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Looking for the best online Swedish course to learn the language?
Swedish is rising in popularity, as more and more course options are being released.
In addition to tourism and foreign language careers, the benefits of speaking Swedish cannot be overstated.
Today I’m going to give you my rundown of the best (and worst) online Swedish courses.
Below you’ll find pros and cons for each Swedish course, pricing and a summary. Where applicable, I’ll link to a review of the course.
Table Of Contents
IMPORTANT: Some of the items listed below are probably only loosely defined as “courses” for Swedish. The reason I’ve included them is that they’re popular enough Swedish tools and therefore should be included.
DISCLAIMER: The comments below are personal opinions and some affiliate links are used.
The best Swedish courses online (most popular Swedish resources)
1. SwedishPod101
Cost: Starts as low as $4 a month.
Summary: SwedishPod101 is an excellent online resource for learning Swedish (especially listening comprehension). If you’re into podcast learning especially, this might be the course for you.
SwedishPod101 uses audio lessons similar to podcasts. Lessons are suitable for beginners through more advanced levels. The instruction not only includes listening skills but also incorporates essential vocabulary and grammar with loads of other useful features.
What I like:
- Large and always expanding variety of Swedish lesson material
- Clean lesson interface and downloadable content
What I don’t like:
- Content choices are sparse beyond the beginner level
- Too much English banter
- While the lesson interface is nice, the rest of the site is overwhelming and confusing to navigate
UNIQUE OFFER: Use the code MEZZOGUILD to save 25% on any of their Swedish course options.
2. Swedish Uncovered (StoryLearning)
Cost: One time purchase of $297.
Summary: Swedish Uncovered is one of the 3 Scandinavian courses in the Uncovered series. Olly Richard’s program begins by immediately throwing you into an easy Swedish story and you learn through a “Guided Discovery” method, which includes classes with a native Swedish teacher.
Instead of just learning about grammar rules, learners come across them through fictional narrative. It provides a fun and unique way of learning a language, though is slightly expensive.
What I like:
- Unique story-based method
- Clear instructions with lots of practice
What I don’t like:
- May appear overwhelming for new learners
- Seemingly unrelated grammar points thrown into lessons
- Pricey
3. Babbel Swedish
Cost: Subscriptions start at $12.95/month.
Summary: One of the best and most well-known online Swedish courses, Babbel, is a great tool for learning the language and very budget friendly. Babbel’s online Swedish course platform focuses on writing and reading, listening and spelling. It aims to give you all the tools you need to start learning the language immediately. It’s often described as a paid, and more professional alternative to Duolingo (see below).
Babbel is available for businesses who need their employees to learn Swedish.
Read this extensive Babbel review.
What I like:
- Flexibility and variety in their teaching style
- Incorporates several different learning styles to effectively teach Swedish
- Developed by in-house linguists
What I don’t like:
- Uninspiring course
- No downloadable materials
4. Mondly Swedish
Cost: Starts at $9.99/month.
Summary: Mondly offers courses for loads of different languages including Swedish and is similar in style to Duolingo and Babbel. There are even hints of Rosetta Stone in its delivery.
It’s a beautifully-designed web app and a pleasure to navigate the Swedish course content.
Some of the language courses aren’t that great (e.g. Arabic) but Swedish and others are done fairly well.
What I like:
- Beautifully designed app and web interface makes it a pleasure to use
- Clear and easy progression through the Swedish lessons
- Inexpensive
What I don’t like:
- Linear learning path
- Fairly repetitive and monotonous
See this Mondly review to learn more.
5. Rosetta Stone
Cost: Starts at $6.49 a month.
Summary: My biggest complaint about Rosetta Stone used to be for its astronomical price tag but it recently switched over to a subscription model (to compete) and now is comparatively cheap.
RS was actually one of the first paid products I used to learn Swedish (and I used it A LOT).
Rosetta Stone is a household name that everyone’s heard about. It tends to get sharp criticism for its method but as I’ve pointed out in the past, people criticize Rosetta Stone because they’re either: a) impatient or b) not willing to allow the method to work for them. Rosetta Stone is all about intuition - it doesn’t give you quick answers or translations.
You infer meaning gradually.
No Swedish grammar rules are given. Just intuitive inference.
See my massively popular review of Rosetta Stone.
What I like:
- Rosetta Stone is, to this day, one of the few major Swedish course products that is genuinely innovative and different
- The RS immersion approach (using pictures and intuitiveness to learn) is a powerful approach that works (if the student’s patient)
- Very comprehensive overall
- Inexpensive (used to be outrageously expensive until they changed to a subscription model)
What I don’t like:
- Inappropriate cultural images
- Very formal dialogues used in scenarios that are unnatural (see my review where I explain this in detail)
- Voice recognition is often inaccurate for Swedish
6. Transparent Language
Cost: Pricing varies
Summary: Transparent is one of the most surprising online Swedish courses I’ve tried.
The system and interface are antiquated and slow which is a real drawback, but if you can look past it, Transparent Language provides a real depth of Swedish course content.
The voice recognition comparison is non-existent in Transparent Language. It relies on recording on your voice and showing you your sound wave to compare with the native speaker’s sound wave.
