French travel posters from the 1980's
A compact overview of all French learning apps can be found below.
Suitable for: Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced Learners, Students, Travel
Content: French vocabulary trainer (5000 words), playful exercises, grammar
Prices: Free (initial lessons), $12.99
(1 month and 1 language), $59.99
(12 months and all 41 languages)
Discount offer: $99 (Lifetime Access to all 41 Languages)
Overall Value: 
The Mondly App lets you learn the French language in a playful way with a series of interactive exercises.
This French learning program contains:
Summary: Mondly is very similar to the Babbel and Duolingo apps and even better in terms of quality. The cost-benefit ratio for the lifetime access to all 41 languages is unbeatable.
Link: Mondly French App and Online Course
Suitable for: Beginners and Advanced Learners, Students, Professionals
Content: 1300 words (basic course), 5200 words (complete course), complete grammar, verb conjugations, exercises
Prices: $59.95 (Basic Course), $127 (Complete Course)
Overall Value:
The French Basic Course contains a vocabulary trainer for the basic French vocabulary (1300 words) with native-speaker audio, as well as grammar explanations and various exercises.
The vocabulary trainer works with a long-term memory method, in which the new vocabulary is checked at increasing intervals.
You can choose between text input, multiple choice or simply confirming whether you knew a word or not.
The exercises include text comprehension questions, filling in word gaps or just vocabulary lists where one side is covered.
The basic course corresponds to the official language levels A1 and A2 (explanation of CEFR language levels).
The Complete Course contains:
Summary: Much cheaper and even better than the famous Rosetta Stone. There is a free demo version available and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Link: French Basic Course and Complete Course
Suitable for: Beginners, intermediate, advanced learners, students, business
Content: Exercises with native speaker audio and speech recognition, writing, grammar, culture
Prices: Free (initial lessons), $89 (basic course), $249 (full course)
Overall Value:
Rocket Languages offers a complete French language course for download, without monthly subscriptions. It covers the beginner, intermediate and advanced levels (A1-C2).
This French learning software and app features:
Summary: Excellent premium French course on par with Rosetta Stone but without a subscription. You pay only once and own the software. There is also a 60-day money-back guarantee.
Link: Rocket Languages French Learning Software
Suitable for: Beginners, intermediate, experts, professionals, business
Content: French lessons with native speaker audio and speech recognition
Prices:
$ 36 (3 months)
$145 (12 months)
$299 (Lifetime access)
$349 (Lifetime access for 24 languages)
Overall Value: 
How does French learning with Rosetta Stone work?
Rosetta Stone has a different approach to language learning than many other online courses or language apps such as Duolingo, Memrise and others.
The idea behind Rosetta Stone is to learn a language like you did as a child - by using pictures in combination with listening, speaking, and reading.
Each Rosetta Stone lesson includes the following exercises:
Instead, you are supposed to learn the grammar and the meaning of words from the context or recognize the meaning from the pictures.
Rosetta Stone Apps and Online Version:
The Rosetta Stone French learning software can be used online with a subscription for 3 or 12 months or with a Lifetime Access.
In addition to the online version, there are now also Rosetta Stone apps for iPhones and Android smartphones.
Summary: Time-tested method, but the lack of grammar explanations and translations may make Rosetta Stone not suitable for everyone.
Link: Rosetta Stone App and Online Course
Suitable for: Beginners, Intermediate, Advanced, Students, Business French
Content: Vocabulary trainer with native speaker audio and speech recognition, grammar, exercises
Prices:
USD 9.60 (1 month), USD 57 (12 months), USD 159 (unlimited)
Overall Value:
The Babbel French Learning App is quite similar to Rosetta Stone.
Babbel also focuses on combining pictures, listening, reading, writing and speaking. For this, Babbel has native speaker audio of all the words and speech recognition just like Rosetta Stone.
The Babbel App also offers improvements over Rosetta Stone:
Summary: Babbel includes most of the advantages of Rosetta Stone and even eliminates its disadvantages. Highly recommended!
Link: Babbel French App and Online Course
Suitable for: Beginners, intermediate, advanced learners, students, professionals
Content: Video and text lessons, browser extension to import any French texts, vocabulary trainer
Price: $15 (1 month), $120 (12 months)
Overall Value:
The LingQ French App is basically a translation program that is combined with a personalized vocabulary trainer.
In addition to the lessons and texts that are included in this app, any French text can be imported. LingQ has its own browser extension for Firefox, Safari and Chrome to import texts (including ebooks).
You can click on any word in the texts to see a translation and this adds the word to your personal vocabulary trainer.
LingQ also has many videos and podcasts, the content of which appears as a text next to the video or podcast — so that any word there can be clicked on and saved as well.
