How to learn a language on a budget

Learning Chinese, Japanese or Korean has never been cheaper. What it costs now is mainly time, plus the discipline to use five free tools properly instead of collecting fifteen.

Kungfucius's own budget method is not complicated: mostly Anki, YouTube and similar free resources, a few practical habits, and simply meeting people online. This page turns that into a concrete plan, and then says where the first money should go once you have some.

Can you learn a language for free?

Yes, to a solid intermediate level, if you are consistent. Dictionaries, flashcards, beginner lessons, graded reading, thousands of hours of video and conversation partners are all available without paying.

Free material is weak in two places. The first is structure: nobody hands you the next step, so you have to choose a path and stay on it. The second is correction: free tools tell you whether an answer matches, not whether your tones are drifting or your sentences sound odd. Those are also the two things worth paying for later.

A zero-cost stack for Chinese, Japanese and Korean

One tool per job is enough. Everything in this table was free to use when checked in November 2026, some of it as the free tier of a paid product.

Job	Chinese	Japanese	Korean
Dictionary	Pleco, free core	Jisho	Naver Dictionary, Papago
First lessons and grammar	HelloChinese, free start	Renshuu, free core, plus grammar channels on YouTube	Talk To Me In Korean on YouTube and as a podcast, How to Study Korean
Vocabulary	Anki	Anki	Anki
Reading	Du Chinese, free lessons	Tadoku graded books, NHK News Web Easy	Webtoons and song lyrics with a dictionary
Listening	Podcasts and YouTube	YouTube	YouTube and podcasts
Speaking and writing	HelloTalk, free tier	HelloTalk	HelloTalk

Some notes on the table:

• Anki is free on computers, on Android and in the browser. Only the iPhone app costs money, once. Use shared decks with audio for the first thousand words, then make your own cards.
• YouTube is the largest free language school ever built, and the least organised. Pick two or three channels and ignore the rest. Kungfucius's lists of YouTube channels for Japanese and podcasts for Chinese save you the searching.
• For Japanese reading, the non-profit Tadoku group publishes free graded books from the very first level.
• For Korean grammar, How to Study Korean offers its long written lessons free of charge.
• The full comparisons are in the lists of the best apps for Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

An app downloaded is not an app used.

Meeting people online costs nothing

The cheapest teacher is a person who wants to talk to you. Kungfucius's view is that simply meeting people online is the most underrated free resource of all, and there are more places to do it than the language apps.

• Language exchange apps. HelloTalk and Tandem pair you with native speakers who are learning your language. Post short texts, correct other people's posts, and send voice messages instead of waiting for the perfect partner.
• Online communities. Reddit has large learner forums such as r/ChineseLanguage, r/LearnJapanese and r/Korean, good for questions and for finding study partners. Many learner communities also run Discord servers with voice rooms.
• Threads. A surprising amount of everyday Chinese is posted there, especially from Taiwan. Follow people who write about your interests, reply in the language, and you have reading practice and conversation in one feed.
• Facebook groups. Groups for learners, for expats in a given city, and for hobbies in the target language are still active. A group about hiking in Korea teaches more useful Korean than a group about learning Korean.

Two rules keep this productive. Give as much correction as you ask for, and move from text to voice within a few weeks, because typing politely for a year does not teach speaking.

Practical ways to learn that cost nothing

• Your local library. Many lend textbooks, graded readers and audio courses, and some give free access to language software with a library card.
• A separate YouTube account used only in your target language. The recommendations soon fill with nothing else, which is immersion by algorithm.
• Dead time. Commutes, queues and washing up add up to hours a week. Audio fills them at no cost.
• Your phone in the target language. Free, slightly inconvenient, and you learn "settings" and "cancel" within a day.
• Talking to yourself. Describe what you are doing, aloud, in the language. It is free and only mildly embarrassing.
• Second-hand textbooks. Last year's edition teaches the same grammar at a fraction of the price. One example from Taipei: Mandarin Picnic, a free gathering where learners and locals meet and speak Mandarin together. An afternoon like that can propel your studies more than a week of flashcards, and it costs a bus fare and a snack to share. You will find similar free events around the globe: language picnics, exchange evenings, conversation tables in cafés and libraries. Search for them in your city, and look at the events calendar for the larger gatherings.

What is worth paying for first

When there is a little money, spend it on feedback. In order:

1. One tutor lesson a week. This is the first thing Kungfucius would buy. A weekly session on a platform such as italki gives you a person who corrects your pronunciation and sentences, which no free tool does well. It pays off most once you can hold a basic conversation. Prepare each lesson and tell the tutor what to correct, or you are paying for small talk.
2. One-off purchases you use daily. The iPhone version of Anki, or a Pleco bundle for Chinese, are bought once and used for years.
3. One reading subscription, such as Du Chinese, but only if you read in it four or five times a week.
4. One good textbook with audio, if you want a fixed path and free material leaves you wandering.

One subscription at a time is a good rule. If a second one tempts you, cancel the first.

What to avoid paying for

• Several subscriptions at once. Three apps at a modest monthly price each cost more than a weekly tutor and deliver less.
• Annual or lifetime plans bought in the first week. Enthusiasm is highest on day one and so is the discount. Use the free tier for a month first.
• Premium tiers of game-style apps before the free limits actually stop you. The review of Duolingo explains what you get and what you do not.
• Exchange app upgrades. The free tier of HelloTalk covers chatting, calls and corrections. If you hit the daily translation limit, the cheaper fix is to translate less.
• Paid flashcard decks when a free shared deck covers the same word list.
• Courses that promise fluency by a date. The date is the product. The language takes the hours it takes.
• Certificates from general online course platforms. Employers and universities ask for HSK, JLPT or TOPIK results, not for a completion badge.

What to do this week

1. Choose one tool per row from the table and install nothing else.
2. Create a second YouTube account and subscribe to three channels in your target language.
3. Write a short introduction of yourself and post it on one exchange app or community. Correct two posts by other learners.
4. Find out what your library card gives you.
5. If you can already manage a simple conversation, book one trial lesson with a tutor and decide after it whether a weekly slot is worth the money.