No inbuilt system to automatically compare sounds.
I remember when Rocket Swedish used to do the same thing but recently incorporated Google Web Speech to compare pronunciation which was a game-changer. I don’t know why Transparent Language haven’t done this since it’s so easy to implement (and free to develop).
The Transparent Language course has a “Produce it. Say it.” section that literally asks you “Were you right?”.
In other words, no way to automatically detect whether you were correct or not - it relies on your own determination. This is incredibly outdated.
Overall, if you can look past the outdated design and deficient voice recording aspect, Transparent Language Swedish is an outstanding course option.
What I like:
- Swedish dialogue is 100% natural speed
- Extensive coverage and depth of content
What I don’t like:
- Outdated and slow interface that’s a pain to navigate
- Pronunciation section has no inbuilt voice recognition to compare to native dialogue
7. uTalk
Cost: $4.99 monthly per language, $9.99 for all 140 languages, $99.99 for a lifetime subscription
Summary: uTalk is essentially a fancy flashcard app, an alternative to Memrise and a great way to learn words and phrases in hundreds of different languages.
There are thousands of potential language pair combinations and tons of native speaker audio recordings with picture associations.
What I like:
- Authentic native speaker audio
- Hundreds of available languages
- Thousands of potential language combinations
- Easily affordable
What I don’t like:
- Sloppy UI
- Games are mediocre
- Broad approach that isn’t tailored for specific languages
8. Pimsleur Swedish
Cost: $14.95 a month subscription (or $119.95 per level)
Summary: Pimsleur’s a household name for learning Swedish using spaced repetition recall. The lessons focus on practical vocabulary and expressions one might need in various scenarios. This includes greetings, common phrases, and vocabulary you might need when talking to native speakers.
In terms of just how much you get out of it, I’d say Pimsleur is a good entry point for Swedish but it will only familiarize you with the basics. Treat its Swedish course as a foundational course and then move on to something more comprehensive.
Pimsleur does not offer any video or written content. It’s audio only.
Read this Pimsleur review.
What I like:
- Pimsleur was based on solid research in second language acquisition.
- Extremely effective method despite its age.
- Heavy repetition of Swedish language samples.
What I don’t like:
- Outdated scenario examples.
- Too much English.
9. Memrise
Cost: Free
Summary: Memrise moved its free “community” courses to a site called Memrise a while back, while it continues to run a premium subscription on the original Memrise site.
From what I see, Memrise is identical to what Memrise use to offer.
Memrise are 100% free community-added courses (Swedish and others) in the form of a gamified flashcard deck. You select a language or dialect, then go through a flashcard game of “watering plants”. It’s highly addictive and actually quite effective.
Some courses are excellent but not all courses are good. Look for ones that include audio and ones that teach phrases rather than single words.
See my video on downloading Memrise to Anki.
What I like:
- It’s an effective memorization tool for phrases and words.
- The addictive nature of the game gets you coming back often to continue learning.
- It’s all free.
- There are loads of community-driven courses to choose from.
What I don’t like:
- As it’s community-driven, you can’t always guarantee quality.
10. Michel Thomas Swedish
Cost: Starts from $11.99
Summary: I reviewed Michel Thomas extensively a short while back and ended up with almost nothing positive to say about the course (both levels). The Michel Thomas method (for all languages including Swedish) is, in my opinion, full of holes and defies current research conclusions in SLA.
I’ve upset the MT fan base by saying so (I recently shared my theory on why they’re so defensive).
The basic premise of Michel Thomas is that you relax like a client in a psychologist’s chair, and let the teacher control your learning. You’re told “never to try to learn”, no memorization, no outside practice, no student responsibility.
Michel Thomas teachers guide students through correcting their every mistake on the spot.
There’s no Swedish listening comprehension training and no natural conversation opportunities during sessions.
Overall, Michel Thomas might be a useful primer (some languages do appear to be slightly better than others) but I would never recommend this course to anybody.
Read my controversial review of Michel Thomas.
What I like:
- Michel Thomas does a good job of breaking down and explaining difficult concepts in Swedish.
- To a certain extent, MT teaches students to learn ‘lexical chunks’ over explicit grammar rules.
What I don’t like:
- Teacher-controlled learning has been proven by SLA researchers to be an ineffective strategy.
- Michel Thomas teaches zero listening comprehension for Swedish and offers no opportunity for natural conversation practice.
- The course teaches you about Swedish, but doesn’t teach you Swedish.
- Way too much English.
- Celebrity endorsements and a total lack of research on Michel Thomas’ part are major red flags to me.
11. Mango Languages
Cost: $7.99 a month
Summary: Mango Languages has implemented what I believe to be one of the best ‘chunking’ approaches in its course style I’ve ever seen (very close to my own successful method). It does this by avoiding grammar Swedish explanations and instead highlighting lexical chunks in colors to help you learn language patterns.
One of the best features I’ve seen in a language product. Period.
The only problem with Mango is that it’s quite lightweight on its course depth. If they developed an advanced course for Swedish, I’d be a raging fan.