Unfortunately, there are no grammar lessons, meaning that this app will not suffice on its own to learn French.
Summary: Very interesting way to learn French vocabulary on any subject. However, you need other apps for French grammar and conjugations.
Suitable for: Beginners, intermediate, students, travel vocabulary
Content: Exercises with native-speaker audio and speech recognition, grammar
Prices: $12 (1 month), $60 (12 months), $99 (unlimited)
Overall Value:
The Lingodeer App is somewhat similar to Duolingo or Babbel, but has a more extensive list of features:
Summary: The Lingodeer App impresses with excellent grammar lessons and speech recognition. However, this app has lessons only for beginners and intermediate level learners.
Content: French exercises with native-speaker audio
Prices: Free (with ads), $12.99 (1 month), $60 (12 months)
Overall Value: 
The Duolingo App offers beginner language courses for 36 languages, including French. Duolingo covers mostly the basics as well as some intermediate level French vocabulary.
The major drawback of Duolingo (just like Rosetta Stone) is that there are no grammar explanations.
The vocabulary learning with Duolingo is "gamified", which means it is structured like a game with levels, experience points, achievements, etc.
The interface is relatively similar to the apps from Mondly and Babbel.
Summary: The vocabulary trainer and the exercises of the program are okay. However, it is not possible to learn French grammar with this app.
Content: French exercises with native speaker audio and speech recognition
Prices: $9.99 (1 month), $100 (12 months), $200 (unlimited), $400 (163 languages)
Overall Value:
The Bluebird App offers 146 source languages and 163 target languages and dialects, including French.
The French language course in this app includes the following:
There are about 500 video lessons for learning French, each 5 to 60 minutes long. For languages with other scripts, the words can also be displayed transliterated in the Latin script.
The Bluebird app has no grammar lessons. Instead, you are supposed to understand the grammar "implicitly" from the examples, like in Rosetta Stone.
Summary: The video lessons and the interface take some getting used to, but the exercises are quite varied. Especially for smaller languages, this app is a viable alternative.
Content: French lessons and vocabulary trainer with native speaker audio, grammar
Prices: $22 (1 month), $70 (12 months), $255 (unlimited)
Overall Value:
With the Memrise App you can learn over 90 languages.
This includes even very small languages - however, in such cases the language courses are often limited to just a few lessons.
One special feature of the Memrise learning app is the large number of lessons created by users (native speakers).
The quality of these lessons varies greatly though. For example, only the basic forms of verbs are usually taught, without the conjugations. Some languages also do not have an audio recording of the words at all.
Another good idea of the Memrise app are the user-generated tips and mnemonics for each word to help you memorize them.
Summary: User-generated lessons are a good idea. In practice, the quality of the lessons leaves a lot be desired.
Suitable for: Beginners, advanced learners, students, travelers
Content: French vocabulary trainer, videos with texts, various exercises
Prices: $89 (3 months & 2 courses), $149 (6 months & 4 courses)
Overall Value: 
The LinguaTV App teaches French primarily with videos. The texts and vocabulary also appear next to each video, including translations.
The French courses at LinguaTV include the following exercises:
This app offers French courses for language proficiency levels A1 to C1.
Summary: Learning French with videos works well, but it doesn't justify the relatively high subscription price of this app.
Suitabe for: Beginners, advanced, students, travel vocabulary
Content: French vocabulary, lessons with native-speaker audio and voice recognition
Price: $122 (Basics), $469 (Complete)
Overall Value:
The Pimsleur App is very similar to Rosetta Stone in that it does not give grammar explanations, verb conjugation tables, etc.
Instead, the Pimsleur method is supposed to let you learn the French language intuitively, just like your native language - by combining pictures, reading and speaking (speech recognition).
The complete course includes a total of five courses (levels 1 to 5). The beginner course is level 1. Each of the five courses offers 30 daily lessons of 30 minutes each and there are various interactive exercises.
This French learning course for PCs and Macs also includes a mobile app for Android and iOS systems.
Summary: The most expensive French course, even though it is unlikely that learning with it is much better than with the cheaper apps.
Best Apps to Learn French:
Best French Online Course:
Best Learning Software for Download:
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17 Minutes
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Rocket
(Basics)
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Rosetta Stone
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Rosetta Stone
months
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Rosetta Stone
months
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Mondly
month
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Mondly
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AppsBabbel
AppsBabbel
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AppsBabbel
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LingQ
month
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Lingodeer
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month
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Lingodeer
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Duolingo
month
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Duolingo
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Bluebird
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Bluebird
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Bluebird
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Memrise
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Memrise
month
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Memrise
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months
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LinguaTV
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