Source: Pexels

Portuguese is a Romance (evolved from Vulgar Latin) language of the Indo-European language family that is the official language in 9 countries such as Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique and others. It has approximately 250 million native speakers and is listed as the most spoken native language in South America. Learning Portuguese can open a host of exciting opportunities to enhance your travel experiences in South America, make new friends, learn new cultures and even expand your career – if you plan to stay!

However, finding a good online Portuguese language course is not as easy as we’d like to think. With so many outdated and boring learning resources that do little to keep you interested nor help you learn effectively, it can be tricky to find reliable and engaging Portuguese language teaching solutions. That is why we’ve curated and selected the 18 best online courses to learn Portuguese, so that you may look no further. We’ll show you the cool language learning sites we’ve found, their prices, their pros and cons and give you a breakdown of their unique features. But first we’ll discuss some of the key differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese and some top tips on how to get the most out of your Portuguese lessons – so that you can become a Portuguese pro in no time!

Portuguese Classes for all Levels

1. Amazing Talker

Source: Amazing Talker

Visit Amazing Talker

Price: Starting from 5€ – 16€ for a 25 minute lesson – varies per tutor

Description: Amazing Talker has a great range of diverse tutors that offer both European and Brazilian Portuguese across all proficiency levels, from beginner to advanced. The tutors set affordable rates per lesson and the website’s AI tutor matching system will make sure you are paired with the best tutor that meets your learning needs.

Pros	Cons
Lessons are tailored to match the students’ requirements	May not be for you if you are do not learn well through video-chat
Flexible options to accommodate students’ times	No supplementary materials provided in lessons
Affordable prices set by tutors with cheap trial lessons

2. Practice Portuguese

 

Source: Practice Portuguese

Visit Practice Portuguese

Price: €11 per month

Description: Practice Portuguese is a well-known language learning site for those who have aspired to start learning Portuguese. While it does only offer European Portuguese, it is dedicated to providing detailed lessons that is loaded with content and resources to make sure that you learn effectively. There are over 400 lessons to help you practice grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation.

Pros	Cons
Provides a wealth of learning materials and resources	The same format can become repetitive over time
Affordable price and with great value for the amount of content provided
Free podcasts available with transcripts and quizzes to help you

3. Camões – Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua

Source: Instituto Camões

Visit Instituto Camões

Price: One-time fee of 180€ (self-study option), 250€ (basic option) or 320€ (Premium option)

Description: The Instituto Camões was created by the Portuguese government and offers courses in focusing on oral and written comprehension skills that are offered in 3 different levels of interaction for all proficiency levels of European Portuguese: self-learning, basic, and premium. The course has a good curriculum structure and has a flow of progression. They offer a great selection of supplementary materials such as storybooks, mini-biographies, and a reference guide for everyday situations. The website is entirely in Portuguese, which may not be easy for beginners, but Google can translate the webpage for you if you are having some difficulties.

Pros	Cons
Different modes offer variety for learners to choose from	More expensive than other options
Structured curriculum and progression to the courses
Lots of supplementary resources

4. Alto Comissariado para as Migrações (ACM)

Source: ACM

Visit ACM

Price: Not shown before registration

Description: ACM aim to respond to migrant’s needs concerning European Portuguese language learning in order to successfully immigrate and integrate into Portuguese society, including in the labor market. The Portuguese Host Language (PLA) courses (formerly known as Portuguese for Speakers of Other Languages (PFOL) or Portuguese for All (PPT)) were created according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). These courses range from elementary proficiency to independent user. They also offer technical Portuguese courses based on industries of work, such as Hospitality and Engineering fields.

Pros	Cons
Developed according to CEFR guidelines, making it reliable and certified education	Prices not shown until you register
Technical Portuguese offered for different industries
Great focus on helping immigrants and others new to Portuguese in getting integrated with the language and society

5. Portuguese Language Lessons

Source: Portuguese Language Lessons

Visit Portuguese Language Lessons

Price: 15€ per month (self study) / 30€ per month (1-on-1 class)

Description: Portuguese Language Lessons offer a good variety of courses types such as online self-study, online group classes and 1-on-1 private classes. They have a pledge to help you learn European Portuguese “efficiently and effectively” with us. They offer experienced tutors that provide a personalized experience for you to learn European Portuguese with flexible times and options that meet your needs.

