An honest comparison from the team that built &Be. Short version: Lingoda is real school with real teachers. &Be is unlimited one-on-one speaking reps. Those are not the same job.
The speaking machine. Every lesson is a spoken conversation with an AI teacher who corrects you honestly.
The real school. Live online classes with certified teachers, around the clock, on a serious CEFR curriculum with certificates.
&Be is built for the talking time school can't give you: you've studied — maybe for years — you understand far more than you can say, and what you're missing is reps. In a 60-minute group class, your mouth might move for 10 minutes. In &Be, every minute of every lesson is yours, one-on-one, whenever you want. If you can't say it out loud, the lesson isn't done.
Lingoda is the closest thing to a real language school online. Live classes with certified human teachers, small groups or private lessons, a CEFR-structured curriculum from A1 to C1 with certificates at the end. If you want school — actual school — this is it.
| &Be Fluent |
Lingoda | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Actually speaking Spanish, out loud | Structured schooling: live instruction, CEFR progression, certificates |
| A typical lesson | A 10-minute spoken conversation — the speaking is the lesson | A 60-minute live class — group (max ~5 students) or private — with a certified teacher |
| Speaking practice | Free-form conversation every lesson, all 349 topics, A1–C2 — every minute is yours | Real, with real humans — but in a group class your personal talking time might be 10 minutes, and shy students can hide |
| Feedback style | Honest correction of what you freely produced — parroted words don't count toward your score | A real teacher's correction, live — quality varies by teacher and by how much airtime you got |
| Spanish coverage | Spanish only, done deep: 349 CEFR-mapped topics with regional usage (Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Spain) | Full CEFR curriculum A1–C1 with certificates |
| Languages | Spanish (that's the point) | Spanish, English, German, French |
| Platforms | iOS | Web (live video classes), around the clock |
| Price | First 10 lessons free · $19.99/mo · $119.99/yr | From ≈ $60/mo · group classes ≈ $8–15 each · a serious cadence runs $1,000+/yr |
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.
Certified human teachers who can read the room, rephrase on the fly, and answer the question you didn't know how to ask. No AI fully replaces that.
A real CEFR curriculum from A1 to C1, with certificates you can actually show an employer or a university.
Scheduled classes you've paid for get you to show up — and the famous Sprint challenges (attend daily for weeks, earn a large refund) turn that into a game some people genuinely win.
Talking to actual people — teachers and classmates — is the thing you're ultimately training for. Practicing it directly matters.
You've done the studying — classes, apps, or both — you understand more than you can say, and what you need is talking time: unlimited one-on-one reps for less than one month of a heavy class schedule costs per year.
You want real human teachers, a certificate at the end, the accountability of scheduled classes — and the budget for it. As online schools go, Lingoda is the real thing.
Lingoda for the structure and the human contact. &Be for the daily speaking reps in between — so you arrive at every live class already warmed up, and your paid class minutes actually count.
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.
