The best resources for learning Arabic, in order: an alphabet book with audio, one grammar book worked to the end, Anki for daily vocabulary, a tutor once or twice a week, a dictionary arranged by root, and graded readers. Choose Modern Standard Arabic or one dialect first. Everything except the tutor has a good free option.
This page sorts everything on OpenArabic by the stage at which you will need it, says which option is free and which is worth paying for, and gives our verdict on each. Every category has its own page with the full list. We only list resources we have used ourselves or that learners have recommended to us.
Arabic learning resources by level and type
The table below is the short version of the whole site. Each row is one kind of resource, when a learner usually needs it, the free option we would start with, the paid option worth buying, and our verdict. The timings are our planning estimates for about an hour of study a day, not measured averages.
| Resource type | When | Free pick | Worth paying for | Our verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alphabet books and courses | Weeks 1 to 2 | Our alphabet chart, writing worksheets and reading drill | An alphabet book with audio, such as Alif Baa | Learn the script before any phrase. Drop transliteration within days. |
| Grammar books | Months 3 to 12 | Madinah Arabic's free grammar course | A New Arabic Grammar by Haywood and Nahmad, with its answer key | Pick one book and finish it. Sampling four teaches you chapter one four times. |
| Vocabulary and flashcards | From day one | Anki, plus our ready-made decks | Nothing in year one | Ten minutes of Anki every day beats an hour on Saturday. |
| Apps | Any time | Anki; HelloTalk's free tier once you can form a sentence | Maybe an audio course such as ArabicPod101 | Supplements only. No app replaces a grammar book. |
| Tutors and speaking practice | From month 3 | A language exchange partner | A tutor once or twice a week | The first thing worth paying for, because self-study skips speaking. |
| Online courses and universities | Year one onward | US government course sets in the public domain | A course with live classes, if you need a timetable | Worth it for structure. Check how much live teaching the price buys. |
| Dictionaries | From month 2 | Almaany online; Living Arabic for dialects | Hans Wehr in print | Look words up online first, then learn root lookup. |
| Reading books | Year 2 | Our graded short stories | Qisas an-Nabiyin and bilingual readers | Switch most study time to reading once decoding stops being slow. |
| TV, films and cartoons | From week 1 | Cartoons and series on YouTube | Nothing | Pick shows in the variety you are learning. |
| Quranic Arabic | Any time | The Quran text and recitations online | A color-coded tajweed Quran | The largest fully vowelled text there is, and free. |
| Dialect resources | Decide before week 1 | The Living Arabic dialect dictionaries | A tutor or course in that dialect | Learn one dialect or Modern Standard Arabic first, not both at once. |
Your first month: the alphabet and reading
Spend the first month on the script, not on phrases. Arabic is normally written without its short vowels, so a learner who stays in English letters cannot read a real sentence, and every resource after this one assumes you can read.
Start with a book or course that has audio, from our Arabic alphabet books and courses, and keep our chart of all 28 letters in their four forms open beside it. Our guide to how to read Arabic puts the work in order, from single letters to text without vowel marks, with a drill you can do on the page.
Then test yourself. The Arabic alphabet quiz covers letter names, sounds, positional forms and the look-alike letters that differ only in their dots. The sun and moon letters page shows how the article al- changes before half the alphabet, a rule you meet in your first week of reading. For handwriting, print our free Arabic writing worksheets, one PDF per letter.
Reading speed comes from reading aloud every day against a clock. While learning, the site's owner timed a single page of the Quran: 20 minutes at first, 2 minutes eventually. Any fully vowelled text works the same way.
Not sure where to begin? Our guide on how to start learning Arabic lays out the first steps for Modern Standard Arabic, and the free Arabic level test tells you whether you can skip the alphabet altogether.
Your first year: grammar, vocabulary and speaking
In the first year you need one grammar book, a few minutes of flashcards every day, and a tutor who makes you talk. Anything else you add that year is optional.
Our grammar pick is A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language by Haywood and Nahmad. It explains each rule properly, and its separately sold answer key lets you mark your own work. Our review of A New Arabic Grammar goes through it in detail, and our list of Arabic grammar books includes gentler options such as the Madina series and Mastering Arabic. If you want the system explained before you buy anything, start with our overview of how Arabic grammar works. The best free option is the grammar course on Madinah Arabic's free content page, which also offers a reading course, vocabulary lists and quizzes.
For vocabulary, use Anki, a flashcard program that brings each card back just before you would forget it. The Anki download page lists the computer version and the Android app as free; the iPhone app is paid. In the site owner's own words: "To this day I still use Anki software to learn new Arabic words and phrases." To start without building decks yourself, use our Arabic flashcards, which run in the browser and come with free decks to import into Anki, or our own vocabulary lists with Anki decks. Frequency dictionaries and shared card sets are on our Arabic vocabulary resources page.