What I like:
- Beautifully designed Swedish course
- Focuses on lexical chunks (color coded) rather than rules which is how I prefer to learn
What I don’t like:
- Minimal grammar focus
- Lack of content depth for higher-level learners
12. Glossika Swedish
Cost: $30 a month.
Summary: I’m a huge fan of the Glossika series.
Glossika is one of the most unique language products available and, in my opinion, one of the very few that uses a natural, research-grounded method. In fact, the Glossika method aligns very closely with how I personally learned Swedish and I’ve seen tremendous success doing it.
Glossika focuses on high repetition of lexical chunks - in other words, listening over and over to a sequence of sentences at natural speed and repeating them.
It is hands down the most effective trainer for Swedish listening comprehension and requires little else but frequent, daily listening/repeating to audio.
See this massive Glossika review and interview I put together.
What I like:
- One of the most truly unique and effective methods available, in my opinion.
- I personally had tremendous success using Glossika for Swedish (and Russian).
- Focuses on heavy repetition of natural language chunks.
What I don’t like:
- Difficult concept to grasp for new learners of Swedish.
- Natural approach requiring heavy repetition may feel tedious to some people.
- Slightly higher priced monthly subscription.
13. Duolingo Swedish
Cost: Free.
Summary: Duolingo has become a staple for many language learners - a completely free household name to rival established companies like Babbel and Rosetta Stone.
I’ve personally have never liked Duolingo and I think it’s an overrated, infantile game that offers little value other than being an addictive distraction and procrastination from real learning. People go through entire courses on the Duolingo platform and come away with little more than a cartoon trophy.
Their Swedish course might serve you well to get you acquainted but there are better ways to spend your study time in my opinion.
Check out my comparison of Duolingo and Babbel.
What I like:
- Free to use.
- Fun downtime activity in between real study periods.
- Appealing to young people and those experimenting with Swedish before committing to a paid resource.
What I don’t like:
- Tedious, repetitive point and click on easily predictable answers.
- Addictive gamification that feels productive but is, in fact, time-wasting.
14. italki
Cost: Prices vary widely
Summary: italki connects learners with tutors, teachers and conversation partners. As with similar services, it doesn’t a curriculum or content to instructors - just facilitates.
The good thing about italki is their vetted onboarding process for teachers which ensures quality. italki has earned its amazing reputation.
Teachers succeed on italki through client feedback, meaning subpar teachers simply will not cut it on the platform.
What I like:
- Facilitates great connections with expert teachers.
What I don’t like:
- No set curriculum means you could be paired with an inexperienced new teacher not yet weeded out by italki’s review system.
15. Assimil
Cost: Prices vary widely
Summary: The Assimil method is old and outdated, and its ‘two wave’ approach has little value in light of current Second Language Acquisition trends (although its focus on patterns rather than grammar drills is ahead of its time). The Assimil dialogues are extremely useful, however.
See this Assimil review.
What I like:
- High quality dialogues
- Perfectly arranged audio library
- Very comprehensive
What I don’t like:
- Translation-based
- French only
- Doesn’t appear to be backed by research or case studies
- Unusual and bizarre situational topics
16. Living Language Swedish
Cost: Starts from $25
Summary: I was never a fan of Living Language when I reviewed it several years ago. I’m including it on this list because it is one of the big names and most popular courses for Swedish (plus I get asked about it from time to time).
I found Living Language to be bland, incorrectly levelled and just a very uninspiring grammar-heavy course.
What I like:
- Very thorough in its grammar explanations
What I don’t like:
- Incorrect levelling - especially for higher levels
- Trashing of competitors in its marketing is extremely off-putting
17. FSI Swedish
Cost: Free
Summary: FSI (Foreign Service Institute) is a government entity that trains diplomats and government officials in foreign languages. It offers Swedish along with many other languages online for free (including audio recordings).
The problem with the FSI material is that it’s literally been around for almost a century.
It’s ancient.
So although you can download their comprehensive Swedish course for free with audio, be aware that the material is literally photocopied booklets that were typed up on typewriters making it almost illegible.
If you’re patient, there’s some good value in the FSI courses but it’s so dated that I personally wouldn’t bother.
What I like:
- Being a US government entity that trains diplomats, FSI naturally has incredible Swedish course depth.
- Free and easy to download lesson + audio on many sites (the link below is the easiest to access).
What I don’t like:
- Archaic course.
- PDF material is still just a photocopy of the original, typewritten paper so it’s dreadful to read.
Summary: Best online Swedish courses
This pretty much sums up every online Swedish course option currently available (if I missed one, let me know!).
In addition to a Swedish course, make sure you’re getting regular Swedish practice with native speakers.
For that, italki is the easiest way to find really inexpensive practice partners and tutors.
Just remember that even if you have all the courses on this list, you’ll still fail at Swedish without the right motivation, and even a poor Swedish course can be effective in the hands of someone with the right amount of determination to succeed.
For tips on how to learn Swedish and overcoming various language learning struggles, subscribe below by ‘Joining the Guild’ (select Swedish as your target language).
Know of a Swedish course that I didn’t mention?
Share it below in the comment section.
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