Readlang review: a very good reader with a very specific shape

What Readlang is, in one paragraph

Readlang is a web reader made by Steve Ridout and online since 2013. You bring a text, click a word, and the translation appears in the line. Clicked words become flashcards scheduled by spaced repetition. A browser extension does the same on any web page, and a YouTube import does it on video transcripts. The free plan allows unlimited single-word translations; Premium at $6 a month or $48 a year removes the daily limit on phrase translations and AI explanations. Duolingo owned it for a few years and sold it back to its creator. The full guide has the details; this page is the opinion.

What is genuinely good

It is also maintained: the Firefox extension got version 0.9.41 on 14 September 2026, and prices on the pricing page were unchanged when we checked on 19 September 2026.

• It gets out of the way. There is no learning curve worth the name. People who come from LingQ notice within minutes that nothing needs maintaining.
• The Web Reader extension. This is the feature that keeps people. Any article, forum thread or documentation page becomes clickable text without copying it anywhere. On Chrome, Edge and, since late 2025, Firefox.
• The free plan is real. Unlimited words, unlimited texts, unlimited practice. A beginner reading short articles may never need to pay.
• The price. $48 a year for Premium is less than half of LingQ's yearly plan and below most subscription language apps.
• Languages. More than a hundred, with AI explanations for all of them since 2024. Few tools in this category reach past the big twenty.
• The founder answers. The forum is active and the person replying is the person who wrote the code. Bugs get acknowledged by name.

What is not

• You bring the material. The shared library exists, but for most languages it is thin at beginner level. If you do not already have things to read, the first week is a search for content, not a reading habit.
• No app. On a phone, Readlang is the website added to the home screen. It reads fine; it also behaves like a website, with server round-trips for every word and browser-style text selection. Native app requests on the forum go back years.
• No offline mode. Every translation is a request. Trains, planes and hotel Wi-Fi are where this hurts.
• The phrase limit on free. Ten phrase translations a day sounds fine until you read a novel where the meaning sits in idioms and phrasal verbs. That is the moment most people either pay or leave.
• Flashcards are adequate, not central. Spaced repetition works, but people who care about their review system usually export to Anki, which takes a CSV detour rather than a button.
• One person. The same fact that makes support good makes the bus factor one. It has survived twelve years, an acquisition and a buy-back, so the risk is theoretical, but it is there.

What other people say

The public record is small but consistent.

As found on 14 September 2026. Review counts are small; treat every rating as a sample, including ours.

The Reddit threads are the most useful reading. The typical arc: someone asks "Readlang or LingQ", a dozen replies say Readlang is simpler and cheaper, two say LingQ is worth it for the import and the known-words counter, and one says they use both. The Readlang vs LingQ page condenses that argument with the prices attached.

One older Quora answer describes Readlang as having "only a few thousand users". That was many years ago; the Chrome extension alone now shows around 100,000 users. Quote it as history, not as a description of the product today.

Is Readlang legit and safe?

Yes. It has been online since 2013, has a public pricing page, a forum, a blog and a named founder with a public track record, and it takes payment through ordinary card processing on its own site. Nothing about it is unusual. The things to avoid are the "Readlang premium APK" and "mod" files on third-party download sites: Readlang publishes no APK, so anything with that label is repackaged by someone else. The Android page covers the real routes.

Is Premium worth it?

If you read books rather than headlines, yes, and the yearly plan is the one to buy: $48 a year is $4 a month for unlimited phrase translations and explanations, plus audio storage and better voices. If you read short articles and can live with ten phrases a day, stay free; nothing about the free plan is crippled. Premium Plus at $120 a year is for people who upload hours of audio or want whole texts read aloud in the better voices; most readers will never need it. The pricing page has every row of the three plans.

Who should use it, who should look elsewhere

Use Readlang if you are past the beginner stage, read on a laptop, already have articles and books you want to get through, and want to pay little or nothing. This describes a lot of self-taught intermediate learners, and for them it is close to the ideal tool.

Look at LingQ if you want a provided library with audio and a system that tracks every word, and you are willing to pay for it and maintain it.

Look at a native reader if the phone is where you read. Readlang Mobile is our answer to that: graded books from A1 to C1 so the first one fits, tap a word or the first and last word of a phrase, free for 30 translations a day. It has about twenty languages rather than a hundred, no video and no export, and the side-by-side page is as blunt about that as this page is about Readlang.

Questions people ask