Course count is not course depth
Duolingo lists over 40 languages, Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone cover around 25 to 50, while Babbel offers a deliberately small list of 14. A bigger number does not mean a better course — Duolingo's smaller languages are often built by volunteer contributors with far less content than its flagship Spanish or French courses, while Babbel's 14 are all built from scratch by professional linguists for that specific pair.
When picking an app for your target language, check the course depth for that specific language, not the vendor's total language count.
Which apps are strongest per region
For major European languages — Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese — Babbel and Duolingo both have deep, well-built courses, with Babbel edging ahead on grammar depth and Duolingo ahead on gamified habit-building. For East Asian languages — Japanese, Korean, Mandarin — Duolingo, Pimsleur, and Rosetta Stone all offer courses, but none teach with the depth their European courses have; supplementing with Anki for character/vocabulary memorization and italki for a native tutor becomes more important.
Babbel does not teach any Asian, Middle Eastern, or South Asian language at all — it is a European (plus Turkish and Indonesian) specialist, so it should be ruled out immediately for those languages rather than compared feature-by-feature.
Apps built around a specific target language
Lingopie's content library is strongest where popular TV and film exist in the target language, which favors Spanish, Korean, French, Italian, and Japanese; less-produced languages have far fewer show options. Pimsleur's audio-first method translates well across a genuinely broad set of over 50 languages because it does not depend on a large visual content library the way video- or picture-based apps do.
How to check before committing
Before subscribing, open the app's course list for your specific language and skim the number of units or levels available — a course with three levels is a fundamentally different product from one with ten, even under the same app name. Read a few user reviews specifically mentioning your target language, since app-wide ratings often reflect the flagship course quality rather than a smaller one.
Frequently asked questions
Which app teaches the most languages?
Duolingo, with more than 40 courses, though depth varies significantly between its major and minor courses.
Which app has the deepest courses even with fewer languages?
Babbel, whose 14 courses are each built from scratch for the specific language pair rather than templated across languages.
Are there apps that don't teach European languages at all?
No app in this ranking is exclusively non-European, but Babbel is exclusively European (plus Turkish and Indonesian) and teaches no Asian, Middle Eastern, or South Asian languages.
