You delete Duolingo on a Tuesday. The owl's guilt notifications stop, the streak is gone, and you're standing there with a few hundred Modern Standard words and no plan. Maybe the 2025 "AI-first" announcement and the cut translators pushed you out, or maybe you finished section 4 and still couldn't say "I want a coffee" to a real person. Either way. What now?
Most lists answer that with a ranking. Wrong shape. The apps below don't compete with each other; each does a different job. Pick the job first.
If you want to speak a dialect
The big one, because Duolingo never offered it. There's no Levantine, Egyptian, Gulf, Lebanese or Palestinian course on Duolingo, and the review explains what that cost you. Three options that do:
Pimsleur. Eastern Arabic, which is a Levantine blend tilted toward Syrian and Lebanese, plus a separate Egyptian course. Audio-first: you listen, you repeat out loud, the app asks you again a few minutes later. It's paid, and it's the best of the big names at getting sound out of your mouth in week one. Nothing to read, and the vocabulary stays small. The Pimsleur Arabic review has the full picture.
Mango Languages. Has a Levantine Arabic course, and it's the option most people overlook. Check your public library first; many of them give you Mango free with a card number.
Tfaddalu. Ours, so read this line knowing that. We teach spoken urban Palestinian, the Jerusalem, Ramallah and Bethlehem variety, with audio on every single word and lessons that take about ten minutes a day. Everything's in plain English letters, 3 for ع and 7 for ح, so you can say (I want) and (coffee) on day one without reading script. Free to try. If your Arabic is for Cairo or Casablanca, we're the wrong pick.
Whatever you choose, listen in week one for a b- on the front of present-tense verbs and for as "I don't want." If those show up, you're learning spoken Arabic. Our page on apps for Levantine Arabic goes further.
If you want Modern Standard Arabic
Maybe you left Duolingo for reasons other than the dialect problem, and MSA is still what you need. Reading, a university course, the news, religious texts. Fair enough.
Rosetta Stone. MSA only, picture-matching with no translations. Some people click with the method. There's no dialect option, so don't expect it to prepare you for a conversation in Nablus.
A textbook and a tutor. Honestly the strongest MSA path once you're past the alphabet. Al-Kitaab is the standard university text for a reason, and a tutor who reads with you will move you past A1 faster than any app.
One warning. MSA gets you understood anywhere, in the voice of a newsreader. "What?" will come out as where a Palestinian says . "How?" as instead of . Fine if reading is the goal. The Palestinian vs MSA guide shows how wide the gap runs.
If you want the alphabet
Small confession: this was the part Duolingo did well. If you left before finishing the alphabet units, the cheapest fix might be to go back for those and leave again.
Otherwise any beginner script course will do, no subscription needed. A workbook that makes you write each letter in all four positions works better than tapping tiles. Then read anything. Shop signs, packaging, the names of stations. The letters stick when you're decoding something you care about, like on a road sign, which a local will pronounce .
And don't let the alphabet block you from speaking. Children talk for years before they read. Adults can learn to say and long before they can spell them.
If you want a free option
Duolingo's free tier was probably the reason you picked it. Here's what free looks like elsewhere.
Mango through a library. Already mentioned, and worth repeating because almost nobody knows. A Levantine course, free, if your library subscribes.
Anki. Free spaced-repetition flashcards. It's a drill tool with no course inside it, so you or someone else has to supply the deck. Good for holding on to vocabulary from wherever you're learning. Memrise is the polished cousin, and its official Arabic course is MSA.
Tfaddalu. Free to try, as above.
YouTube and podcasts. Free, plentiful, and the quality swings. Useful once you know enough to tell which dialect you're listening to.
If you want a human
At some point an app stops being the bottleneck and you are. You need someone who'll stop you mid-sentence and say your 7 is coming out as a plain h, or that was the word you wanted, or that you just used the formal "very" when everyone at the table says .
italki or another tutor marketplace. Book by the hour, filter for a tutor from the country or city you care about. You can find Palestinian tutors specifically. It costs real money per session and it's the only thing on this page that answers back.
Apps get you to the point of ordering, asking prices and following a slow conversation. A person gets you past it. The best setup we've seen is one app for daily drilling and one tutor a week to be corrected by, and the full rundown of Arabic apps in 2026 explains how to combine them.
Common questions
What's the best alternative to Duolingo for Arabic? The one that teaches the Arabic you need. For a spoken dialect: Pimsleur, Mango Languages, or Tfaddalu for Palestinian. For Modern Standard: Rosetta Stone or a textbook. For a person who corrects you: a tutor on italki.
Is there a Duolingo alternative that teaches Levantine Arabic? Yes. Pimsleur's Eastern Arabic course, Mango Languages' Levantine course, and Tfaddalu, which teaches spoken Palestinian. Duolingo itself has no Levantine course.
Is there a free Duolingo alternative for Arabic? Mango Languages is free through many public libraries with a card number. Anki is free for vocabulary drills. Tfaddalu is free to try.
Can I keep Duolingo and add another app? Yes, and plenty of people do. Keep Duolingo for the alphabet and the streak, and use a dialect app for speaking. The two barely overlap.