Glossa vs LingQ
An honest comparison. Last reviewed 26 September 2026; LingQ details checked against LingQ’s own pages, linked under Sources, on that date.
LingQ is a mature platform built around a large curated library of leveled content and native mobile apps, and it can import your own ebooks too. Glossa is built around one thing: reading a book you chose — a PDF, EPUB, or Project Gutenberg title — with translation that adapts to your level, glossing only the words above it, plus on-demand audio and built-in vocabulary practice. Choose LingQ if you want curated content and a phone app. Choose Glossa if you want to read what you already chose, on a desktop or tablet browser.
At a glance
| Glossa | LingQ | |
|---|---|---|
| Import your own PDFs and EPUBs | Yes — kept as one book, with chapters | Yes — split into 2,000-word lessons |
| Built-in content library | Project Gutenberg (public-domain) | Extensive curated library |
| Native mobile app | Web responsive only | iOS and Android |
| Click-to-translate | Yes | Yes |
| Audio narration | Native-voice TTS on any sentence | Recorded audio with library lessons; generated audio for imported lessons on Premium |
| Spaced-repetition vocabulary | Yes | Yes |
| How translation appears | Interlinear, only for words above your level (adjustable slider) | Tap a word to look it up; highlighting by word status |
| Languages supported | 13 | 50+ |
When to choose LingQ
LingQ is the right call if you want curated, level-appropriate mini-lessons, podcasts, and short articles with synchronized recorded audio — and you want them on your phone. LingQ has been around since 2007 and the library is large; the learner community is active. Glossa supports 13 languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish). If you're learning one outside that list — Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and many smaller languages among them — LingQ likely covers it, and that alone may decide the question. The list is about the language you learn, not the one you read glosses in: Glossa shows glosses in 18 languages, so a Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, or Hindi speaker learning English or Spanish gets the help in their own language.
When to choose Glossa
Glossa is the right call if you have a specific book you want to read — a novel you've been putting off, a textbook, a news archive in PDF — and you want the translation tools built around that book rather than around someone else's curriculum. Both apps will import it; the difference is what reading it feels like. Glossa writes translations between the lines for only the words above your level — set by a slider — so easy words stay clean and you aren’t tapping through every unknown word. As your level improves, fewer words get glossed. Audio narration runs on neural TTS, so any sentence in any book gets native-quality audio on demand, included on the free tier too.
Glossa is web-first; there is no native mobile app today. The responsive site works on phones, but if most of your reading happens on iOS or Android in a dedicated app, that is a real trade-off worth weighing.
Try Glossa
The free tier covers two books and 10 pages of reading — enough to confirm whether the upload-your-own-books workflow fits how you want to learn.
Sources
Official pages each competitor claim was checked against, on 26 September 2026. Prices change; if one of these disagrees with this page, trust the source and tell us at [email protected].
- LingQ — Plans and pricing · Importing ebooks · Mobile apps · Languages