The Best App to Learn Hebrew in 2026: Duolingo, and What to Use With It

Before you pick an app, decide which Hebrew you are after. Most roundups skip this question, and it decides almost everything.

Modern Israeli Hebrew is what you need to order coffee in Tel Aviv or talk with cousins in Haifa. The Hebrew of the Torah is older, and the siddur mixes biblical verses with later rabbinic Hebrew. All of them use the same letters and share a lot of core vocabulary, but the grammar and the goals differ. Duolingo will not get you through a page of Chumash, and a biblical Hebrew course will not help you with a taxi driver. So this guide is sorted by where you want to end up.

Quick picks: the best Hebrew app for each goal

Prices and plans change, so check the app store page before you pay. Everything below is what we found in November 2026.

Best apps for modern, conversational Hebrew

Duolingo

The most popular place to start, and for good reason. It is free with ads, it teaches the alphabet and your first few hundred words, and the streak gets people to show up every day. As we wrote in our guide to daily practice, showing up is most of the battle. The catch is that the Hebrew course is shorter than Duolingo's big European courses, and the vowel marks drop away early. Treat it as a warm up, then add something with real audio or real reading.

Is Duolingo Hebrew enough on its own?

Probably not, and that is fine. The Hebrew from English course has 84 units, and Duolingo Data, a fan site that tracks course sizes, puts the end of it at about an early A2 level. That means simple everyday sentences, not real conversation. The audio is recorded by native speakers, which is a real plus. The weak spot is grammar. A Hebrew professor at Bucknell University told JTA in 2025 that the course gives very little explicit grammar explanation, and verbs often arrive in big batches with few example sentences each.

So if Duolingo is your main Hebrew learning app, give it some help:

• Look up each new verb on Pealim (free) and read its full conjugation table once.
• Add Pimsleur or HebrewPod101 audio if you want to speak, since Duolingo will not get you talking out loud.
• Move to Clozemaster when the lessons start to feel like guessing.
• If your real goal is the siddur or the Torah, use Duolingo only for the alphabet and switch to the tools further down this page.

Pimsleur

Audio first, built around about 30 minutes a day of listening and answering out loud. Pimsleur's Hebrew has three levels and 90 lessons, and it is the fastest route we know to saying full sentences without freezing. It is a paid subscription with a free trial. You will do almost no reading, so pair it with letter practice.

HebrewPod101, Drops, and Clozemaster

These are good supplements rather than full paths. HebrewPod101 has graded audio and video lessons with transcripts, and works well for listening once you can read a little. Drops drills vocabulary in five minute visual sessions. Clozemaster shows you words inside real sentences and is at its best when you have outgrown Duolingo and feel stuck.

Mango Languages

Conversation-based lessons with native audio. Mango is a paid app, but many public libraries give you full access with a library card, so check yours first. Mango also has a separate biblical Hebrew course, which makes it one of the few apps that covers both.

Best apps for biblical Hebrew

First, learn the alphabet

Twenty-two letters and about ten vowel marks. With ten minutes a day, most adults have them in about two weeks. Our walkthrough on how to learn to read Hebrew as an adult covers it step by step, and every tool below assumes you have done it.

Biblingo

The closest thing to a Duolingo for biblical Hebrew: short daily lessons, grammar, graded readers, and reading in the Hebrew Bible itself. The flashcards are free forever. The lessons cost $9 a month per language after a 10-day free trial that needs no card. It also teaches Greek and Latin, and it is built mainly for Christian Bible students, so expect that framing.

Aleph with Beth

A free video course on YouTube and its own site that teaches biblical Hebrew the way you learned your first language: by watching, listening, and picking it up slowly, with grammar coming later. It is made by a Christian group for Bible translators. The lessons stick to the language, and learners in Jewish forums recommend it too. It is a video series rather than an app, but it is the best free biblical Hebrew course we have seen.

Daily Dose of Hebrew

Free two-minute videos, five days a week, that each walk through the grammar of a single verse. Like Biblingo, it comes from a Christian ministry, here aimed at pastors. It is not for day one. Once you know the letters and a few prefixes, it helps you work out where one Hebrew word ends and the next begins, which trips up most beginners.

Best apps for Torah and siddur Hebrew

If you are Jewish and the real goal is to follow davening or read the parsha, you want something a little different from an academic course. You need the words you will meet in shul, in the order you meet them.

Bayit

This is our app, so weigh what we say about it with that in mind. Bayit has a Learn to read Hebrew course built for the siddur: 24 short lessons that start with the first letter and end with you reading Modeh Ani, the opening of a blessing, and the Shema on your own. Each lesson teaches a few letters or vowels and quizzes you on real words from the prayers, with the Ashkenazi reading noted wherever it differs. Then you read aloud to a voice teacher who listens and helps when you get stuck.

Around the course sits the rest of the app: a small Daily Plan built around the weekly parsha, with the Tanakh text in Hebrew and English side by side, a little tefilah, and a place to ask about any word or verse and get an answer with sources. The first five lessons and one session with the teacher are free, and the rest comes with the subscription. It is on iPhone only. It will not teach you to chat with a taxi driver. That is Duolingo's job.

People sometimes search for a "Duolingo for davening." Duolingo itself teaches modern Hebrew, so it is not that. Bayit's course is our try at it: short lessons, quick quizzes, and prayers in place of coffee orders. A few other small apps teach siddur reading too. What Bayit adds is the daily practice around it, so once you can read a line, you have a reason to read one every day.

Sefaria

The free, nonprofit library of Jewish texts, with Hebrew and English next to each other. As a language tool it is an endless reader. Open a chapter, read the English, then try the Hebrew line by line. Our guide to reading Tanakh with the Hebrew shows how to do that without getting lost.

Pealim

A free reference site, not a course. Type in a Hebrew verb and you get its full conjugation tables. When you start wondering why two words look related, Pealim usually has the answer.

For the prayer side, our guides to the best siddur for beginners and how to start davening go deeper. A siddur with a good translation does a lot of language teaching on its own.

Free ways to learn Hebrew

You can get a long way without paying anything. Duolingo, Clozemaster, and Drops all have free plans for modern Hebrew. For biblical Hebrew, Aleph with Beth and Daily Dose of Hebrew are free, and Biblingo's flashcards cost nothing. Sefaria and Pealim are free for everyone. Mango is free if your library offers it.

A simple plan for your first month

• Weeks one and two: learn the letters and vowels, ten minutes a day.
• Weeks three and four: add one app for your goal. Duolingo or Pimsleur if you want to speak. Biblingo or Aleph with Beth for biblical Hebrew. Bayit or Sefaria if you want to read the parsha and the siddur.
• After that: keep the daily habit and add a second tool only when the first one feels easy.

If you want both modern and biblical Hebrew, that is fine. They help each other. Just give each app the job it was built for.

Ten minutes a day beats an hour on Sunday. Pick the Hebrew you care about, start small, and keep going.

Bayit is the Torah and siddur option on this list: a course that takes you from the first letter to the Shema, with a teacher who listens, and a short Daily Plan around the parsha with Hebrew and English side by side. Try Bayit on the App Store.