Gone are the days when Portuguese learning was confined to a physical classroom. Now, you can transport yourself to the streets of Portugal, Brazil or any of the other countries that speak Portuguese with just a few clicks.
Read on to discover the best online Portuguese courses, so you can get started on your journey to fluency.
Price: Starts at $13.95 per month (see pricing page here)
Babbel is an immersive platform that consists of a varied selection of online Portuguese courses for learners of the Brazilian dialect.
The platform’s main offerings include lessons that are appropriate for your level, Portuguese grammar exercises and special modules (such as travel-based and everyday vocabulary) that would be useful in all kinds of interactions.
Read our Babbel review to see whether the popular language learning program delivers on its promises! See all the ins and outs of Babbel and its main features, what we…
FluentU takes authentic videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized Portuguese lessons.
Other sites use scripted content. FluentU uses a natural approach that helps you ease into the Portuguese language and culture over time. You’ll learn Portuguese as it’s actually spoken by real people.
FluentU has a wide variety of videos, as you can see here:
FluentU brings native videos within reach with interactive transcripts. You can tap on any word to look it up instantly. Every definition has examples that have been written to help you understand how the word is used. If you see an interesting word you don’t know, you can add it to a vocab list.
Review a complete interactive transcript under the Dialogue tab, and find words and phrases listed under Vocab.
Learn all the vocabulary in any video with FluentU’s robust learning engine. Swipe left or right to see more examples of the word you’re on.
The best part is that FluentU keeps track of the vocabulary that you’re learning, and gives you extra practice with difficult words. It'll even remind you when it’s time to review what you’ve learned. Every learner has a truly personalized experience, even if they’re learning with the same video.
Price: Starts at $150 per level ($575 for the whole course)
Pimsleur is an old name in the language-learning world, providing well-structured courses for a huge number of languages.
It emphasizes spoken language to help you become more confident with your speaking. In fact, you’re encouraged to speak Portuguese from the very beginning. This does mean that reading and writing take a back seat, so you might want to supplement the course with additional resources.
That being said, the course is still highly effective, practical and hands-free (which is always convenient). There’s also a lot of reinforcement in the lessons, which helps with memorization and long-term retention.
You can learn Brazilian Portuguese and/or European Portuguese from Pimsleur, though I personally recommend the Brazilian course between the two.
Is Pimsleur’s popular, audio-based language learning program right for you? I’ve put together an in-depth Pimsleur review to help you decide. Discover the pros and cons of…
Memrise is a language-learning platform and app that offers courses for both European and Brazilian Portuguese. The short lessons, designed around real-life topics like food or introductions, include key words and phrases to learn as well as videos and audio recordings from native speakers.
The app comes with learning games to help you memorize new material and enables you to record your pronunciation and compare it with that of a native speaker.
Find out more about Memrise in this in-depth review.
Can you master a foreign language with Memrise? In this review, we’ll investigate how the Memrise program teaches languages and whether it’s worth the cost of a…
Price: $297 + tax for the basic plan (self-paced digital course) and $497 for the premium plan (digital course + group classes)
Speaking Brazilian offers several courses designed by Brazilian teacher Virginia Langhammer. Upon purchasing a course, you’ll receive access to pre-recorded videos and other learning materials that follow a structured curriculum.
You’ll also be invited to online Zoom classes that take place every week for the duration of the course, where you’ll be able to interact directly with teachers and other students. The Zoom lessons are great for conversation practice!
The courses available at Speaking Brazilian are suitable for learners of all levels. There are also crash courses for verb conjugation and for those traveling to Brazil.
Price: Starts at $149.99 for the Premium Level 1 courses
Rocket Languages provides classroom-style teaching of Brazilian Portuguese, in a way that’s supposed to inspire and make learning more enjoyable.
The lessons are structured like conversations between a native Portuguese speaker and a learner, which makes for less formal and more authentic-sounding dialogues. They can also be downloaded and used on the go.
The virtual voice recognition system can analyze your speech and identify problem areas, which is super handy for perfecting your pronunciation.
You can read our full review of Rocket Languages below.
Thinking about using Rocket Languages? I used it to learn German and Portuguese for a week, and these are my thoughts. Click here to read my full Rocket Languages review…
Innovative Language’s PortuguesePod101 comes with resources and materials for virtually every learning style. It’s worth noting that most of these materials come in the form of themed audio and video dialogues with vocabulary lists and lesson notes.
The basic plan might be enough for casual learners. The premium subscriptions, on the other hand, come with one-on-one tutor access, personalized learning programs and assignments.
Innovative Language’s Pod101 courses are very popular in the language learning community. Find out if they’re worth subscribing to with our detailed review and discover…
Busuu combines language lessons with feedback from native speakers, enabling you to perfect your pronunciation as you build your vocabulary and grammar skills. Since you’ll be receiving encouragement, comments and improvement suggestions from real people, Busuu offers a sense of community support alongside speaking practice.
