours every day studying Russian, you can speak and write it fluently in one year". Three hours a day for a year is roughly 1,100 hours, so the arithmetic is at least in the same territory as the FSI figure.
We are relaying that claim as theirs, not endorsing the word fluently, which nobody has defined in that sentence.
The alphabet is the part that ends
Cyrillic is the reason people put Russian off, and it is the cheapest problem on this page. It is an alphabet: a fixed set of letters standing for sounds, not a character set you keep adding to for years. Several letters are already familiar, several look familiar and are not, and that trap is the whole of the difficulty.
Every product here starts you there, and italki files it under its beginner category, described on its own site as learning the Cyrillic alphabet and the basics of Russian grammar and vocabulary with a native teacher. The practical consequence is simple: do not pay for the alphabet. It is the one part of Russian a free app teaches perfectly well, and it is over quickly. Save the money for what comes next.
Where the hours actually go
Behind the alphabet is the part the products differ on. Russian nouns and adjectives change their endings according to the job they are doing in the sentence, verbs come in pairs that express whether an action was completed, and word order moves around because the endings are carrying the information English carries by position. None of that is exotic, and all of it needs correcting by someone who can hear you get it wrong.
That is the honest case for a teacher in this particular language, and it arrives earlier in Russian than in Spanish. A self-study app can tell you an ending is wrong. It cannot tell you that the ending you chose changed who did what to whom.
The options, and what each is actually for
Duolingo, best free start for the alphabet
Free, with paid tiers that add an ad-free experience and AI features. For the alphabet and the first vocabulary it is exactly enough, and a daily habit is worth more at this stage than a better curriculum. What it cannot do is hear an unscripted sentence and tell you the case is wrong, which in Russian is the whole of the middle game.
italki, best for the grammar and for exam preparation
One-to-one lessons with native speakers, which is the option with no ceiling: the teacher goes as far as you do. italki's Russian page lists three lesson categories, Russian for Beginners, Business Russian and a Russian Language Level Test category covering TORFL and other exams. If you have a real deadline, that last one is the reason to be here rather than in an app.
Two things we will not tell you, because italki does not publish them. There is no Russian-specific teacher count on its Russian page: the 20,000 figure it prints is site-wide, across every language. And we quote no per-lesson price here; teacher rates vary and our breakdown of what italki actually costs works through the published bands with their date.
The honest catch, and it is about money rather than teaching. You buy italki Credits rather than lessons, and italki's payment terms state that no refunds are given for credits purchased. Credits are removed after twelve months of account inactivity, and lesson packages must be used within six months. Top up for the lessons you have actually booked. The real protection is the trial-lesson satisfaction guarantee, which can be claimed twice within 48 hours.
See Russian teachers and their rates
Mondly, best for learning from your own language
Mondly, now part of Pearson, teaches Russian from your own language rather than assuming English, which is the reason it earns a place here for a household where English is already a second language. Its Russian page describes free daily lessons built on common phrases rather than isolated words, native-speaker audio, reading, listening, writing and speaking exercises, a Russian dictionary, a verb conjugator and speech recognition. The conjugator is more useful in Russian than the feature list suggests, given what verbs do here.
Set expectations from what Mondly itself publishes. It states a lesson runs about 45 minutes and ends with you reconstructing a conversation in your own voice. It publishes no CEFR level for its Russian course, so nobody, us included, can tell you where it stops. The conversation practice is scripted: useful rehearsal, not an unpredictable interlocutor.
See what Mondly Premium includes
Pimsleur, named benchmark for the audio method
Pimsleur teaches Russian through structured audio, with you speaking aloud from the first lesson and no screen required, which suits a commute better than anything else here. We name it rather than rank it, for a reason worth stating: its Russian page does not publish how many levels or lessons the course contains, and secondary sites disagree about the total, so we are not going to print a number we cannot source. Our Pimsleur review covers the method in full.
Babbel, named benchmark and the clearest ceiling
Babbel does teach Russian, and it is one of the few non-Latin-script courses it offers. The number that matters is its own: Babbel publishes a CEFR level per language, and Russian is listed at A1, with additional topics to A2. In the same table, European Spanish reaches C1.
Read that as a design decision rather than a failing. Babbel built a beginner course in Russian and a full ladder in Spanish. The problem is only that a buyer cannot see it from the shop front, and in Russian the beginning is the cheap part. Our Babbel review and the Pimsleur versus Babbel comparison both go through that table language by language.
Rocket Russian, named benchmark
Rocket Languages sells a Russian course built around long interactive audio lessons with grammar and writing work attached. Two facts from its own site are worth having, because they change the shape of the decision rather than the price: Rocket Russian has three levels, beginner through advanced, and courses come with lifetime access, paid once, rather than a subscription.
We name it and we do not link it. Its Russian course page shows no price, and our Rocket Languages review covers what the packages cost on the pricing page, using the German figures we actually read.
