Speak
A speaking-first language app built around conversation with an AI tutor
Overview
Speak is a language-learning app from San Francisco's Speakeasy Labs that has learners speak from the first lesson, with AI conversation practice and feedback on pronunciation and phrasing. It teaches English to speakers of 15 languages and Spanish, French, Korean, Japanese, Italian and Mandarin to English speakers, after a seven-day trial.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 14 Oct 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
- Full lesson library and AI conversation practice
- Real-time feedback on pronunciation and phrasing
- Streaks, progress tracking and reminders
- Everything in Premium
- Made for You lessons built from your mistakes
- Speak Tutor custom lessons
- Unlimited personalised review
- Business-focused conversation courses and role plays
- Admin portal for adding learners and customising content
- Engagement and progress tracking
Use cases
What you can produce with Speak
- Daily spoken practice in back-and-forth conversation with an AI tutor
- Real-time feedback on pronunciation and phrasing
- Role-play practice for everyday situations such as making reservations
- Custom lessons generated from your own mistakes (Premium Plus)
- Lessons on any topic you choose through Speak Tutor (Premium Plus)
- Team learning with an admin portal and progress tracking (Speak for Business)
ASEAN Perspective
Speak in Southeast Asia
Speak's earliest and deepest market penetration was in South Korea, where roughly 6% of the national population used the app and it ranked as the No. 1 Education app on Apple's Korean App Store — a credibility signal that resonates across ASEAN where K-pop and Korean drama exposure has also raised demand for Korean lessons. Taiwan is cited as another breakout market. ASEAN learners seeking to improve workplace English — a high-priority credential across Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia — will find Speak's conversation-first model and Speak for Business enterprise tier directly relevant. The primary friction point for price-sensitive ASEAN markets is the lack of a free permanent tier; regional pricing varies and promotional discounts are common, but the standard rate is above what many competing apps charge in the region.
Speak is one of the better apps for actually talking: lessons end in back-and-forth conversation with an AI tutor, feedback covers pronunciation and phrasing, and the new Live Tutor Lessons on OpenAI's GPT-Live-1 are designed not to interrupt a learner searching for a word. The English course serves Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian and Hindi speakers, which matters for ASEAN users.
The costs are real: no free plan after the seven-day trial, $17.99 a month for Premium on the US App Store and $39.99 for Premium Plus, and non-English courses only for native English speakers. Good for beginners and nervous speakers; less suited to anyone wanting a free drill app.
What we found
Speak is a speaking-first language app from Speakeasy Labs, a San Francisco company that built the product teaching English in South Korea before expanding across Asia and beyond. Every lesson follows a learn, practise, apply loop that ends in spoken conversation with an AI tutor, with feedback on pronunciation and phrasing. English speakers can learn Spanish, French, Korean, Japanese, Italian and, since June 2026, Mandarin Chinese, whose course runs from beginner to intermediate (B1). The English course is offered to speakers of 15 native languages, including Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian and Hindi.
The AI has tracked OpenAI closely. Speak is backed by the OpenAI Startup Fund, built its October 2024 Live Roleplays on OpenAI's Realtime API and in September 2026 introduced Live Tutor Lessons on OpenAI's GPT-Live-1. In Speak's own evaluation, framing the model as a language tutor cut interruptions of a learner's thinking pauses from 27.6% to 13.6%. Speak has also written about a problem learners notice: speech recognition that tidies up what someone said can hide the very mistakes a tutor needs to hear.
There is no free plan, only a seven-day trial. On the US App Store, Premium costs $17.99 a month or $83.99 a year and Premium Plus $39.99 or $164.99; Speak says prices vary by region and promotion. Plus adds Made for You lessons built from your mistakes, Speak Tutor's custom lessons and unlimited personalised review. Speak for Business adds an admin portal for teams.
The company has scale behind it. Speak raised a $78 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation in December 2024, led by Accel, bringing its total to $162 million, and reports more than 15 million downloads. The App Store listing showed 4.8 from 63,691 ratings when read on 14 October 2026. For beginners who freeze when they have to talk, it is a strong choice; courses other than English still require English as your native language.
Compiled by RECATOOLS from public sources: vendor documentation and pricing, code repositories and published reporting.
Notable facts
- Speak's co-founders Connor Zwick and Andrew Hsu are both Thiel Fellows — Peter Thiel's programme that pays young people $100,000 to skip college and build companies instead.
- Users collectively spoke over one billion sentences on the platform in 2024 alone, generating a vast proprietary dataset for model training.
- Speak reached approximately 6% of South Korea's entire population before expanding globally — making it one of the fastest-adopted consumer apps in Korean App Store history.
- The company's Series C in December 2024 valued it at $1 billion — unicorn status — with the valuation doubling from $500 million in under six months.
Frequently asked questions
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including Speak's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with Speak unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
For the latest details, please refer to Speak directly →
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