The course comes in the form of an app that enables you to schedule your study time and sends notifications to remind you of your goals and keep you on track. Regular comprehension checks let you verify your progress as well.
If all of that sounds good, read this Busuu review to find out more.
Busuu is a popular language learning program that offers 14 languages. Click here to read our in-depth review. We’ll look at where Busuu wins, what could be improved, who…
The Mondly app offers short, daily lessons that employ a range of methods, from classic exercises to augmented reality games and activities. The app also comes with a chatbot that Portuguese learners can use for conversation practice.
The Portuguese course is intended to cater to learners of all levels, although the advanced content is relatively limited. To make the course engaging and keep you motivated, Mondly features weekly and monthly challenges and other gamification elements.
To learn more about these unique features, check out our Mondly review.
Mondly lets you use AR, robots and other nifty tech to learn languages. But does it work? We tested the program to find out. Click here to read this in-depth review to see…
LingQ features an extensive library of materials in Portuguese—primarily texts with accompanying audio. Most of the audio files were recorded by native speakers, and the platform gives you the option to slow down or speed up audio to suit your level.
The course makes texts interactive by allowing you to click on every Portuguese word to see a translation and other helpful notes. It’s even possible to upload your own content and have the platform turn it into an interactive text that you can use for language practice.
We review LingQ to find out if it can teach you a language through authentic content. In this totally honest and unbiased LingQ review, I’ll dive into the strengths and…
Price: $22 for a 40-minute lesson (on average), loyalty discounts available (up to 15%)
Verbalplanet is a website that connects students of all levels with native Portuguese-speaking tutors.
It’s an incredibly flexible option if you want to build up fluency in a highly interactive manner. After all, having live conversations is a great way to immerse yourself in the language!
While the site’s options are pretty easy to customize (you can test the waters with a single lesson or plunge all the way into a complete course), this is a great option for letting someone else take charge of your learning.
Preply offers access to hundreds of Portuguese tutors, many of whom are certified teachers and/or native speakers of either European or Brazilian Portuguese. Lessons are tailored to your level and needs, with some tutors specializing in certain levels or types of vocabulary, such as corporate or travel communication.
Price: Starts at €320 (approx. $345) for 10 individual classes and €190 (approx. $205) for 30 group classes
Portuguese Connection is a Lisbon-based Portuguese school that offers in-person classes as well as online language courses. The online courses can take the form of either individual tuition or group classes.
The school offers courses in both European and Brazilian Portuguese, and you can even enroll with friends for a group discount. You’ll also get access to interactive materials and receive an official diploma upon successful completion of the course.
Visit the LingoDeer website, and you’ll be learning basic words before you even realize it. The course features an intuitive, user-friendly design, gamification elements and varied exercises that will keep you engaged and entertained while you learn Brazilian Portuguese.
LingoDeer is best suited for beginners looking to dive right into the language. It’s a great course for learning vocabulary and basic grammar, but it doesn’t feature audio recording options—so you’ll need another tool if you want to check your pronunciation.
My honest LingoDeer review for 2024 is based on trying to learn Japanese on LingoDeer in one week! I give all my honest impressions of the LingoDeer program and discuss…
Summary: This practical audio course is excellent for getting you to speak Portuguese from day one.
The Michel Thomas Method focuses on learning Portuguese through active use, making word retrieval much easier when you’re put in a situation where you actually have to use the language.
The approach is quite unique in that it gets you speaking Portuguese from the get-go—something that only a few other courses do. And because it’s entirely audio-based, it makes for easy, on-the-go listening.
Polly Lingual is a neat app that offers interactive lessons for beginner, intermediate and advanced Brazilian Portuguese learners, focusing on both vocabulary and grammar.
Many of the lessons include videos uploaded by tutors—called “Polly Ambassadors”—to explain key concepts. For an added fee, users can connect with Polly Ambassadors and schedule private lessons.
Practice Portuguese aims to introduce learners to Portuguese exactly as it’s spoken in Portugal. It does so via short lessons featuring interactive exercises and activities, including pronunciation practice. The lessons progress to more difficult language over time, with the full course catering to beginner, intermediate and advanced learners.
The lessons in this course come with video and audio recordings of native speakers from different regions of Portugal to expose learners to different accents used across the country.
Live Lingua’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI) project offers free-to-access, public domain courses. This includes a handful of beginner to intermediate lessons for both Brazilian and European Portuguese learners.
Each course consists of e-books, and most come with audio files. Learners also get access to an online sound recording tool for pronunciation practice.
Summary: Easy Portuguese is a no-frills website offering a treasure trove of educational material for beginner to intermediate Brazilian Portuguese learners.
