You did two years of Babbel Spanish and liked how it explained things. Now your partner's family is in Nablus, so you open the app, scroll the language list, and Arabic isn't on it.
Short answer: no. As of this writing, September 2026, Babbel's catalogue has no Arabic course. What it does have is a run of European languages, with Turkish, Indonesian and English rounding out the list. Nothing Arabic in any variety, standard or spoken.
So you're shopping again. Below: what to look for, and a decision Babbel never asked you to make in Spanish that Arabic forces before you spend a cent.
Why the gap surprises people
Arabic has more speakers than every language on Babbel's list except English and Spanish. The app teaches Danish. It teaches Indonesian. So the missing course reads like an oversight.
It probably isn't one. Babbel builds each course around one standard form of a language with one grammar to explain. Arabic breaks that model. The written standard and the spoken dialects sit far enough apart that a course has to pick one. A course in the standard teaches something nobody chats in. And a dialect course only sells to people headed for that one region, which is a much smaller market than the word "Arabic" suggests. We've written about how Duolingo handled the same decision. It picked the standard, and its learners can read the alphabet and can't order coffee.
Babbel hasn't picked at all. Until it does, you're choosing from other people's courses.
What a Babbel learner should look for
Babbel people tend to be a type. You want the grammar said out loud. You like a dialogue you can read along with, and a sentence on screen beats repeating one blind. Here's how to shop for Arabic with that in mind.
First, find out which Arabic is in the course. Read the first paragraph of the description. If it says "Modern Standard" or fuS7a and never names a country, it's teaching the news register.
Second, insist on audio for every single word. Dialogue recordings alone won't do it. The two throat sounds in (hello) and (reasonable) are written 7 and 3 in our system because English has no letter for them, and no page will teach them to you. Your ear has to.
Third, check that the grammar gets explained somewhere. Take "I want." In Palestinian it's , a little stub that takes possessive endings, so "you want" is biddak and "we want" is biddna. A Babbel-shaped course tells you that on the page. An audio-only one leaves you to notice it after forty examples. You know which kind of learner you are.
Last, look for a way to review only what you keep missing. If you drop (I don't know) in week three, you want to drill that one line without replaying the whole lesson.
The choice Babbel never made you face
In Spanish you learned Spanish. In Arabic, the very first fork is whether you learn Modern Standard Arabic or a spoken dialect, and the two share less than most learners expect.
| English | Modern Standard | Palestinian |
|---|---|---|
| I want | ||
| coffee | ||
| here | ||
| who? | ||
| very | ||
| how? |
Some pairs are cousins, and some share nothing. Modern Standard is what schools and newsreaders use, and every Arab learns it as a school subject. The dialects are what people speak at home, at the shop, on the phone. If you want to read, start with the standard. If you want to talk to your in-laws, start with their dialect. Should you learn MSA or dialect first walks the whole argument, and which Arabic dialect should you learn helps you pick a country once you've decided on speech.
Options by goal
No prices here, since they change monthly.
Spoken Levantine, hands-free, in the car. Pimsleur's Eastern Arabic. Half an hour of listening and repeating, no screen, and a dialect that tilts Syrian and Lebanese. Strong on pronunciation, thin on vocabulary, and it never explains anything. Our Pimsleur Arabic review has the full picture.
Spoken Levantine, closest to Babbel's shape. Mango Languages' Levantine course. Short dialogues, a word-by-word breakdown under each line, native audio, and a decent chance your public library gives it to you free. Its Levantine is a general one, with a Syrian and Lebanese tilt. We reviewed it in Mango Languages Levantine Arabic review.
Modern Standard, for reading. Rosetta Stone, which teaches the standard by pictures and inference. Fine if the goal is the script and the news. Useless for a phone call, for reasons laid out in does Rosetta Stone teach Levantine Arabic. Duolingo does the same job for free, with more alphabet drilling.
Correction from a human. A tutor on italki or Preply, from the city you care about. No app corrects you well. Book an hour a week and use something else between sessions.
Spoken Palestinian specifically. Tfaddalu, our app. It teaches urban Palestinian, the Arabic of Jerusalem, Ramallah and Bethlehem, with a recording on every word, ten minutes a day, and spelling in plain letters with 3 for ع and 7 for ح. Free to try. It's named after , the word you'll hear at every doorway, and it won't teach you Egyptian or the script. The wider comparison is in the best app to learn Arabic in 2026, and the Levantine shortlist narrows it to that region.
Common questions
Does Babbel have an Arabic course? No. As of September 2026 there's no Arabic on Babbel in any form, standard or dialect. Its catalogue is mostly European languages, with Turkish, Indonesian and English alongside them. If you've seen a listing that says otherwise, it's out of date or it isn't Babbel.
Will Babbel add Arabic? We haven't seen an announcement, and we'd only be guessing about their plans. If a course does appear, the first thing to check is which Arabic it teaches. A Modern Standard course would help you read; it wouldn't help you talk to anyone's family.
What's the closest thing to Babbel for Arabic? For a dialect, Mango Languages. Its Levantine course is short dialogues with a word-by-word breakdown, which is the closest anyone gets to Babbel's shape, and many public libraries give it away with a library card. For Modern Standard, Rosetta Stone or Duolingo, though neither explains grammar the way Babbel does.
Should I learn Modern Standard Arabic or a dialect first? If the goal is talking to people, the dialect. Nobody chats in Modern Standard, and a dialect speaker follows the news without much trouble. Start with the standard only if reading is the point, or your course is a university programme that requires it.