LingQ alternatives

The best LingQ alternatives depend on why you’re leaving. If you want the same tap-a-word reading for less money, look at Readlang. If you mostly learn from Netflix and YouTube, look at Migaku or Language Reactor. If you want polished graded content for one language, Satori Reader (Japanese) and Du Chinese (Mandarin) are hard to beat. And if you want it free and on your own machine, there’s Lute.

LingQ is still a good tool. It’s big, it covers more than 50 languages, and its import system is mature. But it isn’t cheap, the free plan is very small, and some people find it busy. Here’s where to go depending on why you’re leaving, what each option costs in October 2026, and what you give up by switching.

Why people look for LingQ alternatives

When learners say they’re leaving LingQ, it usually comes down to one of four things.

• Price. Premium is $14.99 a month billed monthly, or $10 a month on the annual plan, according to LingQ’s own comparison of its plans (August 2026). Premium Plus, which adds AI voices and AI-simplified lessons, starts at about $22.50 a month on the annual plan.
• The free plan. Free accounts get 20 saved words or phrases in total, 5 imported lessons and 1 playlist. That’s enough to see how the reader works, not enough to use it.
• Clutter. LingQ has grown a lot of features: lessons, playlists, challenges, AI chat, tutors. Some people love that. Others just want a page of text and a dictionary.
• Video. LingQ can import YouTube and Netflix content, but it turns them into lessons. If you’d rather stay on the video with subtitles you can click, a browser extension built for video may fit better.

None of these means LingQ is bad. It means a different tool might suit you better.

What you give up by leaving LingQ

Be honest with yourself about what you’ll miss before you cancel. Most alternatives below are better at one thing and thinner at the rest.

• The known-word count. LingQ’s running total, and the blue page that shows every word you haven’t met yet, is rare. Readlang doesn’t have it, and Lute and Migaku track word statuses in their own ways.
• The library. Few tools come with thousands of lessons with audio in dozens of languages. With most alternatives, you bring your own material.
• One place for everything. LingQ handles reading, audio, imports and review in one app. Switching often means pairing two tools, such as a reader plus Anki.
• Your history. Your saved words and known words don’t move automatically. See the FAQ below for workarounds.

The short list

Prices are US prices in October 2026, taken from each product’s official site where it publishes them. Prices change and some tools run sales, so check before you pay.

Readlang: the closest like-for-like swap

Readlang does the core LingQ job: open a text, click a word, see a translation, and save it as a flashcard. It’s lighter and much cheaper.

What it does well

• The free plan is usable. Single-word translations are unlimited. Phrase translations and AI context explanations are capped at 10 a day each.
• It reads the web. A Chrome extension and a bookmarklet let you translate words on any page, so you don’t have to import first.
• It handles books and video. You can upload your own texts and DRM-free EPUBs, and sync YouTube videos with their transcripts. It doesn’t support Netflix.
• Price. Premium is $6 a month or $48 a year, with unlimited translations. Premium Plus ($15 a month or $120 a year) adds high-quality voices for whole texts and stronger AI features.

Where it falls short

Readlang’s built-in library is smaller than LingQ’s. It can underline words you’re already studying, but at the time of writing it has no LingQ-style known-word count, and it doesn’t mark every untouched word on the page as new. If that color-coded “how much of this do I know?” view is what you love about LingQ, you’ll miss it.

Best for: learners who want cheap, unfussy click-to-translate reading on the web and in their own books. We go deeper in Readlang vs LingQ.

Migaku: for learners who live in video

Migaku is built around native media. Its browser extension adds clickable subtitles to Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, Rakuten Viki and Animelon, and it works on ordinary web pages and on video files you own. One click turns a sentence into a flashcard with the word, the sentence, audio, a screenshot and a definition.

What it does well

• Sentence mining is fast. If you already make cards from shows, this is the smoothest workflow on the list.
• It estimates difficulty. Migaku tracks what you know and estimates how hard a video or page will be.
• There’s a course, too. Migaku Fundamentals covers writing systems and pronunciation, and Migaku Academy covers roughly the first 1,500–1,700 words and a few hundred grammar points, depending on the language.
• Mobile apps cover flashcards, YouTube, web browsing and OCR for printed text.

Where it falls short

Migaku supports 11 languages: Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Spanish, English, German, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Italian and French. There’s no free plan, only a free trial (10 days at the time of writing), and Migaku offers a full refund within 14 days of purchase. Standard is $10 a month or $96 a year, Early Access is $15 a month or $144 a year, and lifetime is $499. It also asks for more setup than a reader like Readlang.

Best for: anime, drama and YouTube learners, especially in Japanese, Chinese or Korean, who like building their own cards. Our Migaku review and LingQ vs Migaku go further.

Language Reactor: the cheapest way into dual subtitles

Language Reactor is a Chrome extension with about 2 million users on the Chrome Web Store. It adds dual-language subtitles, a pop-up dictionary and fine playback controls to Netflix and YouTube. You can also import text and get a machine translation plus text-to-speech.