It’s not a structured course, per se, but it’s perfect for those looking for a more self-guided approach to online learning. With vocabulary lists, verb conjugation tables and handy grammar guides that explain key concepts, Easy Portuguese can feel more like a digital textbook than an interactive course.
The aforementioned vocabulary lists are its strongest asset. Words are categorized into a number of different themes, including nationality, Brazilian and Portuguese names and adjectives. This makes Easy Portuguese a helpful tool for quickly discovering new words and phrases and for hassle-free vocabulary reviews.
If you’re after a conventional classroom Portuguese course that’s accessible online for free, Professor Jason’s channel might just be the perfect option for you. The channel features dozens of Brazilian Portuguese lessons for every level, which are sorted into playlists for easy access.
Professor Jason’s course is based entirely on these pre-recorded lessons, so there’s no interactive element to learning Portuguese here. However, key grammar concepts are explained clearly and with plenty of examples, so this could be an excellent complementary resource for other learning tools.
This course by Rafael Tavares (a.k.a. Rafa) taps into his experiences with speaking European Portuguese at home, growing up in South America and learning English in the United Kingdom.
The course steers away from dry academic language and gives full insight into daily linguistic conventions. Over the years, the author has developed courses for both European and Brazilian Portuguese learners.
His website includes plenty of materials for beginners, including written guides on grammar, verbs and vocabulary, as well as a series of instructional videos that put all of these into context.
Do you speak Spanish? Well, you’re already halfway to speaking Portuguese, and Tá Falado is sure to help you get there.
These series of audio lessons are available courtesy of The University of Texas at Austin, aimed at highlighting differences between Spanish and Portuguese for those who already speak the former (though they can be helpful for everyone). They cover grammar and the ins and outs of Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation in a lot of detail.
Professor Orlando R. Kelm breaks down the language concepts behind dialogues performed by Brazilians Michelle and Valdo, with native Spanish speaker José Luis offering a Spanish speaker’s perspective.
Rosetta Stone’s lessons rely heavily on image association—basically, you’ll be asked to look at a graphic and commit it to memory. Speech recognition technology is included in the program as well. There’s also a live tutoring option that’ll put you in conversation with a native speaker, although this is only available to premium users.
You can learn more about Rosetta Stone in this review.
Our full Rosetta Stone for 2024 is here. Read this review to find out whether Rosetta Stone is worth using and how it compares to its competitors! Rosetta Stone once…
Price: $24.99 per month or $149.99 per year (rates for multiple languages are higher)
While Transparent Language favors the Brazilian dialect, they also have some European Portuguese software in their collection.
If you’re using the software version, standout features include graphs and charts that track progress and performance, as well as typing activities—the latter of which will be instrumental in helping you get used to those Portuguese tildes, cedillas and acute accents.
Our full and honest Transparent Language review is here! Read on to hear about my personal experiences with the program. We cover what its best at and where it can be…
Fluenz is unique in that its courses come in the form of video tutorials courtesy of a Brazilian Portuguese-speaking tutor.
Earlier units focus primarily on the basics of conversational speech and grammar. As you progress through each lesson, Fluenz covers more abstract ideas, specialized vocabulary and difficult verb tenses. The idea is that all lessons build from one another, following a logical structure.
Repetition is embedded within different contextual examples, making new vocabulary much easier to memorize. The study material takes care to explain all grammatical conventions as clearly as possible.
Our full and honest Fluenz review for 2024 is here. We used Fluenz for two weeks to see how well this video-tutorial-based program works, what its key features are and…
FAQs About Learning Portuguese
How Do I Choose the Best Portuguese Course for Me?
Do you need Portuguese for a specific purpose, like business or vacation?
By writing down your priorities and expectations, you can narrow this list of courses down to just one or two options that would suit your needs. Keep in mind that most of the paid courses have free trials available, so you can try them out without worrying about long-term financial commitments.
What’s the Difference Between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese?
European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese vary in terms of grammar, vocabulary use and (of course) pronunciation.
Though both varieties of Portuguese are usually understood everywhere, if you’re planning to visit a specific place or use Portuguese with speakers of a particular country, it may be worth sticking to learning Portuguese from that country. As we mentioned earlier in the intro, Brazil and Portugal aren’t the only countries that use Portuguese!
Is Portuguese Hard to Learn?
While Portuguese isn’t the easiest language in the world to learn, it’s not the hardest, either.
If you have experience with other Romance languages such as Spanish, French or Italian, then Portuguese will come more easily to you. Spanish speakers, in particular, have an easier time as the two languages are very closely related—though Portuguese pronunciation is more challenging.
Don’t worry too much about whether Portuguese is “hard” or not. Ultimately, your motivation is what matters the most.
Online Portuguese courses are meant to be personalized experiences, so don’t be afraid to try out different options before settling on a resource that works for you.
Then, just keep practicing at your own pace, and you’ll soon find yourself reaching new levels of fluency!
