Free German learning resources
77 free resources, checked and categorised.
No trials, no paywalls, no sign-up required.
German rewards early structure more than most languages. The four cases and the gender system are front-loaded — they feel arbitrary for the first month and then quietly stop being a problem once you have heard enough sentences to feel the patterns. So start with a structured course rather than app streaks, and accept a slow first few weeks.
The free material for German is unusually good: Deutsche Welle alone covers A1 to C1 with audio, video and graded news, and it is genuinely free rather than a trial. Pair one course with one dictionary and stay there until you finish it. Switching courses every fortnight is the most common way people spend a year on German and stay at A2.
Once simple sentences are comprehensible, add slow news and a podcast. German's long compounds look intimidating in writing but decompose predictably in speech, so listening often outpaces reading earlier than learners expect. Reading comes easiest through material you already know — a translated book you have read before beats a German novel you have not.
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A comprehensive online textbook.
It is a site that is giving the basics in Spanish and German. They are going to expand to other languages as well. As far as I know there are articles about learning German but there are way more resources/practices in Spanish.
A useful post by u/travel_ali.
More resources and useful tips by u/travel_ali.
Here you can learn how to write in Sütterlin.
A guide for beginners.
Interactive platform for learning German vocabulary.
Arkadius Gerlic's blog about the German language.
An online textbook from A1 to B1 level. There's also a dedicated moile app.
A blog about the German language.
Free comics in German.
Here you can train your conjungation skills.
Online textbook for beginners.
The channel is a bit controversial, since the author isn't a native speaker, but nevertheless there are lots of resources you can find useful.
Probably the most reputed monolingual dictionary of the German language.
Online Baseldytsch-English dictionary.
A series of ten minute podcasts about various verbs and their meaning in context. Each episode contains about a dozen examples of the given word's usage. There's also a newsletter if you want to get a new word in your inbox every day.
A German Youtube channel for German learners, run by a native speaker.
Vocabulary and grammar exercises, idioms, false friends and more.
Grammar and exercises.
Deutsche Welle learning resources, sorted by proficiency levels. You'll find here miniseries in easy German, slowly read news summaries, articles with exercises an more.
A channel about the German language - listening material, grammar, vocabulary and more. Also available in Spanish (Alemán con Jenny).
Online German-Luschnouarisch dictionary including idioms and proverbs
A blog about the German language - book reviews, tips, resources.
Practical German at work and in daily life. Brought to you by Dr Anna Jędrzejczyk.
Alsatian vocabulary sorted by themes.
A Youtube channel about the German language - advanced grammar, pronunciation and culture.
C1 Learning resources for advanced learners preparing for Goethe Institut C1 Certificate.
Free books in German.
Listening comprehension exercises - telling similar sounds apart etc.
A playlist with idioms and colloquial phrases.
"SRF is basically the Swiss version of the BBC and they do a mix of High-German and Swiss-German telly and radio. Generally they do the highest quality and most widely interesting productions. As far as I can tell the content isn’t locked to the country so you can access it anywhere."
Swiss TV broadcasts on Youtube.
A Spotify playlist with Swiss German music.
A Spotify playlist with Swiss German music.
Swabian-German dictionary (including sound files), also features rather humorous guides to e.g. grammar and pronunciation
Over 750 free audiobooks in high quality.
"Online Berndeutsch-High German dictionary."
A Swiss Reddit community.
A Swiss Reddit community.
Learn it there, practise it here
Free resources are great for input — reading, listening, explanations. They are weaker at the two things that actually move you forward: speaking German out loud, and remembering what you met once. That is what OwnSlides is for.
Say it out loud
Talk to an AI tutor that answers back, or join a live room with other learners and native speakers.
Practise what you read
Turn a grammar point or article into exercises, so it moves from recognised to usable.
Keep the words
Save new words to My Words and let spaced repetition bring them back before you forget them.
This directory began from a community-built list of free language resources — a year of collecting and checking by Joanna (u/chlebka) and dozens of contributors who suggested links, shared freely. See the original list. We have since expanded, re-checked and re-categorised it, and we keep the per-resource credits where the original list recorded them.