If you’ve used LingQ or are aware of any other alternatives to Readlang, I’d love to know how you think they compare. What makes you prefer one or the other?
I used lingq for quite a bit but since I’ve started to read on readlang it’s been hard to go back and read on there. I tend to waste a lot of time finding the right definition because the translations are made by the users and most of the time I don’t like them and some are just plain wrong. The reading on here is just so much smoother for me, especially with the explain feature which solves all my problems and is much more accurate and convenient than any dictionary.
I also prefer the layout of readlang, I don’t like how they split lessons on lingq and it’s very buggy sometimes.
I do like that they count known words and stuff like that but it’s mostly superficial. The only advantage it has in my opinion is the lessons have audio but for me personally it’s not that important.
For me the clear winner is readlang especially this last year I’ve seen a lot of improvements and my wife feels the same way.
6 Likes
I’ve used Lingq, Learning with Texts, Lute and I’ve also made my own clone of Lingq which recognized different forms of a german words as one (for example bin, bist, ist are all marked as sein)
I liked how in Lingq you can mark words with different levels of comprehension and get a report of the number of words you already know. I do not think it is such a crucial feature but it is a nice to have to boost your confidence when you see the number of learned words to grow slowly.
I didn’t like Lingq translations. Explain feature in Readlang is vastly superior and what actually made me to pay.
Readlang UI is way cleaner than Lingq’s .
Lingq read aloud feature is better that Readlang. The major problem with Readlang is that if i click on a word to see the translation during Read aloud then Read aloud starts again form the beginning of the page and not from the word i click which is kind of annoying.
Lingq doesn’t have a summary feature like Readlang which i found great.
If i remember correctly Lingq had superior import options comparing to Readlang.
Lingq has some nice features like simplifying a text which i found it very interesting. So you upload a c1/c2 level text, you click a button and you get a simplified version which is much easier to read. So in one way you create you own graded reader.
Every app i’ve used lacked one of the most important features in my opinion: large quantity of interesting content right in the app. For me the killer feature would be having the following functionality right in the app: Write a topic name, select a CEFR level, text length, click a button and start reading. I do this now manually by asking ChatGPT “write an engaging text about X using German b1 level. Text should have at least 1000 words”.
One other interesting feature that both Lingq and Readlang lack is grammatical explanations. I’ve found this feature only in Clozemaster. If you click in Clozemaster the explain button for the phrase “Glaube an die Wissenschaft!” you get the following:
Certainly! The phrase “Glaube an die Wissenschaft!” translates to “Believe in science!” in English. Let’s break it down grammatically:
Glaube: This is the imperative form of the verb “glauben” which means “to believe”. In German, the imperative is used to give commands or make requests. Here, “Glaube” is used to directly tell someone to believe.
an: This is a preposition that often means “in” when used with the accusative case. Prepositions in German can require nouns that follow them to be in a specific case (nominative, accusative, dative, or genitive), and “an” in this type of sentence requires the accusative case.
die: This is the definite article “the”. In German, articles change based on the gender, number, and case of the noun they accompany. “Wissenschaft” is a feminine noun and “die” is the accusative singular form of the definite article for feminine nouns.
Wissenschaft: This word translates to “science”. It is a feminine noun in German (hence, “die Wissenschaft” in the accusative case).
So, put together, “Glaube an die Wissenschaft!” means “Believe in science!” where the speaker is directly addressing the listener and instructing them to have faith or trust in the field of science.
In summary:
“Glaube” = “Believe” (imperative form of “glauben” for a singular “you”)
“an” = “in”
“die” = “the” (feminine, accusative case)
“Wissenschaft” = “science”
The phrase encourages someone to place their trust or belief in scientific principles or knowledge.
In summary, I like Readlang more that Lingq because the UI is minimal and because i find explain and summary feature very important. I would prefer and pay for more AI features (grammatical explanations, content generation, text simplification) than any gamified feature like points, levels, badges, detailed reports ) or advanced review system.
Outsourcing complex language learning features to AI is the future. It might be expensive at the moment but prices will go down eventually as tech goes mainstream.
5 Likes
That’s unexpected and sounds like a bug. For me if I translate a word it will pause the Read Aloud but when I restart by pressing Space or clicking the play arrow button at the bottom it it will continue from where it left off. If this isn’t happening for you please can you post more details about this as a new topic in the Bugs category with some more details. Thanks!
(Also, thanks very much for the rest of your feedback! I agree that more AI features would be useful and hope to do more in this direction!)
1 Like
I’ve used several spaced repetition softwares (namely Parley, Memrise and Anki). None of these are alternatives to the reading functionalities of Readlang, but there are a few functionalities I’d like to see carried over.
