English Flashcard Apps for Polish Speakers

Most Poles have studied English for years before they ever open a flashcard app: at school, for the matura, in a language school, on Duolingo. The vocabulary is often there. What trips people up is everything around the words: the a or the that Polish simply does not have, a Present Perfect that has no match in Polish, a th that the mouth refuses to make, and false friends like dress, desk and data. The best flashcard app to learn English as a Polish speaker has to handle exactly that, not just show you "word = słowo".

In this article I compare eight apps that Polish speakers actually use for English in 2026, including two Polish favorites, eTutor and Fiszkoteka. I judge them on one question: does the app help a Polish speaker remember English words and use them correctly? You will get the criteria that matter for Poles, one comparison table, an honest verdict on each app, and the free tools to check your level first.

What Makes a Good Flashcard App for Learning English as a Polish Speaker

The usual app reviews compare design, sync and price. None of those tells you whether the app will finally stop you from saying I have been in London last year. These four criteria each come from a mistake Polish speakers make again and again.

Articles: a, an, the, or nothing

Polish has no articles, so every English noun forces a decision Polish never asks you to make. "Her husband is a doctor" needs a because it names a profession (Polish just says jest lekarzem); the book on the table needs the because we both know which book; bread in "I buy bread every morning" takes nothing, because it is uncountable and general; and by bus takes nothing, full stop. You cannot learn this from a rule sheet alone. You learn it from hundreds of correct examples, each with a short reason, reviewed until the choice feels automatic. That is a job flashcards do well, if the cards bother to explain the article.

Tenses that do not map onto Polish aspect

Polish has three tenses and does a lot of its work with aspect: robiłem versus zrobiłem. English has a dozen tense forms and no aspect pairs. The Present Perfect is the classic trap. "The internet has transformed the way we communicate" becomes a past perfective in Polish (przekształcił). "He has been unemployed since the factory closed" becomes a present tense (jest bezrobotny, odkąd). "She has been coughing all night" is present again (kaszle całą noc). A card that only translates the verb teaches you the meaning and hides the grammar you actually got wrong.

Sounds Polish does not have: th and w

The English th (in think and this) does not exist in Polish, and it tends to come out as f, t, s or d. The English w is not the Polish w at all; it is close to the Polish ł. Add silent letters (cupboard, knee), -gh that sounds like f in cough, and stress that moves around, and you get words that Poles can read perfectly and still mispronounce. A good card for a Polish speaker spells out the trap in Polish terms, or plays the word, or both.

Word order and false friends

Polish word order is flexible because the endings carry the meaning. English word order carries the meaning itself: subject, verb, object, and time usually at the end ("She visits us every Sunday"). Indirect questions keep normal order ("I wonder whether she will accept", no inversion). On top of that sit the false friends: dress is a sukienka, not a dres; desk is a biurko, not a deska; data means dane; a lecture is a wykład, not a lektura; and eventually means "w końcu", not "ewentualnie".

English Flashcard Apps for Polish Speakers Compared

Each row is one app, judged on the four criteria above. Prices are the ones I could confirm on the vendor's own store page; where a price depends on country, store or promotion, I describe it instead of quoting a number. Prices checked October 2026.

App-by-App Breakdown

Words on Repeat

Full disclosure: I built Words on Repeat, so take this with appropriate skepticism. Here is what it does for Polish speakers specifically, and where it stops.

Words on Repeat has 14 English decks made for Polish speakers: six on the CEFR ladder from A1 to C2, and eight themed decks (daily life, conversations, travel, work and education, health, media, business, science). That is 3,500 words. Every card has a Polish translation, an English example sentence with its Polish translation, an English definition, and a note in Polish about the grammar in that sentence: which article and why, which tense and what Polish would use instead, where the trap is. False friends are flagged in the note, so the dress card starts with "Fałszywy przyjaciel: dress = sukienka, nie dres". Reviews are scheduled by FSRS, and that runs on the free plan.

Where it stops: it is a vocabulary tool, not a course. There is no teacher, no speaking assessment, and no lesson that walks you through all the uses of the Present Perfect from the beginning. The notes teach grammar one sentence at a time. The Free plan holds 1,000 words at a time, which is four of these decks; the full ladder needs Pro.

Best for: Polish speakers who already know some English and want to fix the gaps that school left: articles, tenses, pronunciation traps and false friends, explained in Polish, with a vocabulary that grows from A1 to C2. Browse the English decks or start at English B1 if school English is your base.

Want to see the cards before you sign up? Study 15 English cards free - no account, right in the browser.