It’s the lowest-friction way to make a show you’re already watching more useful, and the free version goes a long way. A paid Pro tier adds extras such as generated subtitles for videos that lack them, saved-word highlighting and export. Language Reactor doesn’t publish Pro pricing on a public page, so check the extension for the current price.

The trade-off: it’s a desktop extension (Chrome, and it also runs in Edge), and it’s a watching tool first. Reading long texts and reviewing vocabulary are thinner here than in LingQ.

Best for: people who watch a lot of Netflix and YouTube and want help without leaving the player.

Satori Reader and Du Chinese: depth in one language

If you’re learning Japanese or Mandarin, a single-language app can beat any general tool, because humans wrote and annotated every line.

Satori Reader has more than 1,650 Japanese episodes with native-speaker audio, inline grammar explanations and word definitions in context. You can read in kanji, kana, or kanji with furigana. Pro is $9 a month or $89 a year, and selected episodes are free. It’s aimed at intermediate learners.

Du Chinese has more than 3,000 readings and 80+ graded stories, from Newbie to Master, with native audio, a pop-up dictionary and grammar notes. It’s $14.99 a month, $79.99 for six months or $119.99 a year, with some lessons free.

The trade-off for both: you read their content, not yours. They don’t import articles or books.

Best for: Japanese or Mandarin learners who want reliable, level-appropriate material rather than wrestling native content too early.

Lute: free and open source

Lute (Learning Using Texts) is a free, MIT-licensed app that you install and run on your own computer. It’s the modern Python rewrite of the older LWT project. You paste or import texts, set up your own dictionaries, and mark words with statuses as you read. It handles multi-word terms and “parent” terms, so the definition for hablar can cover habló.

There’s no subscription, no account and no company that can change the price. The cost is your time: you install it with Python (pip install lute3) or Docker, configure dictionaries per language, and there’s no official mobile app.

Best for: tinkerers, privacy-minded learners, and anyone who wants LingQ-style word tracking for free and doesn’t mind setup.

What about Anki?

Anki isn’t a LingQ alternative on its own. It’s a flashcard app, not a reader. But many people pair a reader with it. The desktop version and AnkiDroid on Android are free, and AnkiMobile on iOS is a one-time purchase that funds development (see apps.ankiweb.net). If you already have a big Anki collection, check which readers can export to it before you switch.

Lumo: coming soon

We’re building Lumo, so weigh this section accordingly. It isn’t available yet. It’s a reading and listening app that keeps LingQ’s word-level idea and adds a difficulty label to every text, based on how many of its words you already know: Easy at 98% and above, Just right from 90%, Challenging from 80%, and Hard below that. You can import pasted text, web articles, YouTube videos with an interactive transcript, EPUBs, and audio or video files with subtitles. Saved words become flashcards scheduled with FSRS, and it works offline.

What it doesn’t have: no browser extension, no Netflix support, and no community or tutors. If those matter to you, the tools above are the better pick today. Planned pricing is a free tier (one language, 5 imports a week) and Pro at $5.99 a month or $49.99 a year.

How to choose

Ask yourself one question: what will you actually spend your hours on?

• Your own articles and books, in any language: Readlang, or Lute if you want free.
• Netflix and YouTube: Language Reactor to start, Migaku if you want serious card-making.
• Japanese or Mandarin, with trustworthy graded material: Satori Reader or Du Chinese.
• A huge built-in library plus imports, and you don’t mind the price: stay with LingQ.

Whatever you choose, the tool matters less than the hours. Most of the benefit comes from reading and listening to lots of material you mostly understand. The research on lexical coverage (Hu and Nation, 2000, Reading in a Foreign Language) suggests you need to know about 98% of the words in a text to read it comfortably without help. Pick the tool that gets you to that kind of text quickest, and makes you want to open it tomorrow. Our piece on the 98% rule explains why.

FAQ

What is the best free LingQ alternative?

For most people it’s Readlang’s free plan, which gives you unlimited single-word translations and 10 phrase translations a day. If you want something completely free with no limits and you’re comfortable installing software, Lute is open source and runs on your own computer.

Is there a cheaper alternative to LingQ?

Yes. Readlang Premium is $6 a month or $48 a year, against LingQ Premium’s $14.99 a month or $10 a month billed yearly. Language Reactor has a free version too, but it’s mainly for video rather than reading.

Is Migaku better than LingQ?

It’s better for some people. Migaku is stronger if you learn mostly from Netflix, YouTube and anime and like making sentence cards. LingQ is stronger for reading, supports far more languages (50+ against Migaku’s 11), and has a much bigger library.

Can I move my known words from LingQ to another app?

Not directly. There’s no standard format for known words, and at the time of writing LingQ doesn’t offer a one-click export of them. Community-made browser scripts can download LingQ vocabulary as a CSV file, and a few tools can take such a list in. Otherwise, the practical workaround is to read easy texts in the new app and mark words known as you go. Expect some manual work.

Does Lumo replace LingQ?

Not yet, because Lumo isn’t available. When it launches it will cover the core reading workflow, with imports, word levels, difficulty labels and FSRS flashcards. But it won’t have a browser extension, Netflix support or tutors at first.