Busuu vs Speak: pricing, features and which to choose

Busuu was founded in London in 2008 by Bernhard Niesner and Adrian Hilti, and Chegg acquired it in early 2022 for about $436 million. The app teaches Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. Courses follow the Common European Framework of Reference levels from A1 to B2, and McGraw Hill-branded certificates mark completed levels, though they are not formal accreditation. Busuu's distinguishing feature has long been its community: learners submit written and spoken answers that native speakers correct, and they correct learners of their own language in return. Busuu also sells Busuu Live classes and a business program.

Lessons mix vocabulary, dialogues, grammar tips, listening and speaking, and usually take about 10 minutes. A study plan sets a weekly goal toward a target level. Grammar Review and Vocabulary Review resurface items based on your mistakes and progress, and Offline Mode lets you download lessons. The community exercises are available even on the free plan, though corrections arrive whenever another user responds, with no set turnaround. Busuu runs on iPhone, Android and the web, and progress syncs across them. Specialty courses on travel, business and pronunciation sit on the top tier, and Busuu Live adds one-to-one or group classes with qualified teachers for an extra fee.

Busuu's strength is structure combined with real people: clear CEFR levels, grammar explanations and native-speaker corrections that most apps lack. Its weaknesses are a B2 ceiling, AI speaking tools limited to five languages on the top plan, and reviewers' complaints about cancelling subscriptions. Babbel offers similar structured courses with Babbel Speak for AI conversation. Duolingo is free and gamified, with Duolingo Max for AI video calls. Pimsleur focuses on audio, and Speak and Praktika center on open AI tutoring. Choose Busuu if you want a free, level-based course with feedback from native speakers, and add Premium Plus when you need AI speaking practice.

Speak is the consumer language-learning service from Speakeasy Labs, founded by Connor Zwick and Andrew Hsu in the mid-2010s and launched commercially in South Korea in 2019. It is a privately held Delaware company, independent of Duolingo, with OpenAI acting as an investor and technology partner. The company reported more than 10 million downloads, customers in over 40 countries, a 75-person workforce, and $162 million raised by December 2024, including a $78 million Series C at a reported $1 billion valuation. Those figures describe company-reported scale rather than audited active users. Speak’s expansion plans have included Europe, Latin America, and the United States, giving the service a broad commercial ambition despite its focused emphasis on spoken language practice.

Speak organizes study around the Speak Method: Learn, Practice, Apply. Learners first meet useful phrases in teacher-led, voice-first lessons, then repeat and drill them, and finally use them in open-ended roleplays or conversations. The structure places speaking patterns and repetition ahead of explicit memorization of grammar and vocabulary rules. Speak Tutor answers grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation questions, supports conversation and word games, and can generate personalized lessons. Made For You lessons adapt to learner needs, with Premium allowing up to three daily lessons and Premium Plus allowing unlimited custom lessons. Roleplays add objectives, hints, corrections, level-appropriate language, and changing learner-state information, creating a guided practice environment rather than an unstructured chat. Recent additions include adaptive lessons, side quests, refreshers, and audio-first practice.

Speak is narrower and more voice-centered than Duolingo Max, which offers broader course coverage, stronger gamification, and a substantial free tier. Speak is more curriculum-led than Praktika, whose avatar-based tutor experience emphasizes character interaction and visual motivation. ELSA Speak focuses more tightly on phoneme-level pronunciation diagnosis, while Speak combines guided lessons, roleplays, tutor questions, and progression. Speak also has functional boundaries: non-English target courses currently require an English native language, pronunciation coaching is narrower and English-focused, and feature availability varies by country, course, platform, and plan. Audio, learning activity, and recordings may support service improvement and AI training or refinement under the privacy notice. Choose Speak if guided speaking practice matters most.