Apps are supplements. Our roundup of the best apps to learn Arabic compares them on what each one teaches and where its free tier stops. We treat Duolingo as a warm-up for days with ten spare minutes, for the reasons further down.
Speaking is the skill self-study drops, so book a tutor before you buy anything else. One or two sessions a week, with homework in between, is enough. Our Arabic tutors and services page covers italki, Natakallam and conversation exchanges. If you want a fixed timetable and a teacher who sets the pace, our comparison of Arabic courses online sets paid programs side by side on price per live hour, dialect and textbook, and our list of universities and Arabic institutes covers degree programs and schools in the Arab world.
After the first year: dictionaries and real reading
Once reading stops being slow decoding, most of your study time should go to reading, with a dictionary arranged by root. In a root dictionary مكتب maktab (office) sits under the root k-t-b, next to كتاب kitab (book), so you have to strip a word back to its root letters before you can find it. Transliteration on this page uses plain English letters.
Our guide to Arabic dictionaries and how to look a word up names our picks: Almaany for free online lookup, because it accepts a full conjugated word and finds the entry for you; Al-Mawrid in print for beginners, since it is alphabetical; and Hans Wehr as the standard reference to grow into. Dialect learners should use the Living Arabic Project. Its dictionaries cover Classical Arabic and dialects including Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf and Iraqi, you can search them on the website by root, and there is a paid app for iPhone and Android.
For reading, our list of Arabic reading books starts with Qisas an-Nabiyin (Stories of the Prophets), which begins with simple words and gets harder as the book goes on, and includes collections with the English translation on the next page. For something to read today at no cost, our free Arabic short stories are graded by level and marked for vowels and audio.
Free or paid: what is worth the money
Pay for a tutor first, a grammar book with an answer key second, and very little else in the first year. Every other row in the table above has a free option we would use ourselves.
The strongest free course material is the US government set collected on FSI Language Courses: Foreign Service Institute, Defense Language Institute and Peace Corps courses with PDF books and audio, covering Modern Standard Arabic and ten dialects, all in the public domain. The recordings are old and drill-heavy, but there is no free tier to run out of. If your public library takes part, Mango Languages gives you full access at no cost. Our page on how to learn Arabic for free shows where each free tier stops and which "free" apps are really trials.
For a single plan that puts the free and paid options in order, read our six-stage roadmap for learning Arabic. Every guide we have published is listed in our Arabic learning guides.
Modern Standard Arabic or a dialect
Choose before you start. Modern Standard Arabic, called fusha, is for books, news and the Quran. A dialect is for talking to people in one country or region. The alphabet stage is the same either way. Our Arabic dialects hub compares the dialect groups, and our guide to which Arabic dialect to learn ranks them and recommends one. Each dialect has its own page of courses, books and media:
Listening, media and Quranic Arabic
Listen from the first week, before you understand much. Cartoons are the easiest real Arabic listening a beginner will find, and most of them are free on YouTube.
Our list of Arabic cartoons, TV shows and films says which variety of Arabic each one uses, which matters more than the show itself. If your goal is the Quran, our guide to learning Quranic Arabic compares free and paid options and what each one assumes you already know. For physical books, our Arabic bookstores page says which store is best for textbooks, children's books and Quran copies.
Free tools on OpenArabic
Our own tools run in the browser with no account. The extensions page lists add-ons for Chrome and Firefox.
- Online Arabic keyboard and language packs: type Arabic with short vowel marks on any device, and set up a real Arabic keyboard.
- Arabic browser extensions: hover dictionaries and font fixes for reading Arabic on the web.
- Free Arabic fonts: preview your own text in each font and check its licence before you download it.
- Arabic calligraphy generator: type a word and save it as an image in different script styles. It is a font, not hand calligraphy, and the page says so.
- Arabic name generator: real Arabic names with script, transliteration and meaning.
- Abjad calculator: the number value of any Arabic word, letter by letter.
- Islamic calendar 2027: Ramadan and Eid dates, with free printable PDF calendars.
How we chose, and what we leave out
A resource makes this page if it teaches the Arabic script rather than transliteration, explains rules instead of only showing them, and is still useful after the first few months. Most of our picks come from one adult learner's path, written up in the site owner's account of learning Arabic, and the rest from what learners have recommended to us. Four popular choices fail those tests:
- Al-Kitaab on its own. It is a series many universities teach from, and it is on our grammar list, but it gives up grammar explanation to make room for listening and speaking. The site's owner took an online university certificate built on the series and wrote, "I found the course quite lacking." Use it with a teacher who fills the gaps.
- Duolingo as your main plan. It gives no grammar explanation and keeps transliteration on screen long after you should stop reading it. It is fine for ten spare minutes.
- Free trials sold as free courses. Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur are subscriptions with the bill delayed. Judge them as paid products.
- Phrasebook apps that never show the script. If an app teaches only through English letters, you finish it unable to read a street sign.
Prices and free tiers change often, so check the current terms before you pay for anything named here. This page was last revised in October 2026.