Pros	Cons
Great variety of class types and learning methods	Affordable pricing schedule
Experienced tutors
Flexible learning options

Portuguese Courses and Apps for Beginners

6. Rocket Portuguese

Source: Rocket Portuguese

Visit Rocket Portuguese

Price: 90€ (one-time payment) with options to pay 17€ (monthly) for 6 months

Description: Rocket Portuguese teaches you Brazilian Portuguese through structured lessons, interactive audio lessons and survival lessons with various topics. They also offer you challenging games and quizzes to help you practice what you have learned while giving you points to keep you motivated and keep things fun. It has a nicely designed interface that makes your experience on the platform refreshing and simple.

Pros	Cons
Good design and easy to use interface	Can be come repetitive and monotonous
Lifetime access with a one-time payment
Sets goals and points to earn which keeps you motivated

7. Babbel – Best for Beginners

Source: Babbel

Visit Babbel

Price: Subscriptions cost 12.90€ (monthly), $28 (quarterly), 47.60€ (half yearly) or 71.38€ (annually).

Description: Babbel is a tried and tested language learning app that has earned a good reputation due its delivery of comprehensive, bite-sized teaching to beginners in various foreign languages. They teach Brazilian Portuguese, covering vocabulary and grammar basics with conversations that you are likely to hear in daily Brazil life. They use memorization and repetition techniques to help you learn and practice Brazilian Portuguese fundamentals.

Pros	Cons
Personalized experience from their questionnaire at the start	Format can become repetitive and boring over time
Good focus on basics to make a solid foundation for beginners
Affordable subscription plans

8. Mango Languages

Source: Mango

Visit Mango Languages

Price: 7.20€ (monthly) or $79€ (yearly) for a single language. Costs 16. 26€ (monthly) or $179.99 (yearly) for all languages.

Description: Mango offers an affordable variety of lessons for Brazilian Portuguese aimed at helping beginners improve their listening, reading and pronunciation skills with flash-card learning and learn-in-context methods. These are done through the use of drill exercises, pronunciation comparisons with native speakers including in-depth cultural and grammatical notes as well. Mango is a great all-rounder that focuses on reading, listening and pronunciation skills with a balance of audio and written notes and resources. For an affordable subscription, it is a great language learning solution for beginners.

Pros	Cons
Comparison of your pronunciation with native speakers to increase fluency	Audio lessons can become lengthy sometimes, with long explanations that become tiring to listen to
Insight into cultural and traditional Portuguese elements
Includes reading and listening skills development

9. Pimsleur

Source: Pimsleur

Visit Pimsleur

Price: European Portuguese – 19.85€ (per 5 lessons) or 108.95€ (per full level, which includes 30 lessons). Brazilian Portuguese – the cost is 520.00€ for a complete course (levels 1 to 5) or 136€ (per level).

Description: Pimsleur is a good language learning tool for beginners to develop their listening and speaking comprehension and language proficiency in both Brazilian and European Portuguese. With the use of their trademark “Dr. Pimsleur’s method”, you’re able to learn on all aspects with the sole focus of speaking the language efficiently and without rules nor boring drills of memorization or repetition. This is because of their aim to help you learn the phrases and words you would most probably need in daily conversations and situations. Using this, they help develop your vocabulary, grammar, and native-like pronunciation with each audio lesson. This includes vocabulary, greetings, common phrases and expressions you would need when talking to native speakers.

Pros	Cons
Practical teaching on contextual situations and application of speaking skills right away	Does not focus on reading, writing and grammar skills
Flexible scheduling options to accommodate students with apps on Android and Apple devices for better accessibility
Incorporation of cultural aspects into lessons

10. Lingodeer

Source: Lingodeer

Visit Lingodeer

Price: 10.84€ (monthly), 27.11€ (quarterly), 50.61€ (yearly) or 90€ (lifetime).