I’ve liked the possibility to add images to flashcards, that was very useful in the beginning stages of learning a language.
I like how Memrise is pushing the user to define mnemonics, that was sometimes useful.
In Memrise, it is possible to give the word grammatical tags. These are then shown during practice in small print above the main text of the flashcard. As I am learning languages with very rich inflection (currently Finnish, before that also Latin and Hebrew), I tend to use a lot of grammatical annotation as part of the “mother tongue translation” entry to desambiguate the English translation and to force myself to consciously analyze the word form. Of course, I can put them directly into the area for translation, it just requires a lot of punctuation to separate the grammatical information from the actual translation.
Parley also allows you to specify additional information, such as part of speech, an example and a comment for each side of each flashcard. Additional use for this: currently in Readlang, I am placing the lemma (dictionary form) and other forms that need to be memorized into the “synonyms” fields, which is just a workaround for what would better be a completely separate field which I’d like to see (just like the grammatical tags) somewhere on the flashcard but possibly in smaller print or otherwise visually separated.
With Parley, I’ve used the option to have three-sided flashcards. In the CSV view, I would define three columns - target word in the foreign language, mother tongue equivalent, and definition in the foreign language. Internally, Parley is keeping track of the spacing interval for each target side irrelevant of the source side used during practice but each practice session only has one source side and one target side, so it was necessary to first practice in the “definition → foreign language” mode and only afterwards in the “mother tongue → foreign language” mode if I wanted to use the definitions for the revisions of the items where they were available. However, in Readlang, I can easily add the foreign language definition as context (just write “TARGET WORD = the definition”), so I am not missing that feature too badly.
1 Like
I was going to post a separate feature request to be able to add my own additional requests to the prompt for the Explain feature:
- just like @kjhlkajlkqwjasd , I’d like to obtain more detailed grammatical analysis;
- I think it would be great if the Explain feature would start or end with full translation of the provided context, as often I’ve been unable to understand the explanation until I’ve run the whole context through machine translation
2 Likes
I’ve used LingQ for a decade and Readlang also for a time. I’m considering coming back to Readlang mostly because LingQ is just too buggy. It takes too much work to do simple things like read a text and the importing is always a mess and takes so much time editing. I try to import history books (free ones) but they have images and it can’t handle that. Also, for me, they make updates such as popups and “incentives” that are always popping up and reminders to keep up your “streak” that are always in the way and annoying and can’t always be turned off. I’m not 8 years old. Meanwhile, the things that needed fixing like a simple import that works aren’t being fixed. Not to mention, most of the “lessons” now, at least for Spanish, are just video clips that need you to import - more work because it doesn’t always work well. Tired of paying over and over for that. I just want to read without a hassle! Working in tech (having been a dev), they’ve tried to gold plate everything but still struggle with the basic functionality that the customer ultimately wanted.
1 Like
My main reason for leaving LingQ was that I felt their unsubscribe process was disrespectful to the user. I have a serious issue with how difficult they made it to cancel a membership. This was years ago, and they may have stopped the gimmicks, but the experience left me with such a bad taste in my mouth I go out of my way to tell people NOT to pay for LingQ and instead use Readlang.
Aside from that, Readlang has a cleaner UI and less feature bloat. Steve reads my emails and has implemented several of my feature/bug requests. I am happy overall.
4 Likes
I’ve just added an experimental Ask AI feature which you can use for grammatical explanations: Ask AI: custom ChatGPT prompt feature for premium users (experimental). Would love to get your feedback on it!
@Anna_Vernerova The same Ask AI feature could be useful here too. You can prompt it with “translate the whole Spanish sentence to English” (replacing Spanish with your language of course)
1 Like
I use both Readlang and VocabTracker, but for different languages. Readlang has a better platform overall, but VocabTracker has a better browser extension.
What I love about Readlang is the ability to upload an entire novel, read it, and do all my sentence mining and SRS reviews in one place. VocabTracker has a character limit on imported texts that is only long enough to accommodate typical web articles/blog posts. It also does not support epubs at all.
A nice thing about VocabTracker is that you can edit the definitions/translations that get saved with your vocabulary for review within the browser extension. This is something I don’t think Readlang’s extension can do, although the e-reader does that easily with the “Words” tab. This is a crucial feature for me once I reach an intermediate level and begin transitioning to a monolingual dictionary because I don’t want translations showing up in my reviews at that point. With Readlang, I need to keep the Word List page open in another window and alt+tab over to it every time I look up a word with web reader in order to paste in the monolingual dictionary’s definition.
The review system is better in Readlang, in my opinion. In VocabTracker, there is a built-in SRS as well, but it isn’t nearly as good as Readlang’s, especially once you have a large number of words to review.
