An honest comparison from the team that built &Be. Short version: Busuu gets you feedback on Spanish you prepared. &Be makes you produce Spanish live. Those are not the same job.
The speaking machine. Every lesson is a spoken conversation with an AI teacher who corrects you honestly.
The community classroom. CEFR-aligned courses with a placement test, native speakers correcting your exercises, 14 languages.
&Be is built for what the exercises can't reach: you've studied — maybe for years — you understand far more than you can say, and when a real person talks to you, the sentences you "know" refuse to come out. Busuu's corrections arrive after you've performed; real conversation demands Spanish now. If you can't say it out loud, in the moment, the lesson isn't done.
Busuu is built to walk you through a real curriculum — affordably. CEFR-aligned courses from A1 up through B2/C1, a placement test that starts you in the right spot, and its signature feature: you submit written and recorded exercises, and actual native speakers correct them. At roughly $63 a year, it's one of the best-value structured options out there.
| &Be Fluent |
Busuu | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Actually speaking Spanish, out loud, live | Working through a CEFR curriculum with community feedback along the way |
| A typical lesson | A 10-minute spoken conversation — the speaking is the lesson | Short course units — vocabulary, dialogues, exercises — plus submissions the community corrects later |
| Speaking practice | Free-form conversation every lesson, all 349 topics, A1–C2 — the whole product | One-way recordings: you record a clip, post it, and wait for native speakers to correct it |
| Feedback style | Honest correction of what you freely produced, in the moment — parroted words don't count toward your score | Asynchronous corrections from real native speakers — genuine, but on a performance you prepared |
| Spanish coverage | Spanish only, done deep: 349 CEFR-mapped topics with regional usage (Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Spain) | Solid CEFR-aligned Spanish course, A1 through B2/C1, with placement test and certificates |
| Languages | Spanish (that's the point) | 14 |
| Platforms | iOS | iOS, Android, web |
| Price | First 10 lessons free · $19.99/mo · $119.99/yr | ≈ $63/yr Premium — one of the cheapest structured options |
Coursework trains recognition; only speaking trains speaking. In &Be there is no lesson that isn't a conversation — you can't tap your way through.
A deterministic scorer counts the unique Spanish words and clean sentences you actually said — and refuses to count words echoed back from the teacher. A 7.5 means you hit your level's target, not that the app wanted you to feel good.
Every vocabulary pack carries regional notes — the Mexico word, the Argentina word, the Spain word — because "textbook Spanish" is nobody's Spanish.
At roughly $63 a year, Busuu is one of the cheapest ways to get a real, structured course. On pure value for a curriculum, it's hard to beat.
Proper A1–B2/C1 courses with a placement test that drops you in at the right level, plus study-plan scheduling so you know what to do next.
Native speakers correcting your written and recorded exercises is a genuinely lovely feature — encouragement and nuance no algorithm fully replaces.
Completion certificates you can actually put on a CV — useful if you need to show a level, not just have one.
You've done the coursework — Busuu's or anyone's — you understand more than you can say, and the gap between your head and your mouth is the thing you're paying to fix.
You want an affordable structured course, you value corrections from real native speakers, you'd like a certificate for your CV, or you're on Android.
Busuu for the curriculum and native-speaker corrections. &Be for the daily live speaking reps. Coursework plus conversation is how people actually get fluent.
You already understand more Spanish than you can say. The only thing that closes that gap is speaking — and your first 10 lessons are free.