Description: Lingodeer teaches Brazilian Portuguese by using a variety of exercises, activities and challenges for practicing the language. The lessons are delivered in manageable chunks that are not too much nor too little. Their interface is really well-designed and customizable to make your user experience smooth and easy. They have detailed explanations of concepts during their lessons, which are a great resource to help develop your grammar and vocabulary in Brazilian Portuguese. While their detailed break-downs of grammar and vocabulary are excellent, they have not given attention to helping students practice their speaking skills. This is a great option for beginners only, as there is not much catered for intermediate and advanced learners.

Pros	Cons
In-depth explanations in grammar and vocabulary	No speaking skills practice
Great variety of engaging and challenging exercises	Not helpful to intermediate and advanced learners
Intuitive and customizable interface making it easy and fun to use
Affordable pricing

Intermediate Portuguese Courses and Free learning Resources

11. Portuguese Lab Academy

Source: Portuguese Lab

Visit Portuguese Lab Academy

Price: 32€ (monthly) or 316€ (annually).

Description: Portuguese Lab Academy is a well-designed platform with step-by-step structuring of its courses and content. It has great depth in its teaching that makes it ideal for beginners and sufficient for even intermediate learners of European Portuguese. The courses are of good quality with a natural progression design, as they are taught in accordance with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. It is taught by Susana Morais, who is a renowned Portuguese teacher.

Pros	Cons
Wide range skills are focused on such as reading, writing, pronunciation, vocabulary	Pricier than other options online
Well-structured course and system
Great supplementary resources

12. Glossika

Source: Glossika

Visit Glossika

Price: 27€ (monthly) or 270€ (annually) for access to all **languages.

Description: Glossika is an AI-based language learning platform that is structured around speaking skills and listening comprehension, where you listen to sentences by native speakers and repeat what you hear. This is geared towards more intermediate language students of both Brazilian and European Portuguese, as it offers challenging exercises to test your language skills. It’s focused on enabling students to naturally learn the grammar points, pronunciation, vocabulary, and language structure.

Pros	Cons
Good audio quality and use of native speakers	Pricy subscription options
Good for challenging you and making you develop your proficiency
Great balance of audio and text lessons and exercises

13. City Lit

Source: CityLit

Visit City Lit

Price: Average of 189€ per course

Description: City Lit offers a variety of courses across a diversity of subject areas, with a dedicated online language learning section that includes the European Portuguese language. Accommodating the busy schedules of their students, their courses run during the daytime, evenings and weekends to offer a great level of learning flexibility to students. They offer a diversity of Portuguese modules that cover beginner and intermediate levels and also specialized courses in Portuguese literature and culture.

Pros	Cons
Specialized courses offered	Courses are expensive
High quality course content and education service
Great flexibility with their courses and scheduling

14. Learn-Portuguese.org

Source: Learn-Portuguese.org

Visit Learn Portuguese.org

Price: 74.22€ per beginner course and 95€ per intermediate course.

Description: Learn Portuguese.org is a platform created by Mia Esmeriz, who is a certified and professional Portuguese teacher. She has video lessons for beginner and intermediate students who want to learn European Portuguese. Each video lesson is about 30 to 90 minutes in duration and comprises of 10 to 12 recorded lectures where she explains grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation concepts.

Pros	Cons
Lifetime access after purchasing any course	Courses are costly
Free 3-day crash course which includes resources like worksheets and solutions
Good for beginners

15. FSI

Source: FSI

FSI (Foreign Service Institute) is a government entity that trains diplomats and government officials in foreign languages. It offers Portuguese courses along with many other languages online, completely free. However, getting this content for free means there are some trade-offs – the material and content is quite old, going as far back as 1967! If this is something you can get past, you will have a very good collection of free downloadable resources to help you learn as it contains a wealth of free and detailed content designed for US Government purposes and training. While the courses are quite outdated and some of the content may be of low quality and legibility, this is still a risk-free option that you should not miss out on.