If you have ASB player installed in Chrome-based browsers, you can make both Readlang and VocabTracker run directly on video subtitles without needing to import anything, which is fantastic. I will write a full guide with screenshots on how to do this soon. It basically turns them into a makeshift Language Reactor, but the bonus is that all your vocabulary from the videos goes to the same place as vocabulary from your reading material.
Readlang supports way more languages than Vocab tracker, including the recently added Kazakh, which I’m excited to start in January.
Vocab tracker can tell you how far an imported piece of content is from your current level, based on the percentage of known vs unknown words it contains. I started Korean from scratch on this platform, so nearly every word I’ve learned is stored in my account there, making the known words percentage pretty accurate. However, this feature is pretty useless if you’re already at an intermediate level because you’re not going to manually enter the thousands of words you already know into it.
Finally, price: VocabTracker is 100% free, while Readlang uses a freemium model with optional paid features. I’m currently using the free version of Readlang, and it provides more than enough for me. I do plan on upgrading in the future, not for the extra features but just to support the project because Steve deserves to be compensated for all his hard work.
4 Likes
Heey Steve!
LingQ veteran here. I learned a whole language from 0 to C1 almost exclusively with LingQ, been librarian (person who responsible for adding content) for 3 months!
I can say for sure, that ReadLang today is unprecedentedly cool! UI is awesome, flashcards is nice! In a lot of aspects its already better than LingQ. I just think, if you could take the best features from LingQ and implement them, ReadLang would be suh a beast, beating LingQ in every single aspect!
For example
-
There is a WhisperAI, or something like that, which can transcribe audio into pretty accurate transcript. With it, LingQ made it possible to import videos from youtube, which made process of learning a lot more fun and enjoyable! Readlang already have the UI, the script for everything, just only if process of making transcript would be automatized! What a wonder it would be!
Now people can import a lot of new content which their like, learn from it, and share it!
More enjoyment, more content (music videos, youtube, audio-books which now a book), and more users. How awesome it will be! -
I think that if public library would get a little bit more of your attention - it would literally MULTIPLY enjoyment from using ReadLang. I mean, for example, what if it would be possible to add covers to books, and have them displayed in rectangle? What if it would be possible to sort differently youtube videos and books, and have their picture of preview showed to user. It would breathe in more life to the site, and make the process of choosing new content more enticing and fun!
-
One of the hardest thing, especially to casual, not so-tech-savy users - is finding and adding content.
In LingQ they solved that, by having a people called Librarians, which they recruited from usual users. Their goal was to post a content on LingQ.
And everything when user would engage with content they are posted, some amount of coins they would receive. Like, 4 for opening it out, etc. And by the end of the month, if the sum of coins were more than 1000, they would give a free subscription for a month.
And, because people would click only on good, quality content, and librarians were rewarded for adding something that people would like to read - content libraries flourished. Suddenly just a handful librarians added a TON of different copyright free literature, music, stories, books, EVERYTHING! And suddenly libraries were alive and full of content.
I think it would be beneficial for ReadLang if it had something simmilar
2 Likes
I’ve been using LingQ to learn Japanese and a bit of French for quite long now, and I’ve tried Readlang for some time, so my review may be unreliable or unfair due to my lack of experience.
What I love about Readlang that’s not in lingQ:
- UNLIMITED WORDS SAVE. I literally stopped Automatic Lingqs Creation because when you reach a number (I think 100?) you no longer can save words, nor look up for the meaning. Not saving words is a pain, but loosing the look up feature is just cruel(please keep unlimited in Readlang)
- UNLIMITED BOOK UPLOADING. In LingQ, I’m supposed to uploaded 5 books for free, but you know, LingQ can’t have a whole book as one lesson(I mean, a book is 30-60k), so it splits it into smaller lessons, which are a lot, so it counts multiple lessons of ONE book as 5 books and I got to stick to it for the rest of my language learning journey. But Readlang, oh dear Readlang, I can upload as many books as I want and it’s one lesson for each book(so no confusion of which page of which lesson I was in)
- The content explanation is just so helpful because I get lost sometimes.
- This community is just cool, I love how it appears like a big family, and Steve really puts our feedback in mind and actually keeps us in touch of what’s new. LingQ… feels so more profitional(in a bad way) that you feel your feedback doesn’t matter.
- Steve is so generous. I don’t mean the other Steve isn’t(just realized Steve Kaufman got the same name as yours). I understand that having a whole team to build LingQ and just Steve to build Readlang is different. I didn’t believe it at first when I read Steve’s bio, because it’s just crazy. What’s more amazing that he, despite the tire of building Readlang alone, still tried to make it as free as possible. If you notice, Steve does not STOP a feature, he LIMITS it.For instance, he does not stop the feature of explaination, he limits it to ten per day for the free plan, which I personally respect.
