Readlang alternatives
for learners who want to listen
Readlang is a reader for people who learn in a browser. You click a word or phrase on a text or any website, see the translation, and the word goes into your flashcard deck. It is built around reading at a screen, so learners who want to take a whole book with them and listen, without tapping, often look for something else.
What Readlang is and does well
Readlang's tagline is "learn a language reading what you love". You open a text in its online reader, or any web page through the Web Reader, and click a word or phrase to see a translation inline. Every lookup is saved and becomes a flashcard. It is fast, clean and flexible about what you read.
- Click-to-translate for words and phrases, in the Readlang reader and on any website through the Web Reader, a browser extension (or a bookmarklet on mobile browsers).
- Context-aware translations that use the whole sentence, plus AI explanations of words and phrases.
- Flashcards from your lookups, with a spaced repetition algorithm, words ranked by usefulness, and export to Anki.
- Your own material: texts and articles, novels as .txt or DRM-free EPUB files, web pages saved for later, and, on paid plans, MP3 audio that is transcribed automatically and highlighted word by word.
- A public library of texts shared by users, mostly short pieces of a few hundred words tagged with a CEFR level. Many were generated with the Readlang Story Bot.
- A YouTube video player with transcriptions, and Ami, an AI chat partner that corrects your writing.
- More than 100 languages.
Audio comes in two forms. Auto-Pronounce speaks a word or phrase when you tap it and during flashcard practice. Read Aloud is a play button at the bottom of the reader page that reads the whole text and highlights the current word. On the free plan both use your browser's built-in voices, so quality depends on your device. Premium adds higher-quality voices (Microsoft Azure neural voices) for words and phrases; Premium Plus uses them for whole texts too.
On phones and tablets, Readlang is a web app you add to your home screen. The free plan gives unlimited single-word translations with daily limits on phrase translations and AI explanations. Premium removes those limits; Premium Plus adds whole-text voices and a more powerful AI model.
Redible: how it differs for Readlang users
Redible starts from listening. It is built so that listening to a book is as comfortable as reading it, including with the phone in your pocket.
- Complete books in the original language, not bilingual editions. Every sentence is voiced in a natural, expressive synthesized voice (not a human narrator, and not the phone's built-in text-to-speech) and synchronized with the text. Read along, or put the phone away.
- Sandwich mode: the original sentence, then the same sentence in your language, then the original again, so you can follow without looking.
- Hints and translations on request: short contextual explanations on the words likely to be new at your level, and sentence translations, spoken as well as shown.
- Questions by voice. Tap your earbuds or the lock-screen button and ask out loud what a word meant, what just happened or why a character did something. You hear the answer and the book continues, with the screen off. You can also type a question or pick a suggested one.
- Auto mode sets how often support appears, which hints play and how fast the narration runs, based on the level you choose (A1–C2).
- Offline downloads with Premium, background playback with lock-screen controls, separate speeds for the book voice and the support voice, and position sync across devices.
The trade-off is scope. Readlang covers more than 100 languages and any text you can find. Redible offers a curated library of complete books in seven languages, in apps for iPhone, iPad and Android.