HelloTalk is not an AI app at all — real native speakers who will correct your writing for free.
Prices verified 30 July 2026 · US iOS App Store| Saygood | HelloTalk | |
|---|---|---|
| Open-ended live conversation | ✓ | ✓with real people |
| Real-time speech-to-speech | ✓ | ✓it’s a human |
| Interrupt mid-sentence | ✓ | ✓ |
| Slang dial | ✓four steps | ~whatever they speak |
| Speaking-speed dial | ✓four steps | ✗you have to ask |
| Patience dial | ✓ | ~theirs, not yours to set |
| Corrections dial | ✓ | ~humans, when they reply |
| Immersion dial | ✓five steps | ✗often half in English |
| Change the dials mid-call | ✓ | ✗ |
| Partners you invent | ✓ | ~you get who you get |
| Scenarios you write | ✓ | ✗ |
| Level from a spoken call | ✓from a 5-minute call | ✗ |
| Recap carried to the next call | ✓ | ✗ |
| Structured course | ✗in build — August 2026* | ✗ |
| Languages | 20+ | 150+ via its users |
| Platforms | iPhone · online only | iPhone, Android |
| Price, US iOS | $29.99/mo · $199.99/yr | Free · VIP $12.99/mo |
Of the 14 things above, Saygood does 13. HelloTalk does 3, plus 4 in part.
✓ yes ~ partly ✗ no
* Roadmap, not a shipped feature — and scored as a loss for us until it ships. If a date slips we will change this line rather than quietly leave it up.
A real native speaker beats any AI, and HelloTalk is free. The catch is finding one who is awake, willing and patient with a stranger — tonight, at your level, at the speed you need.
They know what actually sounds weird, and the free corrections on written posts are good. If you are the kind of person who will message a stranger and keep it going, HelloTalk beats us and it costs nothing.
Also true, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It is cheaper, it is on Android, and you might make a friend — more motivating than anything we can build.
you are comfortable messaging strangers and can handle the scheduling and the awkward first exchange.
you have downloaded a language-exchange app before and never sent the first message.
A course is a good way to get your first few hundred words. The mistake is staying there for two years. Speaking is a separate skill from recognising, it is the slowest one to build, and the only way to build it is to talk to someone who is not waiting for you — as early as you possibly can.
I speak five languages and I have tried more or less everything under the sun to learn them — courses, flashcards, tutors, every app in this comparison set that I could get my hands on. The gap that never got closed by any of it was the same one every time: actually speaking, in real time, to someone who is not waiting for you. That is the only reason Saygood exists.
Largely, yes. You can find partners, chat, get your writing corrected and make voice calls without paying. VIP ($12.99/mo or $79.99/yr on iOS) removes limits and adds translation features.
Availability, control and embarrassment. A human partner needs to be awake, free, in the mood, and willing to spend half the call speaking your language instead of theirs. They will not reliably stay in the target language, slow down for twenty minutes, or turn the slang up because you asked. And most people are far more willing to be bad at a language in front of something that will not remember it. If none of that is a problem for you, use HelloTalk — we mean it.
It is the best combination in this whole comparison. Do your reps with an AI partner until you stop freezing, then take that to a human who can tell you what actually sounds strange. The AI is the practice room; the human is the match.
It has added AI tools over time, but the product's centre of gravity is still the human network. If you want an AI conversation partner specifically, that is not what HelloTalk is for.
Not today, and that is the honest answer — you open the app, pick someone, and talk. One is in build, and it is deliberately not another course: rather than a library of lessons, it works out what you can and cannot say from the calls you have already had, and steers the next conversation toward the gap without ever showing you a lesson screen. The first piece — a spoken level taken from a real five-minute conversation instead of a multiple-choice quiz — is due in August 2026. If that date moves, this page moves with it.
Yes, and it is the single most underrated thing in the app. Slang is a dial in Saygood — mostly clean, everyday, street, full slang — and you can move it in the middle of a call, along with speaking speed, how patient they are, and how hard they correct you. Courses teach the careful, neutral, written register almost exclusively, and that is not the register anybody speaks to you in. Learning only that version of a language is how people end up fluent on paper and lost in a bar.
Ten minutes of calling, free, no card. That is enough to find out whether talking to an AI partner does anything for you.