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Umlaut Atlas
The routesFree firstNotesAbout

Teaching yourself German

Eight ways in. One of them is free.

Read at source · 24 Sept 2026
FreeDeutsche WelleNo charge
Recorded courseRocket German$149.95–$449.85
Live classesLingodaPriced in reais to us
The certificateGoethe-Institut, telc, ÖSDNo data
Showing 4 of the 8 routes. Each price is what that seller served to one connection on 24 September 2026, in the currency it chose — the full board compares all 8.
Compare the routesStart with the free one

This is a board of the ways into German, kept the way a departure board is kept: one line per route, what it actually gets you, and the price as read on the day. Where a seller would not show us a price, the line is blank rather than filled in.

All notes

The Best App to Learn German

Almost every German app is good at the part German gives away free. The useful test is what it does for the part German charges for — and two of them will not tell us their price.

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The Best Books to Learn German

Most German course books are written for a teacher to use in a classroom, entirely in German. Knowing that changes which shelf you should be shopping on.

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The Best YouTube Channels to Learn German

Eight channels that exist, described in their own words, sorted by what they are actually for. With no subscriber numbers, and an explanation of why not.

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German Levels A1 to C2, and Who Issues Them

The levels are not the Goethe-Institut's, several separate bodies examine against them, and this page prints no exam fee at all. Here is exactly why.

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How Long Does It Take to Learn German?

One respected figure exists, it says 828 class hours, and it is about full-time diplomats. Here is what it actually measures — and why this page will not turn it into a number of months for you.

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How to Learn German Fast

There is no accelerator. There are several brakes, and taking your foot off them is the only honest version of this question — plus the sellers' claims, named.

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What this board is for

German is the easiest of the hard languages and the hardest of the easy ones, and the products sold to learners mostly address the fortnight where it is easy. This site exists to tell you which part of German has actually stopped you, and then which route is any good at that part.

Everything here is organised around one observation you can check for yourself: German gives an English speaker its spelling and its everyday vocabulary almost free, and charges for the grammar later, all at once. That ordering is why so many people enjoy their first month and quit in their fifth.

How the prices on this board are kept

Every figure was read from the seller's own page, on this machine, on the day printed next to it. Where a page served a currency other than the one we asked for, the currency it served is the one printed — no figure here has been converted, because a converted price is our arithmetic wearing the seller's authority.

Two sellers on the board gave us no usable price — one published none at all, one served a currency we will not convert — and the exam bodies gave us nothing whatsoever. Those three lines say so instead of carrying a number from elsewhere. A blank on a departure board is information, and so is this one.

What is not here

No timeline to fluency, because nobody who would know publishes one. No pass rates. No exam fees, because the two bodies that would know refused our requests outright. No coupon codes. No score out of ten for any product, because we have not run a trial that would justify a number and a number without a trial behind it is decoration.

There are commercial links on this site and they are labelled wherever they appear. The single strongest recommendation here — a public broadcaster's free course — earns nothing at all, and the disclosure explains exactly how that sits.

Questions people ask at the board

What is the best way to learn German by yourself?
Work out which part of German has actually stopped you, then buy help only for that part. German is unusual in that its spelling and pronunciation are close to free for an English speaker while its grammar and its abstract vocabulary are not, so the route that fixes a pronunciation problem is not the route that fixes a case-endings problem. Start with Deutsche Welle's free course, which costs nothing and pays this site nothing, and pay for something only when you can name what you are paying it to solve.
How long does it take to learn German?
Nobody publishes an honest answer for a person learning in their own time, and this site does not invent one. The only respected published figure is the US Foreign Service Institute's: it places German in its second band at approximately 36 weeks, or 828 class hours, and it describes a full-time government student in a classroom 23 hours a week reaching a specific score on a specific scale. That is a real number about diplomats. Multiplying it into evenings and weekends would turn it into a fake number about you.
Is German harder than French or Spanish?
By the only published measure, yes, but by one band rather than by a gulf. The Foreign Service Institute puts French and Spanish in its first band at 24 to 30 weeks and German in its second at approximately 36 weeks, while its fourth band — Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Arabic — sits at 2,200 hours. Where German differs in kind rather than degree is the shape of the difficulty: it is easy to start and gets harder, because the everyday words resemble English and the abstract ones are built from German roots instead of the Latin ones English borrowed.
Can you learn German for free?
Yes, further than most people expect. Deutsche Welle, Germany's public international broadcaster, publishes a complete German course — video courses, audio, a grammar reference, a vocabulary trainer and a placement test — and its own overview page describes it as free of charge, grouped from A1 to C2. It pays this site nothing, which is precisely why it can be recommended first. What free routes do not give you is a person who corrects you, and that remains the one thing worth paying for.
What do the German levels A1 to C2 mean, and who issues them?
A1 to C2 are the six levels of the Common European Framework of Reference, which is the Council of Europe's framework rather than any one exam board's. Several separate organisations examine against them in German, among them the Goethe-Institut, telc and Austria's ÖSD, and Deutsche Welle's own exam pages name all three. This site publishes no exam fee, format or eligibility rule for any of them: on 24 September 2026 the Goethe-Institut's pages and the Council of Europe's own site both refused our requests outright, and a fee copied from a language blog is not a fee we have read.