Lingvist
Adaptive vocabulary training that drills the words you do not know yet
About Lingvist
Lingvist is a vocabulary trainer that tries to work out what you already know before it teaches you anything. Rather than starting every learner at lesson one, it runs a placement pass that tests your recognition of words across the frequency range, then builds a queue of the words you are most likely to need next and drills them in context sentences. The underlying idea is that vocabulary, not grammar drills, is the bottleneck for most adult learners, and that the useful question is which 2,000 words you are missing rather than which chapter you are on.
The company was founded by a physicist who had worked at CERN and built the first version to learn French, and the product has stayed narrow ever since: it does vocabulary, with spaced repetition and a placement model, across more than 50 language courses. It is honest about that focus, and the focus is also the main reason to hesitate. There is no conversation practice, no speaking partner and no generative tutor here. What the site calls AI is adaptive scheduling and placement rather than a model you talk to, which is a real capability but not the one a reader arriving from an AI directory may be expecting. Lingvist states 7 million app downloads and a Google Editors Choice award on its own pages, and its blog was still publishing in February 2026, so the project is maintained rather than parked.
You pick a course - the pricing page lists more than 50 - and take a short placement test in which Lingvist shows you words and asks whether you know them. From your answers it estimates your vocabulary size and position in the frequency list, then starts serving cards. Each card is a sentence with one word missing, which you type in, so the word is always practised in a context rather than as an isolated pair. Right answers push a word further out in the schedule, wrong answers bring it back sooner. Over time the queue drifts towards the words at the edge of what you know. Custom Decks let you add your own vocabulary - a reading list, a work glossary - and have it scheduled by the same engine, and a progress view shows how many words you have in active recall.
- •Placement By Testing, Not Asking - Estimates your existing vocabulary from a short diagnostic instead of asking you to pick a level
- •Context Sentence Cards - Words are always practised inside a sentence with a gap to fill, rather than as a bare translation pair
- •Adaptive Scheduling - The queue reorders itself continuously around what you keep getting wrong
- •More Than 50 Courses - A wide spread of source and target languages, with more listed as in progress
- •Custom Decks - Load your own word lists and have them scheduled by the same algorithm
- •Progress Insights - A running estimate of active vocabulary rather than a streak counter
- •Lingvist for Business - A separate offering with a dedicated account manager and industry-specific vocabulary courses, priced on request
Adult learners who can already read a little of their target language and have hit the wall where everything is comprehensible except the words, and people preparing for a move or a job where a specific vocabulary matters more than conversational fluency. The Custom Decks feature makes it genuinely useful for domain vocabulary. It is a poor fit for absolute beginners who need grammar scaffolding, for anyone whose goal is speaking confidence rather than recognition, and for anyone unwilling to hand over a card before trying a product, since the 14 day trial requires payment details and there is no permanent free tier.
Pricing
$9.99/mo
- Subscription$9.99/mo
- Lingvist for BusinessContact sales
From the vendor pricing page, 2026-10-14
