Best apps to practise speaking English: an honest list

How is this list ordered?

By problem, not by quality. The order runs from the problem most learners hit first to the one that needs another person to fix.

Pronunciation takes places one and two, because it decides whether you are understood at all. Confidence is third, because it decides whether you speak. Holding a long turn is fourth, because it only matters once the first two work. A scripted lesson is fifth, and a human tutor takes sixth and seventh, because a tutor costs more than everything else here combined.

That ordering is also why SoulfulStories sits fourth, and we make it. If we put our own product first, this page would read like the vendor listicles it is trying to beat, each of which ranks its own publisher at the top. The reason for fourth is in the section on long turns: it does one narrow thing well, and that thing is not pronunciation or confidence.

Two things about the prices below. Every figure is dated and linked, and several of these apps do not publish a price at all, which we say rather than guess. And prices move: re-check before you pay.

What does each app actually make you do for ten minutes?

This is the column the listicles leave out. Features are easy to copy from a marketing page; the task you repeat for ten minutes is what changes your speaking.

Each task in that column comes from the vendor page linked in its entry below. Look at the shape of that column. Four of the seven are repetition or conversation with a machine, and two are conversation with a person. Only one asks you to produce two minutes of connected speech from memory, with no partner and no script. That is the gap this list is built around, and it is why the order is by problem rather than by rating.

What does ten minutes cost on each app?

Cheap-looking subscriptions stop looking cheap once you divide by the minutes you actually use, so here is the arithmetic for the three that let you compute it.

SoulfulStories. Pro is $96 a year. At three retellings a week, ten minutes each, that is 156 sessions and 26 hours: $96 ÷ 26 = about $3.70 an hour, or 62 cents per ten minutes. On the free tier the same practice costs nothing for three retellings a week.

Praktika. Its own site says about $8 per month (Praktika, read 2026-10-26), which is $96 a year. At ten minutes a day you would get about 61 hours: $96 ÷ 61 = about $1.58 an hour, or 26 cents per ten minutes. If you only practise twice a week, the same $96 buys 17 hours and the price per ten minutes rises to 93 cents. Attendance, not the sticker price, decides that.

italki. Its English teacher page listed trial lessons from $5 to $59 on 2026-10-26 (italki). At $11 for a 50-minute lesson, ten minutes costs $2.20, and one lesson a week for a year is $572. At $22 a lesson it is $1,144 a year. That is six to twelve times our annual price, which is not an argument against tutors. It is an argument for doing the cheap reps between them.

ELSA and BoldVoice. Neither publishes a price on its public pages today. ELSA's shop page lists the plans and features but no figure, and shows a 7-day free trial (ELSA, read 2026-10-26). BoldVoice's pricing URL returns a 404 and its home page offers a 7-day free trial (BoldVoice, read 2026-10-26). Check the checkout, then do the same division.

Speak. Its FAQ states that pricing varies by plan, region and promotion, and that the accurate price is inside the app (Speak, read 2026-10-26).

Preply. Tutors set their own rate per lesson, and the site quotes them in your local currency, so there is no single figure to divide. Check the tutor's price, not the category page.

If your problem is pronunciation

Start with ELSA Speak, then BoldVoice. Both fix how words sound; neither asks you to hold a story.

1. ELSA Speak, for individual sounds and exam modules

ELSA is the bigger operation. Its shop page describes 9,000+ lessons on ELSA Pro and 10,000+ lessons with 25,000+ exercises on Premium, plus a 1

AI tutor for conversation practice and unlimited Interview and Presentation Coach on the Professional tier. It claims 90M+ app downloads and a 4.9/5 rating (ELSA shop, read 2026-10-26).

The reason it leads this list is the granularity. You are scored per sound, and the app tells you which sound you missed, in which word. The ELSA comparison in full goes through where that matters and where it stops. Its App Store listing also covers preparation for IELTS, TOEFL, TOEIC, EIKEN and CEFR, available with Premium (App Store listing, read 2026-10-26). Sounds plus exam formats is why it is first.

The limit: at no point does ELSA hand you two minutes of text and ask you to tell it back. Fluency is scored in fragments, not in paragraphs.

2. BoldVoice, for accent coaching with a human face

BoldVoice is accent training built on video lessons from dialect coaches, with AI feedback on pronunciation, stress and clarity as you speak. Its home page claims 4.8 stars and 5M+ downloads and offers a 7-day free trial (BoldVoice, read 2026-10-26). Its App Store listing adds that without a subscription you can open the first lesson only (App Store, read 2026-10-26).

It sits second for two reasons. The coaching videos give you a model mouth and a model voice, which ELSA's automated feedback cannot. And the app says it builds a plan around your first language, which is where most accent problems actually come from. If you have ever been told "I can't understand you" and you want to know why, this is the more human of the two.

The limit is the same as ELSA's, plus one: the product is American-accent training. If your goal is to be understood rather than to sound American, treat it as one tool among several, not a destination.

If your problem is confidence

Speak is the best of these for the specific fear of opening your mouth at all. It is a conversation, not a drill.

3. Speak, for talking to a patient machine

Speak runs a three-step loop it calls Learn, Practice, Apply: learn the phrases people really use, repeat them in new situations, then use them in a back-and-forth with its AI tutor. It claims 15M+ downloads and a 4.8 rating, and offers a 7-day free trial with two paid tiers, Premium and Premium Plus (Speak, read 2026-10-26).

