Is Sabai Thai actually free, or free to start?

Actually free. All 34 chapters, all 176 lessons and all 1,684 exercises are available without paying, without a trial clock, and without a daily limit. There is a paid tier, but no lesson is in it.

What is in the paid tier then?

Things that cost money to run or that only matter once you are already studying: conversation practice with an AI tutor, and unlimited history of your mistakes and speaking takes rather than the last seven days. The lessons themselves are never gated.

Is there a catch with the audio?

No. Every Thai word and phrase is a pre-recorded audio file - 1,406 of them - bundled with the app. They work offline and they sound the same every time. Nothing is generated by a phone voice at playback.

Do I need an account?

You need one to sync progress across a reinstall. Everything on this website works with no account at all.

A free Thai course with no paywall on any lesson

What "free" usually means

Most language apps use the word to mean one of three things: a trial that expires, a sample of the course with the rest behind a wall, or a full course rationed by lives so that a bad day costs you money. All three are reasonable businesses. None of them are what this is.

Here the entire curriculum is open from the first minute to the last. There is no chapter you cannot reach, no exercise you cannot retry, and no timer counting down while you decide.

What you get without paying

Not a sample. The list below is the app minus one subscription's worth of extras.

All 34 chapters, 19 exercise formats

Greetings through regional dialects and slang. 178 lessons and 1704 exercises in a fixed teaching order, each chapter only using words the ones before it introduced.

Speech recognition on your pronunciation

Speaking exercises listen and compare word by word, so you learn which syllable was wrong instead of getting a score and a shrug.

Spaced repetition

Every word you meet gets scheduled to return just before you would have forgotten it, plus a mistake log so you can see what is actually sticking.

Nine practice drills

Tone ear-trainer, stroke tracer, shadowing, reading drill, classifier quiz, flashcards, listening quiz, numbers drill, placement test.

Five games

Including a detective mystery you solve by reading Thai clues. Hearts apply to the games only, never to lessons.

Live practice rooms, friends and leagues

Two-player roleplay over a room code, a weekly friend leaderboard, and an eleven-tier league with promotion and relegation.

1880 native recordings, offline

Every Thai word and phrase, pre-recorded and bundled. Works with the plane on. Listen to any of them here on the site.

The whole writing system and the tone rules

68 characters with mnemonics and classes, and the fifteen rules that decide a tone. Both are on this site too.

Grammar, culture notes, reading and eight real-life tools

18 grammar topics, a cultural note per chapter, 20 glossed passages, and a taxi address card you will use more than you expect.

All of it in detail, including the five things that are not built.

Where the money comes from, honestly

There is a paid tier called Sabai Pro. It holds conversation practice with an AI tutor, which costs real money per message to run, and unlimited history of your mistakes and speaking takes instead of the last seven days.

That is the whole list. Lessons are not in it and will not be. The reasoning is not charity - a Thai course that stops at chapter three teaches nobody Thai, and nobody recommends an app that taught them nothing.

The honest limitations

Free does not mean best at everything, so: this is Android only, there is no iOS build and no plan for one until an Apple developer account makes sense. There are no human teachers - if you want a person correcting you, this is the wrong tool and one of the others has tutors. The romanization on most entries is generated rather than reviewed by a linguist. And the app is not published on Google Play yet.

Start now, without installing anything

The site carries the same content and the same recordings. Begin with the alphabet if you want to read, or chapter 1 if you want to speak.

Learn the rest in the app

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

Get told when it launches