Busuu Review

Saturday, December 14th

2024 Portuguese Lesson Reviews

Busuu

• Free for Basic membership
• Premium membership: $13.90/month
• Discounts available when billed annually (as low as $6.95/month)
• 7-day free trial of Premium
• 14-day money-back guarantee on Premium membership
• Beginner to Upper Intermediate Brazilian Portuguese (Levels A1-B2)
• Placement test available for non-beginners
• Certification testing available

Busuu got its start in 2008 and was acquired by education industry giant Chegg in 2022. This Portuguese lesson platform makes heavy use of real-world situations to walk you through fluency levels ranging from beginner to upper intermediate (CEFR A1-B2). It's also one of the only language services we know of that invites you to have your work checked by native speakers, while reciprocating by correcting others' English submissions.

Lessons for multiple proficiency levels

When you create a free account on Busuu, you'll get access to a ton of introductory-level Portuguese lessons, as well as the initial lessons on higher fluency levels. There are 10 chapters for students at the Beginner A1 level, 3 chapters at Elementary A2, 7 chapters for Intermediate B1, and 2 chapters for Upper Intermediate B2. Although each chapter has several components, that overview alone should show you pretty clearly that Busuu is strongest for beginning learners, and the lessons dwindle the more you progress in fluency. There's also a Level A1-A2 course on Portuguese for Travel that you can access independently of your work within the main lessons.

Direct approach to grammar

Learning Portuguese through Busuu is pretty straightforward. You'll start with basics like introducing yourself and asking how someone is doing. The free version comes with lots of ads as you work your way through, but that's pretty common among Portuguese lessons. We appreciate that Busuu takes an overt approach to teaching grammar: where many platforms expect you to figure it out intuitively over time, here you'll be explained exactly when to use "ser” or "estar”, what definite articles are and when to use them, and so on. That's really helpful for most adult language learners.

Community-based learning features

Busuu incorporates many of the motivational features you'll find with other Portuguese lessons. Those include study plans (to help you commit to consistent learning), streaks, and leagues to compete with other Busuu users. If you started your Portuguese studies with the Bird App, this would feel very familiar. But, Busuu takes it to the next level within the Busuu community. As you progress through your learning, you'll have the opportunity to present written and spoken work to native Portuguese speakers on the platform, and get their corrections and feedback. And, on the flipside, you can contribute to the Busuu "family” by offering your input on others' submitted English work.

More advanced content requires a subscription

What does it cost to use Busuu? If you're a beginner, you'll be able to access plenty of content for free. But, moving beyond the basics to more advanced levels of fluency will require a subscription, if you want anything past the first lesson or two offered as a sample. Pricing is tricky here: you only get a 7-day free trial of the Premium subscription if you set your account to bill at 6- or 12-month intervals, paid upfront. At the time of our review, that worked out to $50.70 for 6 months of access, or $83.40 for a full year. Otherwise, you can pay month-to-month at $13.90.

What does a Premium subscription get you?

What do you get with a Premium subscription? Those features include:

• Specialized courses
• Spaced repetition
• Grammar review
• Priority feedback from native speakers
• Use lessons in any order, from any level of fluency
• No ads
• End-of-level completion certificates

Not 100% sure the subscription is worth it

Is it worth it to subscribe? We're on the fence. You'll definitely need it if you wind up loving the way Busuu approaches Portuguese and want to take advantage of every lesson at every proficiency level. And, there are plenty of 5-star reviews (to the tune of more than 70,000 on the Apple App Store alone) to show that Busuu has some fans out there. We did find one reviewer's criticism thought-provoking, though: "the app seems almost exclusively geared to upper middle class business people in what it talks about. It feels a little silly to be learning how to talk about meetings in the boardroom when I can't say ‘door' or ‘hallway'.” That tracks with what we saw as well, even (especially?) at the B1 level where we landed after taking our placement test: conversations about flights and business environments, and so on.

Better than average, but find out for yourself if it's a good fit

At the end of the day, our impression of Busuu is that it's good but not great. We appreciate that it legitimately offers higher levels of content, even if the vocabulary isn't what we might use in our own day-to-day life, and that it's easy to see how the platform works to provide Portuguese lessons with free access to a ton of beginner-level content. We would recommend that you create a free account and see how Busuu compares with other Portuguese options on our list: only you can determine if you like the way it fits with how you learn best. For us, however, we had better results with our higher-ranked providers, and we probably wouldn't use Busuu long-term.