Now to the reasons why I, though those great features are tempting, am using LingQ.
- POOR SUPPORT FOR ASIAN LANGUAGES. Enjoying the features I mentioned earlier really depends on what language you’re learning. European languages are okay, but Asian ones, Nah. I don’t really have experience in Asian languages except for Japanese, but the reason I’m generalizing is that I’m aware that their writing systems are as complicated if not more(Korean, Chinese…). I think it’s kind of obvious that Steve will not focus on those languages because they’re hard(and I think I read that he’s more into learning European languages, not sure). LingQ has more support for my targeted language, Japanese. Part of it is because Kaufman has learned it himself. I’m not asking Steve to learn every single language in Readlang(though it would be the coolest thing ever😂), but doing more research to improve them bit by bit would be nice.
- LISTENING. I don’t know wether Readlang is meant totally for reading(based on the name), but the listening option are pretty poor. For me that’s okay, because I only open the app with intention of reading. LingQ got Audiobooks(If it was shared) attached to the book, so it’s really helping my listening skills.
- WORDS SPLITTING. I think it will improve Readlang, but I also think that some people wouldn’t prefer it, so adding this feature with the option to dis/en/able it would be even nicer.
Something I love about both apps is that Steve Kaufman, the founder of LingQ, and Steve, the developer of Readlang, are learning languages themselves, so it’s not like some random guy is doing the “trend” of language learning.
6 Likes
Thanks for all the feedback, positive and negative 
This is all really helpful for me.
Keep it coming!
4 Likes
Late to this thread, but just signed up for the forum after running across it. I’ve used both Readlang and Lingq, and prefer Readlang as I don’t really like the color coded links concept and the word info on Readlang is more useful to me (I do like the “Explain” option!). My only minor wish is that Readlang had an (android) app, as Lingq does. My browser tends to sign me out of Readlang between sessions, and reentering the username/password is tedious. But I get that maintaining multiple platforms may be unrealistic here as a small developer, and the webapp does work really well. If it is a resource allocation matter, I’d rather the effort go into keeping the browser/webapp working top-notch, rather than dividing efforts between web/android/iOS.
4 Likes
I’ve started to create a solution similar to Readlang. I didn’t know about Readlang that time. I wanted to read English books and expand my vocabulary knowledge. The second purpose is to train my programming skills: Python, FastAPI, GCP, NLP, machine learning.
My idea was to connect app ReadEra ebook to my website, where you can translate words and create flashcards. On my site you can see flashcards and related sentences (there can be more than one sentence related to a flashcard). At the moment there is only one language translation: English → Polish, which means you can train from English books to the Polish translation.
I don’t want to create competing service for Readlang, that’s why I will focus on small part of system that will search related sentences for the flashcard. (edit: my website is https://parrot.reu.pl/)
Thanks Steve! You’ve created a very good learning tool for many people. I recommend your Readlang.
2 Likes
Nowadays, I rarely use RL to read ebooks, although I have an annual subscription. I was tired of Google API (as I mentioned in some emails) where I always need to edit the words myself, and the translation was bad. AI explanations are long and take time to read.
So instead, I highlight words in my PDF / ebook, then I use Claude to parse and make CSV files for me. After that, I import them to Readlang, because I prefer Readlang to Anki.
Now, I have just developed a simple web app for myself 
to support reading PDFs and generate cards for me. It’s always powered by Claude. Feel free to check the repo; it’s open-source and uses simple HTML + JS adapted to my use cases.
The cost is going down and will continue to go down, as is latency.
I don’t know but I believe it’s time to switch to LLM to survive the AI wave, and maybe make a better UI / font for the reading mode.
2 Likes
I actually love the AI explanations just as they are. Huge advantage over Lingq. They recently implemented AI definitions and it doesn’t even come close to the readlang explanations or the more recent substitution of google translate. I think people are too focused on flash cards and reading has been proven to be a lot more effective for language acquisition. I read books in 6 languages here at readlang and I detest doing flashcards. I think the focus should be on the reading experience.
If you want to acquire more words, read more! Flashcards offer no context and it’s time better spent reading in my opinion.
4 Likes
Dont just leave this in the comments and not follow up dude 
please post a guide on this. It will be really helpful
1 Like
However, this feature is pretty useless if you’re already at an intermediate level because you’re not going to manually enter the thousands of words you already know into it.
The “mark all as known” feature partially addresses this, there’s also a feature to import terms from another app. But the main issue I have with Vocab tracker is that it just isn’t as fast as readlang. It’s crazy how much of a difference 0.3 seconds or whatever it is makes.
Did you ever post that guide?