Advanced Portuguese Classes and Free learning Resources

16. Tandem

Source: Tandem

Visit Tandem

Price: Pro version available at 6.32€ for one month**, 3.61€/month** for 3 months**,** and 2.64€/month for a year’s subscription.

Description: Tandem is a language exchange app that you can use to communicate with native speakers via their translation and speaking features. You can speak with your conversation partner directly through the app, so it’s very useful tool for communication in foreign languages. Using Tandem as an advanced Portuguese lesson means you must ensure you are prepared in advance, so that you know what you will talk about and how it’ll teach you and help you reach your learning goals. Advanced students would probably choose more complex topics to use a range of special/technical vocabulary, like business or even health-care industries.

Pros	Cons
Affordable subscription plans	No set way of learning, you mainly learn through use of the tool
Technical Portuguese for different industries
Useful foreign language communication tool for practical situations

17. Polly lingual

Source: Polly lingual

Visit Polly Lingual

Price: The Polly Passport subscription is available at two different price tiers, 2.70€ per month and 9€ per year.

Description: Polly Lingual provides advanced Portuguese lessons that are taught and practiced in engaging methods such as games, exercises, vocabulary lists and other such challenges. The advanced level covers themes and topics like idioms, sports, politics, current affairs and others. Advanced level students are recommended to take the business and healthcare Portuguese lessons for more focused learning on technical vocabulary.

Pros	Cons
Affordable subscription plans	Not as structured in learning Portuguese as other courses
Basic membership is free
Engaging methods to learn such as topics and themes. Games and other exercises are used too

18. Living Language

Source: Living language

Visit Living Language

Price: A 136€ annual subscription with a 90€ renewal fee thereafter.

Description: Living Language provides a structured Brazilian Portuguese course. They use engaging exercises and challenges to help you practice your language skills such as flashcards, games and dialogue. The course covers vocabulary, grammar and cultural aspects too. Their audio content has native Portuguese speakers, which makes it a great tool for helping you with developing your Portuguese listening and pronunciation skills too.

Pros	Cons
Free first lesson is offered	Expensive subscription plan
Great audio dialogue in native Portuguese
All language skills focused on

19. Conta-me Tudo Podcast

Source: Conta-me tudo

Conta-me Tudo (Tell Me Everything) has over 100 audio podcasts that you can download or listen to online. While these aren’t actual lessons in European Portuguese, they’re a very useful audio resource for advanced students as they cover a wide range of topics using clear European Portuguese. Therefore, this podcast is an entertaining way to further develop your vocabulary while refining your listening, pronunciation and speaking skills.

20. PortuguesePod101

Source: PortuguesePod101

Visit PortuguesePod101

Price: 7€ – 43€ a month depending on the account you choose and how long you purchase it for.

Description: PortuguesePod101 offers 1180+ audio and video lessons, including detailed PDF lesson notes and transcripts to help supplement your learning. It has lessons with a good progression route that increases in challenge you, especially in the Advanced levels, with the intention of helping you become totally fluent in Portuguese. This is a great podcast to help advanced students refine their pronunciation, listening and speaking skills in Portuguese. It is a good tool for learning Portuguese vocabulary, grammar and culture. It has a steady pacing and learning curve designed to help you grow through proficiency levels and become fluent in Portuguese. There is a large amount of content here, with supplementary materials to help boost you even further on your language learning path.

Pros	Cons
Good learning curve and challenge in advanced level	The platform might be a bit confusing to use
Cultural aspects of Portuguese explored in lessons
Diverse array of topics and content covered

Have you found your ideal Portuguese course?

We’re confident that you’ve found your perfect Portuguese course after reading our top 20 best online Portuguese classes. Each language learning platform has their own pros and cons, unique features and price ranges. Ultimately, the course that best suits you will match your learning needs while keeping you engaged and motivated through your learning journey of Portuguese.

If you want to see more of what we have to offer, come visit AmazingTalker and let us show you the wide range of exceptional tutors and classes we have to offer in both Brazilian and European Portuguese!