Prices checked 9 August 2026

Every Thai app compared, and what each one charges you for

The shortlist is short, one famous name is not on it at all, and the pricing gap between the options is larger than anyone expects. Here are the numbers.

The short version

Duolingo does not teach Thai

Worth stating first, because it is the most common wrong assumption. Duolingo has no Thai course for English speakers and never has. It covers roughly 42 languages including Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi, Navajo, Klingon and High Valyrian, and not Thai. The volunteer programme that produced its smaller courses closed in 2021, and its large 2025 expansion added new interface languages for the big courses rather than new target languages.

So if that is what brought you here, the honest answer is that the app you were looking for does not exist and you are choosing between the three below.

Sabai Thai

Cost: free. All 34 chapters, 1,684 exercises across 19 formats, 1,406 native recordings. No trial clock, no chapter wall, no hearts on lessons.

What you are getting for nothing: speech recognition that compares your pronunciation to the target word by word and tells you which syllable missed. Spaced repetition under everything. A tone ear-trainer with pitch curves, because tones are the actual hard part of Thai and they deserve their own tool. A finger tracer for all 68 letters. Five games, including a detective mystery you solve by reading Thai clues. Live two-player practice rooms with another learner. Eight practical tools including a taxi address card you show the driver. The full list.

Optional: Sabai Pro at €69.99 a year adds an AI tutor and a review drill built from your own worst words. Extras on top of a free course, rather than the key to one.

Not for you if you are on an iPhone. There is no iOS build. It is also not on Google Play yet.

Ling

Cost: $16.99 a month, $64.99 for six months, or $89.99 a year after a 7-day trial. The free tier is limited lessons with ads.

A polished gamified course with a real Thai track, dialogues and native audio, covering 40-odd languages on one subscription. It runs on iOS, which we do not.

The trade is straightforward: you are paying $89.99 a year for lesson access. That is the product. If Thai is the only language you want, you are also subsidising 39 courses you will never open. The longer comparison.

ThaiPod101

Cost: Basic, Premium and Premium PLUS, listed at $4, $10 and $23 a month on a 24-month commitment during the promotion running when this was checked. Shorter terms cost considerably more per month, which is worth reading twice before you sign up for two years.

An enormous archive of recorded lessons with Thai and English hosts. If you learn by listening and want sheer hours of material, nothing else comes close, and Premium PLUS is the only option on this page that puts you in front of a human teacher.

It is a library rather than a course, so structure and daily momentum are on you. The free tier gives you the first three lessons of every pathway.

Sabai Thai, ours

34 chapters across 19 exercise formats, with speech recognition that compares what you said to the target word by word rather than handing you a percentage. Spaced repetition schedules every word before you lose it, and Smart Review builds a drill from the ones you keep relapsing on.

Around that: dedicated drills for the two genuinely hard parts of Thai, a tone ear-trainer and a finger-tracer for all 68 letters. Five games including a detective mystery you solve by reading Thai clues. Live two-player practice rooms with another learner over a room code. Eight practical tools, of which the taxi address card gets used more than the rest combined. 1,406 native recordings, bundled, so it all works on a plane. The full list, including what is not built.

Cost: free, and that means the course, not a trial. A paid tier adds an AI companion, Smart Review, full history and cosmetics; no lesson is ever in it and hearts have never applied to lessons.

Best for: a self-directed learner on Android who wants the depth without a subscription. Weak for: iPhone users, because there is no iOS build. Also no human teachers, no CEFR alignment, the course tops out at upper intermediate, and it is not on Google Play yet.

Which one

The thing worth noticing about the pricing

Two of the three paid options charge you for access to lessons. That is a reasonable business and it is also why people stall: the month you are busy is the month you cancel, and the cancelled month is usually the one you do not come back from.

Our bet is the other way round. The lessons are free permanently, so a quiet month costs you nothing and you still have the app in March. Pro exists for the things that cost real money to run, mainly the AI tutor. Skip it and you still have every chapter, every recording and every drill, which is not true of anything else on this page.

What none of them do

No app makes anyone fluent, ours included. They build vocabulary, reading and listening comfortably; they build speaking badly, because speaking needs a person who will not wait for you. Everything above is a supplement to talking to Thai people, not a substitute. Any app that tells you otherwise is selling.

Sources, all read 9 August 2026: Ling pricing · ThaiPod101 pricing · Duolingo course list (Wikipedia)

Learn the rest in the app

All 34 chapters, every word with native-quality Thai audio. Free, forever.

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