Swedish news apps for learners, compared

8 Sidor: the easy-to-read newspaper, in an app

8 Sidor has written the news in easy Swedish since 1984. Its app for iPhone and Android opens the same free website, and if you allow notifications it tells you about an important story twice every weekday. The articles can be listened to as well as read. For a lot of easy text every weekday, this is the place to start. It does not ask anything of you back: you read, and that is the whole exercise. Our comparison of Klartext, 8 Sidor and NÖVA looks at how it fits a daily habit.

Sveriges Radio: Radio Sweden på lätt svenska and Klartext

Sveriges Radio makes two news programmes in easier Swedish. Radio Sweden på lätt svenska is made for people who are new in Sweden, with short items of a few minutes and a daily episode of around ten. Klartext publishes short news items in plain Swedish. Both are free on the web, and Radio Sweden's episodes are all in Sveriges Radio's own app. This is the best listening practice here. Like 8 Sidor it is one-way: you listen, and nothing answers.

Språkkraft Reading Coach: real Swedish media, with a dictionary

Språkkraft Reading Coach is a free app from a non-profit, for iPhone, iPad and Android, with no ads. It brings current Swedish media into one place: news articles, podcasts, YouTube videos, novels, websites and songs. Tap any word for a translation into more than 30 languages. The app colours vocabulary by CEFR level, green for words you know and yellow for words to learn now, builds exercises from them, and keeps reading points and daily goals.

A simplify button rewrites a news article closer to your level. The app itself warns that simplifying can change the meaning, so it tells you to check the original. For reading real Swedish with support in your own language, nothing here does more. What you practise is words, not writing your own Swedish.

Swedish with Fabulo: levelled news and an AI tutor

Swedish with Fabulo is an iPhone app from Hallberg Ryman. Its Easy Swedish News offers each simplified story at several levels, from A1 to C2, so the same news can grow with you. It also has vocabulary quizzes and AI tutor chats for conversation practice and role-play. It is free to download, with in-app purchases. If you want graded news and a chatbot in one iPhone app, it comes closest to that description.

talanu: a Swedish coach in WhatsApp, Teams and an app

talanu, from Kognitiv AI, puts a Swedish coach called Alva where you already are: WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, a Chrome extension, and an app for iPhone and Android. You chat or talk with Alva in casual or formal Swedish. She corrects your grammar and adapts to your CEFR level, and the app includes Swedish news simplified for your level. It leans towards work, with modules for workplace Swedish and packages for employers and universities. It is free to start, and its website does not list a price.

LingQ: bring your own news

LingQ is a general language app, with Swedish among more than 40 languages. Its Swedish library includes news, and it can import an article or a video you choose and turn it into a lesson where you look up and save words, then review them later. The free account is small: 20 saved words and 5 imported lessons. Premium costs 14.99 US dollars a month, less on a longer plan. Writing correction comes from its community of learners and tutors, not from the app itself.

NÖVA: the day's news as a conversation

NÖVA retells a few of today's real Swedish news stories in simple Swedish, around level B1, and links each one to the original article. It does one language, Swedish, on purpose. After the reading comes the part that is different: NÖVA asks what you think, you answer in Swedish, and it replies to what you actually said, corrects the one or two things that got in the way, and asks you something back. There are no streaks, points or quizzes.

NÖVA is a web app. It works in the browser on your phone or your computer, and you can add it to your home screen; there is no store app yet. Reading is free, and so are a few conversations a day, with an account. The paid plan adds memory from one day to the next.

Side by side

What each app does with the news:

What it costs and where it runs:

Which should you use?

It depends on which part of the habit you are missing, and most people will do best with two.

To read a lot of easy Swedish, 8 Sidor is free and there every weekday. To train your ear, Sveriges Radio's two programmes are free and short. To read real Swedish media with a dictionary in your own language, Språkkraft Reading Coach is free and hard to beat.

To use your own Swedish, you need one of the apps that answer back. Fabulo pairs graded news with a chatbot on the iPhone. talanu is built around chat in WhatsApp and Teams and leans towards work. LingQ suits you if you want to import whatever you read and review the words.

What sets NÖVA apart is how the two halves meet. Fabulo and talanu list the news and the chat as separate features; in NÖVA they are one thing, because every conversation starts from the story you just read. NÖVA works in the browser on any phone or computer with nothing to install, while Fabulo is iPhone only. It teaches Swedish alone, where Fabulo's maker publishes the same app in more than a dozen languages. And it corrects the one or two things that got in the way, not everything, so you keep talking. Try it on today's story above, no account needed.

A realistic day: a Radio Sweden episode on the way to work, an 8 Sidor article at lunch, and one conversation about the news in the evening, in whichever app suits you.