Readlang alternatives: 6 reading-first tools compared

First, the honest part: Readlang is a good tool. Click a word, get a translation, the word becomes a flashcard. Cheap, focused, been around for years. If it's working for you, keep it.

People usually go looking for a Readlang alternative for one of a few concrete reasons:

• the web app feels dated and development is slow
• free-tier limits on phrase translations get annoying fast
• no real mobile experience
• you want reviews smarter than basic flashcards
• you've moved from articles to video, and Readlang doesn't follow

Which reason is yours matters, because the alternatives are good at different things.

What you're actually choosing between

Every tool in this space answers three questions differently:

1. Where do you read? Texts you import, a curated library, or the live web.
2. What happens to saved words? Simple flashcards, or a proper spaced-repetition scheduler.
3. What does it cost? Free, one cheap sub, or a platform subscription.

Here's the field.

LingQ — the big library

The closest thing to a Readlang superset. Thousands of lessons with audio in dozens of languages, plus imports. Words you save ("LingQs") are tracked against everything you read, and it counts your known words over time, which is genuinely motivating.

Trade-offs: the interface is busy, and it's subscription-only for real use. If Readlang felt too minimal, LingQ is the opposite problem. Full comparison of LingQ alternatives here.

Pick it if: you want a huge ready-made library and don't mind paying monthly.

Lute — the free tinkerer's option

Lute (v3) is open source and self-hosted: you run it on your own machine, import texts, click words, define terms. No accounts, no fees, your data stays local. It's the spiritual successor to Learning With Texts, minus most of the jank.

Trade-off: you set it up yourself, and it only reads what you import — no web, no video, no built-in dictionary beyond what you wire up.

Pick it if: you're comfortable with a bit of setup and want zero recurring cost.

Mossglen — read the live web (full disclosure: this one's ours)

Mossglen is a free Chrome extension. Instead of importing texts into a library, it turns the page you're already on — any article, and YouTube videos — into a clean reading view. Tap a word for the meaning and it's saved with its sentence; a short quiz after reading keeps difficulty calibrated to you; reviews run on FSRS, the current generation of spaced-repetition scheduling. Works without an account, in 8 languages (EN, ES, FR, DE, IT, PT, JA, KO).

Trade-off: it lives in your browser. No iOS/Android app today, and no curated story library — the internet is the library.

Pick it if: your reading already happens on real websites and you want saving + review to be automatic.

Migaku — for the video-and-Anki crowd

A browser extension aimed at learners who live on Netflix and YouTube: dual subtitles, word lookups, one-click flashcards that sync into a serious SRS. Strongest for Japanese and other East Asian languages. Subscription-based, and the workflow assumes you enjoy tuning your setup.

Pick it if: video is your main input and you want power-user card creation.

Language Reactor — video subtitles, free core

The default choice for Netflix/YouTube dual subtitles with a popup dictionary. The free tier covers a lot. It's a lookup tool more than a learning system, though — saved words don't get a real review engine.

Pick it if: you mainly want to understand shows, and reviews aren't the point.

Beelinguapp — casual parallel reading

Mobile app with side-by-side bilingual stories and audio. Pleasant and low-effort, but it's a curated-content walled garden: you read their texts, not yours.

Pick it if: you want light daily reading on your phone, not a system.

The short version

You miss…	Go to
A big built-in library	LingQ
Free forever, own your data	Lute
Reading real websites + auto review	Mossglen
Netflix/YouTube as study material	Language Reactor or Migaku
Casual phone reading	Beelinguapp

Whichever you pick, the tool is the smaller half. Words stick because of how you handle them while reading — mark, collect, review — and every tool above is just a way to make that loop cheaper. New to the approach itself? Start with how learning a language by reading actually works.