How to learn German for free: a plan from A1 to B1

You can reach B1 in German without paying for a course. Two free online courses cover the levels from A1 to B1, public broadcasters in Germany publish news in simple German every week, and grammar explanations, exercises and dictionaries are free as well. Two things still cost money: an official certificate, and a teacher who corrects your speaking and writing every week. The plan below puts the free material into a fixed order and fits it into one hour a day. At that pace, A1 takes about five months.

What you can get for free, and what you cannot

Free, with no catch:

• complete courses with lessons in a fixed order, from A1 to B1 and beyond
• grammar explanations with tables and exercises
• news, podcasts and videos made for learners
• dictionaries for German, and for German and English
• a placement test that tells you roughly where you are

Not free:

• official exams such as the Goethe-Zertifikat, telc or TestDaF; the fee depends on the country and the level
• regular, personal feedback on what you say and write

The second gap is smaller than it looks. A language exchange partner and a few recordings of your own voice cover a large part of it. Step 5 explains how.

Step 1: choose one course and finish it

Free material is not scarce. The usual problem is the opposite: learners open six apps and four YouTube channels, try each for a week, and never get past the same A1 topics. A course solves this, because it decides the order for you. Pick one of the two below and stay with it until the end of a level.

The vhs-Lernportal is run by the German Adult Education Association (DVV) and is publicly funded. The courses follow the official curricula, and the menus and instructions are available in 19 languages, English among them. If you like a clear structure with a lesson, exercises and a test, start here.

Nicos Weg suits learners who stay motivated by a story. The episodes are short, and each one is followed by exercises on the words and grammar it used.

If you cannot decide, take the vhs-Lernportal as the course and watch Nicos Weg as extra listening practice. That way both are useful and neither competes for the same time.

Step 2: keep a grammar reference open

Courses introduce grammar in small pieces spread over many lessons. When you want to see the whole rule in one place, for example all the endings of the accusative, you need a reference.

The grammar section of this site covers 52 topics in English, from the present tense to the subjunctive. Each topic has tables, example sentences with translations and its own test. There is no account and no paywall. For the questions beginners ask most, start with these:

• der, die or das: how to guess the article
• the four German cases
• German word order
• German pronunciation

For single words, DWDS (the Digital Dictionary of the German Language, published by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences) explains meaning and usage in German, and dict.cc or LEO give German and English side by side. All three are free.

Step 3: learn words with a review system

Most learners lose more time on vocabulary than on grammar. They meet a word, understand it, and have forgotten it a week later. The fix is spaced repetition: you see a word again just before you would forget it, and the gaps grow longer each time you remember it.

Anki does this and is free on computers and on Android. A paper version works just as well. Make five boxes. New cards go into box 1. A card you know moves one box forward, a card you get wrong goes back to box 1. Box 1 is reviewed every day, box 5 about once a month.

What goes on the card matters more than the tool:

The basic vocabulary list and the list of irregular verbs on this site are a good source for your first few hundred cards.

Step 4: listen every day, at the right level

Listening practice works when you understand most of what you hear and have to work for the rest. Material far above your level turns into noise. Choose by level:

Use each piece three times. First listen without the text and note what you understood. Then listen with the text and mark the words you missed. Finally read the text aloud along with the recording, sentence by sentence. The third round trains pronunciation and speaking speed at no extra cost.

Step 5: speak and write without paying for a teacher

This is the hardest part to get for free, so it needs a plan of its own.

• Find a language exchange partner. You help someone with your language, they help you with German, half the time each. Universities, cultural institutes and exchange apps all connect partners. One 45-minute call a week is a good start at A2.
• Record yourself. Read a dialogue aloud, record it on your phone and compare it with the original. You will hear mistakes you never notice while speaking.
• Write five sentences a day. Write about what you did yesterday. That one habit practises the Perfekt, word order and everyday vocabulary at the same time. Once a week, ask your exchange partner to correct one text.
• Use AI chatbots with care. They correct texts quickly and can explain a mistake. They also sometimes change sentences that were correct, or give a wrong reason. Ask which rule the correction is based on and check it in a grammar reference.

A week of one-hour days

The course lesson stays at the start of the hour on purpose. On a day with only 20 minutes, do the lesson and the flashcards and skip the rest. On a free afternoon, do not move ahead three lessons; add listening instead. Steady daily contact does more than long weekend sessions.

For the order of grammar topics within A1, the A1 roadmap lists what to learn first. For realistic timelines at each level, see how long it takes to learn German.

How to check your level for free

• Goethe-Institut placement test. A free online test that places your reading and listening between A1 and C2. It measures understanding, not speaking.
• Exam practice material. The Goethe-Institut publishes free practice exercises for its exams, and its YouTube channel 24h Deutsch shows recorded examples of the speaking exam.
• Topic tests. Each grammar topic on this site has a test with explanations after every answer, so you see which rule caused a mistake.

If you are preparing for the A1 certificate, the post on the Goethe A1 exam explains each part, the 100 points and the pass mark.

What about Duolingo and other apps?

The free versions of popular apps are good for a daily habit and for vocabulary. They explain little grammar and rarely ask you to build long sentences of your own, so they work best as ten minutes on top of a course, not as the course itself.

Check what is really free before you plan around an app. The vocabulary trainer of the Goethe-Institut, for example, can be downloaded for free, but only part of the content is open; the rest needs a subscription after a seven-day trial. The Goethe-Institut's site Deutsch für dich, on the other hand, still offers more than 270 exercises from A1 to C2 at no cost, although its community features have been closed.

Three habits that waste the most time

1. Collecting resources instead of finishing one. A finished A1 course is worth more than five started ones.
2. Learning nouns without their article. Fixing it later takes longer than learning der Tisch instead of Tisch from the first day.
3. Waiting to speak until you feel ready. You will not feel ready at A1, or at B1. Short sentences with mistakes are how speaking develops. If German looks too hard right now, the post on whether German is hard puts the difficult parts in proportion.

Written by: Fatih Ün, German teacher · Last updated: 10 November 2026