Memrise Review

Friday, January 17th

2025 Korean Lesson Reviews

Memrise

• No cost to use basic Memrise account
• More features available (ad-free) with paid Memrise Pro subscription
• Uses video clips of native Korean speakers in authentic environments
• Learn from user-created content as well as Memrise lessons
• Many fluency levels available
• 30-day money-back guarantee

Memrise is our all-time favorite way to learn Korean (or most languages, if we're being honest). It combines the best parts of so many of today's popular language platforms. Native speaker video clips using speech authentically (in some pretty sweet Korean locations)? Yep. Motivation to keep making progress? Yep. Content that gets updated regularly? Yep. Multiple language levels? You know what we're going to say next! Memrise says that they push you to speak another language, and "if you want to pretend to learn, choose another language learning app.” Okay, then!

Let's go!

To get started, you initially create your Memrise account for free. The first thing you'll see is Korean 1, and the first lesson is Deciphering the Alphabet. Memrise goes to great lengths to help you understand how the letters combine to make syllables, and how those syllables combine to make words. Better yet, they explain the word order as you would understand it in English: for example, if you've watched any number of K-dramas, you already know that what sounds like "ka-ja” means "let's go”, but Memrise makes sure you know that in Korean, it's actually more along the lines of "go let's”. Helpful (and a big departure from the Little Green Bird App That Everyone Loves To Hate). That instruction is where you'll start to see the native speakers teaching you how they say each letter and word, in ways you'll be able to picture as you practice what you've learned.

Lots of user-created content (for now)

But that's just what you get from the Memrise-created introduction to Korean. More advanced? No worries. There's also tons of community-created content on Memrise (and some that actually syncs up with other Korean lessons we've reviewed, if you need a place to get extra practice). You'll find all of that when you go out to the main Korean page on Memrise.

Big upgrades are coming

In the past, it could be a little confusing trying to sync up what you might be learning in the Memrise-created content with any extras you were adding, but big changes are coming soon to the platform. What will those changes look like? Memrise is rolling out an upgrade across many of its languages; at the time of this evaluation, most of the languages we had tried were slated to be moved to the new experience "soon”. That will include ways to Learn, Immerse, and Communicate, including conversations with the MemBot Chat AI. That could mean that Memrise looks a little different when you try it out, compared to how it looked when we visited recently (but we encourage you to give it a try and let us know what you think).

Pay as little as $80 for lifetime access to all Memrise languages

You can use Memrise for free across all of the languages in its portfolio, for as long as you like. But, if you'd like to go ad-free, unlock all vocabulary lessons, native speaker videos, and conversation practice, consider getting the Pro membership. While it's typically priced at $27.99/month or $130.99 annually, there's almost always a promotion to get Lifetime Pro access for much less than the list price of $199.99. At the time of our updated review of Korean lessons, Memrise was offering that plan for just $80. It's a solid way to get unlimited access to your Korean program (or Spanish, or Italian, or... ) without having to worry about a subscription; just think about how much you might spend month-to-month on anything else you might be a member of, before you realize you're not even using it. A one-time cost of $80 sounds like a pretty good deal to us.

Millions of users who love this platform

You're going to be amazed how many people have reviewed Memrise: over 1.5 million on the Google Play store and almost 200K on the Apple App Store. People tend to have nothing but high praise for Memrise as an app, with both places showing an average of 4.5-4.8 stars. We found frequent mentions specifically for Korean, saying it's got a steep learning curve but probably the best language learning app out there. Just keep in mind that with any updates and new releases of any service, there are bound to be bugs; we read several very recent comments that made it sound like the rollout of Memrise's upgrades might have some hitches (like lessons that have to be manually stopped, which kills the user's learning streak).

Still our favorite way to learn Korean

While we wish we could tell you all about what Memrise's Korean lessons look like in the new release, we were just a little too early to include those details in this review. But, with as much as we've loved using Memrise in the past, we're confident that it's going to continue to be a stellar way to learn Korean in a way that's both fun and authentic. If you want to actually learn how to speak the language like a native, with words and phrases you genuinely need (and not useless ones like "the baby's cucumber”), Memrise is the best option out there today. We continue to give the Korean lessons at Memrise a 5-star rating and our highest recommendation.