Is there a free alternative to Ling for Thai?

Yes. Sabai Thai puts all 34 of its chapters out free with no trial and no daily limit. The trade-off is that it is Android only and covers Thai alone, where Ling covers 40-odd languages and runs on iOS.

Why would I stay with Ling?

If you are on an iPhone, if you are learning more than one language on the same subscription, or if you want a course that has been polished by a company for years rather than one that is not on the store yet.

As listed on their own pricing page on 9 August 2026: $16.99 a month, $64.99 for six months, or $89.99 a year, with a 7-day free trial. The free tier is limited lessons with ads.

A free Ling alternative for Thai, with the whole course open

Bias declared. This is the website of one of the two apps being compared, so read the opinions with that in mind. Ling's prices came off their own pricing page on 9 August 2026 and are not opinions.

The price, plainly

$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. What you are buying with that is access: the lessons are the product, and the subscription is the door.

Learning a language is a multi-year job, which makes an access subscription an awkward shape. The month you are busy is the month you cancel, and the cancelled month is usually the one you do not come back from. Paying again in March to resume something you were mid-way through is a decision most people quietly decline.

Sabai Thai has no door. All 34 chapters are open permanently, so a quiet month costs you nothing and the app is still there when you come back.

What Sabai Thai does differently

Price is the boring half of the answer, so take it as read and here is the rest.

It listens to you, word by word

Speaking exercises run speech recognition and compare the result against the target syllable by syllable, so you find out which part missed. There is also a shadowing tool that records you and plays it back against the reference audio.

Drills for the parts of Thai that are actually hard

A tone ear-trainer with pitch curves and a quiz, and a finger-tracer for all 68 letters. Building a whole tool for tones is a Thai-specific decision that a 40-language platform has no reason to make.

It remembers your failures, not your streak

Spaced repetition under everything, plus a review built from the words you personally keep relapsing on, which is a different list from the words you never learned.

Games and live practice rooms

Five games, including a detective mystery solved by reading Thai clues, and two-player roleplay with another learner over a four-character room code.

Thai only, all the way down

Consonant classes, classifiers, the ครับ/ค่ะ particles and a taxi address card get proper treatment rather than a slot in a shared template.

The whole reference is on the web

Read the alphabet, the tone rules and every chapter right now without installing anything. Or the full feature list.

When you should stay with Ling

Two real cases, and they are not close calls.

You are on an iPhone. We have no iOS build and no date for one. Nothing else on this page matters if that is you.

You are learning several languages. One Ling subscription covers 40 of them. We have exactly one, and two apps cost more than one.

Otherwise, the things Ling has that we do not are that it is finished and on the app stores, and that its romanization has been checked by people rather than generated. Ours is good enough to read by and occasionally slightly off.

And if you want to pay us something

Sabai Pro is €69.99 a year and buys an AI tutor plus a review drill built from your own worst words, rather than permission to open chapter four. There is a 7-day trial, and if you never take it you still have the entire course.

The recommendation

Switch if you are on Android and Thai is the language you care about. There is no cost to trying, because there is no cost.

Stay if you are on iOS or juggling several languages.

You do not have to decide from a webpage either way. Chapter 1 is right here with the real audio, no install and no account. Twenty minutes will tell you more than this page can.

Learn the rest in the app

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

Get told when it launches