What is not on this list, and why
- Lingoda. The live-class school we recommend elsewhere teaches six languages, all European, and Russian is not among them. There is no Russian class to book, so there is no Lingoda option on this page.
- Rosetta Stone. It does teach Russian, and it is one of the products whose non-Latin script range is genuinely wider than Babbel's. We cover it in is Rosetta Stone worth it rather than ranking it here.
- A speaker count. Every roundup opens with one. italki's Russian page says eighth most spoken and approximately 260 million; Mondly's says over 267 million and seventh. Two companies we can earn from, one language, two answers, so we print neither.
A plan that matches the two hurdles
- Weeks one to three, spend nothing. Learn Cyrillic and a few hundred words in a free app. If you stall here, you have lost no money, which is the point of doing it in this order.
- Then decide what the money is for. Self-study that continues after A1, or a person who corrects your endings. In Russian that second question arrives sooner than most learners expect.
- If there is an exam or a deadline, start with the teacher. TORFL preparation is a named lesson category, and no app is aimed at it.
- Check the ceiling before you subscribe, not after. Ask any product where its Russian course stops. The ones that publish a level are doing you a favour, even when the answer is A1.
For the wider comparison, our best language learning apps guide ranks the same products across languages, and the free options covers what you can do without paying. If Russian is a maybe rather than a decision, the German page shows what a Category II language looks like by comparison, and our italki review covers how the teacher marketplace works before you book anyone.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best app to learn Russian?
It depends which of the two hurdles you are standing at. For the Cyrillic alphabet and your first few hundred words, a free app is enough, and Duolingo is the obvious start. For the part that actually takes the time, which is the grammar, a native teacher on italki has no ceiling and lists Russian lesson categories for beginners, business Russian and TORFL exam preparation. Mondly is the sensible middle if English is not your first language, because it teaches Russian from your own. One caution worth knowing before you buy: Babbel does teach Russian, but its own level table puts the course at A1.
Is Russian hard to learn?
Harder than the European languages most people compare it to, and measurably less hard than the ones usually called impossible. The US Foreign Service Institute sorts languages into four categories by how long its students take to reach a working level, and Russian sits in Category III, "hard languages", at approximately 44 weeks or 1,012 class hours. German is Category II at 828 hours. Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean are Category IV at 2,200. Those figures describe full-time government students at 23 class hours a week plus 17 of self-study, so treat them as a ratio between languages rather than a forecast for you.
Is the Cyrillic alphabet difficult?
It is the part of Russian that looks hardest and turns out to be smallest. It is an alphabet, not a character set, so it is a fixed list of letters mapped to sounds, and every product on this page starts you there. italki files it under its beginner category, described on its own site as learning the Cyrillic alphabet and the basics of Russian grammar and vocabulary. The genuine difficulty in Russian is behind the alphabet, in the grammar, which is where the hours in the FSI figures actually go.
How far does Babbel take you in Russian?
To A1, with additional topics to A2, which is Babbel's own published level for its Russian course. That matters more in Russian than it would elsewhere, because A1 is roughly where the grammar that makes Russian hard starts to bite. For contrast, Babbel puts European Spanish at C1 in the same table. So the product many readers would buy first is, in this particular language, built for the beginning only. That is not a reason to avoid it, it is a reason not to expect it to be the whole plan.
How many Russian speakers are there?
We are not going to give you a number, and the reason is more useful than the number would be. italki's Russian page says Russian is the eighth most spoken language with approximately 260 million speakers. Mondly's Russian page says over 267 million, which it calls seventh. Both are companies we can earn a commission from, both are describing the same language, and they disagree. Marketing pages are not reference works, ours included, so where we cannot source a figure to something better we say so instead of picking whichever one reads best.
How we research these pages is on our methodology page. The difficulty categories, the class-hour figures, the description of Category III as "hard languages", the note that the category list is not exhaustive, and the study load of 23 class hours a week plus 17 of self-study toward an Interagency Language Roundtable level 3 are quoted from the US State Department's National Foreign Affairs Training Center page on foreign language training, read from state.gov on August 9, 2026.
italki's Russian lesson categories, its TORFL exam preparation category, its description of the beginner category and the quoted sentence about three hours a day were read from italki's Russian page the same day; the 20,000 teacher figure on that page is site-wide and we have therefore not presented it as a Russian figure, and italki publishes no Russian-specific teacher count.
Mondly's course description, the 45-minute lesson statement and its feature list were read from Mondly's Russian page the same day, where no CEFR level is published. Rocket Russian's three levels and lifetime access were read from Rocket Languages' own Russian course page the same day, which shows no price. Babbel's Russian level of A1 with additional topics to A2 comes from Babbel's own published CEFR table, verified July 28, 2026.
Pimsleur's Russian page publishes no level or lesson total, so none is printed here. Every company is named in text and none is linked. Fawnio can earn a commission from italki and Mondly, and from no other product named on this page; that disclosure and the full list are on our affiliate disclosure page.