An honest comparison from the team that built &Be. Short version: Memrise trains your ear. &Be trains your mouth. Those are not the same job.
The speaking machine. Every lesson is a spoken conversation with an AI teacher who corrects you honestly.
The listening machine. Thousands of clips of real native speakers at real speed, vocab that sticks, MemBot AI chat.
&Be is built for what all that input can't do: get the words out of your mouth. You've studied — maybe for years — you recognize hundreds of phrases, and when a real person talks to you, the sentences you "know" refuse to come out. There are no flashcards to hide behind. If you can't say it out loud, the lesson isn't done.
Memrise is built to fill your head with real Spanish. Its signature is thousands of short video clips of actual native speakers — filmed in the street, not a studio — saying phrases at the speed people really talk. Pair that with genuinely good spaced repetition and the vocabulary sticks. As input, it's hard to beat.
| &Be Fluent |
Memrise | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Actually speaking Spanish, out loud | Absorbing the language: vocabulary, phrases, and real-speed listening |
| A typical lesson | A 10-minute spoken conversation — the speaking is the lesson | Spaced-repetition vocab reviews plus short native-speaker video clips |
| Speaking practice | Free-form conversation every lesson, all 349 topics, A1–C2 — the whole product | MemBot AI chat for practice conversations — useful, but it leans typed rather than spoken |
| Feedback style | Honest correction of what you freely produced — parroted words don't count toward your score | Right/wrong on recall; you know which phrases you recognize |
| Spanish coverage | Spanish only, done deep: 349 CEFR-mapped topics with regional usage (Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Spain) | Strong phrase-focused Spanish with real native-speaker video; no full grammar path |
| Languages | Spanish (that's the point) | 20+ |
| Platforms | iOS | iOS, Android, web |
| Price | First 10 lessons free · $19.99/mo · $119.99/yr | Pro ≈ $90/yr · free tier available |
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.
From day one you hear actual native speakers — in the street, not a studio — talking the way people really talk. It's the best listening training of any app on this page.
Well-tuned spaced repetition resurfaces words right before you'd forget them. Your recognition vocabulary grows fast and stays.
Memrise teaches in useful chunks — the things people really say — rather than marching you through grammar tables.
The clips are charming, the pace is quick, and it never talks down to you. Easy to keep coming back to.
You've done the studying — Memrise's or anyone's — you know hundreds of phrases but have never produced a spontaneous sentence out loud, and that gap is the thing you're paying to fix.
You're building your Spanish from the ground up, native speakers still sound impossibly fast to you, you want vocabulary that sticks, or you're on Android.
This pairing genuinely works: Memrise for the input — your ear and your vocabulary — and &Be for the output, saying it all out loud every day. Ear plus mouth 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.