Why it is third rather than first: confidence is the most common blocker among learners who can already read English, and free conversation is the fastest way through it. The AI does not sigh, does not finish your sentence, and does not care how many times you restart. That is genuinely useful, and no amount of pronunciation drilling replaces it.

The limit is structural. A patient AI is patient in a way no person is. The conversation also floats: there is no fixed text, so the feedback can tell you a phrase was awkward but not that your account of events was wrong.

If your problem is holding a long turn

Here is where SoulfulStories belongs, and it is fourth.

4. SoulfulStories, for two minutes without a script

The task is unusual among these seven: read a short true story, then retell it out loud from memory, then read a report. You get pace over time, pauses split into planned and hesitant, fillers, pitch, volume, emotional match, impact, craft and vocabulary, and a check on whether the story's facts survived. If fewer than 70% of the facts survive, or a critical one is distorted, the score is capped at 59 and the level does not pass (how the facts floor caps a score).

Why fourth. The problem it solves, staying coherent for two minutes with no interlocutor, is real and common: it is the IELTS long turn, the wedding speech, the five-minute slot at work. But it is narrower than pronunciation, and narrower than the fear of speaking. Our library is also 96 stories, English only, against ELSA's thousands of lessons in several exam formats. And there is no phoneme-level feedback, no human, and no mobile app.

What the accuracy check buys you is specificity. A report can say "you said the name was made official in 1932; it was 1 May 1930", because there is a source text to be wrong about. Nothing else on this list can say that. If that is the kind of feedback you have been missing, storytelling practice for English learners explains the loop in more detail.

If your problem is exam format

No app on this list simulates an exam. The closest is ELSA's exam modules, and the closest thing to IELTS Part 2 is a retelling.

ELSA's Premium tier covers IELTS, TOEFL, TOEIC, EIKEN and CEFR preparation (App Store listing, read 2026-10-26). That gets you the question types. It does not get you a band score, and no app here will tell you what an examiner would give you.

For the two-minute long turn specifically, the skill being tested is the same one a retelling trains: hold a structure, keep producing, land an ending. Practise it with a timer and a fixed story, then take the same shape into a real Part 2 question. What you will still lack is the examiner's judgement, which is what a tutor or a mock test is for.

If your problem is scripted lessons

Praktika is the one that feels most like school, which some learners need and others find stifling.

5. Praktika, for a lesson with an avatar

Praktika sells lessons with AI character tutors rather than open conversation. Its site puts the price at about $8 per month (Praktika, read 2026-10-26). You are guided through material rather than asked what you want to talk about, which removes the blank-page problem that stops people practising.

It is fifth because the structure is also the limit. Following a lesson is not the same as speaking unprompted, and the transition from "I can do the exercise" to "I can say this in a meeting" is exactly where learners stall. If you already know that about yourself, put Speak or a retelling ahead of it.

If your problem is talking to a person

Preply and italki are the honest answer, and the most expensive one. A year of weekly lessons costs more than a year of any app here.

6. Preply, for a large marketplace

Preply's English tutor page listed 46,774 tutors with an average rating of 4.94 from 478,415 customers on 2026-10-26 (Preply). It offers free tutor replacement if the fit is wrong, which lowers the risk of the first booking.

Every tutor sets their own price per lesson, and the site displays it in your local currency, so the only number that matters is the one on the tutor's profile. Check it before you book, and check what the trial lesson costs on that tutor's profile rather than assuming it is free.

7. italki, for choosing the teacher yourself

italki listed 4,252 English tutors and trial lessons from $5 to $59 on 2026-10-26 (italki). It is last only because the two marketplaces solve the same problem, and Preply's search filters and replacement policy are easier for a first booking. If you already know the teacher you want, italki's range is wider.

What both give you is a person who reacts to you, which is the one thing you cannot practise alone. Do the cheap reps, then spend the lesson on what only a human can hear.

What none of them fix

Nothing here makes you practise, and nothing hears you in a real room.

Five of the seven put software on the other side of the microphone, and that software has been designed to be encouraging. The moment a real listener looks confused, or a colleague interrupts, the conditions change completely. The only defence is reps under mild pressure: a timer, a recording, a story you must not get wrong.

The second gap is transfer. Ten minutes of tapping at a phone is not the same as standing up in front of twelve people. If your event is close, how to practise alone covers the cheap way to make practice feel less comfortable.

How do you choose in five minutes?

Read the symptom, not the feature list. One line each.

• People ask you to repeat yourself. Start with ELSA, then BoldVoice. Sounds first.
• You know the words but freeze when it is your turn. Start with Speak. Volume of low-stakes conversation.
• You start strong and lose the thread after a minute. Start with SoulfulStories. Structure and memory.
• You need a lesson to follow or you do nothing. Start with Praktika. Structure over freedom.
• You have an exam in eight weeks. ELSA's modules for format, a retelling a day for the long turn, and one tutor for judgement.
• You speak fine in class and badly at work. Preply or italki, and book a tutor who works in your field.

One more note before you choose: Poised, the live meeting coach that used to appear in lists like this one, is shutting down. Its homepage banner gave 8 October 2026 and that date has passed (poised.com, read 2026-10-26), so it is not ranked here. The dated notes on it and on the apps above are in the full competitor notes.