Duolingo

Duolingo is many Poles' first English app, and for good reason: the streaks and leagues make daily practice a habit, it is free with ads, and its English course now reaches B2 according to Duolingo. The upper units teach English in English, which is the right direction for intermediate learners.

The trouble for someone with school English is the fixed path. You may be bored by units you already know and still have holes Duolingo never targets, such as the versus nothing. You cannot add your own words, and the review schedule is invisible.

Best for: Building a daily habit, especially for beginners or for coming back to English after a long break.

Anki

Anki is free on desktop, Android and the web, has FSRS built in, and lets you build exactly the cards you want. Polish learners have shared plenty of English decks, many of them built from school word lists or exam vocabulary.

The weakness is the same as always: the app is empty, and shared decks are typically bare word pairs. They rarely explain why a sentence takes the, or that has been would be a present tense in Polish. If you are willing to write those notes yourself, Anki is excellent. Most people are not.

Best for: Learners who like to build and tune their own system and have the patience for it.

Quizlet

Polish teachers use Quizlet a lot, and Quizlet calls its collections "zestawy", which is why many Poles think of flashcards in those terms. If your teacher shares sets, Quizlet is the easy choice for those words.

For learning on your own it is thin: sets vary wildly in quality, the free plan is basic flashcards and Match with ads, and the adaptive Learn mode is limited unless you pay. The scheduling behind it is not published.

Best for: School and language-school students whose class already uses Quizlet sets.

eTutor

eTutor is a Polish online English course that many readers will know. It covers A1 to C2 with hundreds of lessons, has its own repetition system that brings back the words you rate as difficult, and is integrated with the Diki dictionary, so you can add any word you look up to your reviews in one click. That mix of a course and built-in review is close to what a lot of Polish learners want.

It is a full course, and it is paid. You get the most from it if you follow the lessons; if you only want a vocabulary tool for words from your job or your series, it is more than you need.

Many learners pair a course like eTutor with a flashcard app, because the two do different jobs:

Best for: Polish learners who want a complete course in Polish with review built in, and plan to use it regularly.

Fiszkoteka

Fiszkoteka is a Polish flashcard app with a large catalog: millions of community flashcards and paid courses, some prepared with lecturers from the University of Warsaw, with audio recorded for the words. Its reviews follow the Leitner box system.

You pay for single courses, course bundles or a premium account rather than one flat subscription, so the price depends on what you buy. Leitner is a simpler scheduler than FSRS: it moves a card up or down a fixed set of boxes instead of estimating when you will forget it. And how much grammar a card explains depends on the course.

Best for: Polish speakers who want ready-made English courses with recorded audio and are happy with a simpler review system.

Busuu

Busuu has a Polish interface and a feature worth having: native English speakers in the community correct your written and spoken answers. Its lessons are short and structured from beginner to upper intermediate.

As with any course, the vocabulary comes in Busuu's order, you cannot bring your own words, and the review tools are limited on the free plan.

Best for: Learners who want feedback on their own sentences from native speakers.

Babbel

Babbel has offered a Polish interface for English since 2019, with grammar explained in Polish and practical dialogues. It has a review tool that brings course vocabulary back over time. Beyond the first lesson it is paid, and you cannot add your own vocabulary.

Best for: Learners who want a polished paid course and prefer to follow it rather than choose their own words.

What Words on Repeat Does for Polish Speakers Learning English

Notes in Polish that explain the grammar of each sentence

These decks exist because one English deck for everyone cannot explain an article to a Pole. Some real notes, translated from the Polish on the cards:

• the: the translation itself reads "(no equivalent in Polish: definite article)", and the note says the is used when we talk about a specific, known thing: "The book is on the table."
• big: "This is a big house": article, then adjective, then noun, in that order.
• to go: "I go to work by bus": by plus a means of transport takes no article.
• desk: false friend, desk is a biurko, not a deska (a board). The note adds that English says the computer "is" on the desk where Polish says it "stands" or "lies".
• wind: pronounced with a short i, respelled for Poles as "łynd".
• cupboard: read roughly "kabyd", because the p is silent.

Tenses explained against Polish, not in a vacuum

From B1 up, the notes keep doing something a grammar book rarely does: they tell you what Polish would say instead. That is the fastest way past the Present Perfect, because the problem is never the form (has plus past participle); it is knowing when English wants it.

A ladder from A1 to C2

The 14 decks hold 3,500 words: A1 has two decks (500 words), A2 three (750), B1 four (1,000), B2 three (750), and C1 and C2 one each (250). Most Poles with school English will be bored at A1 and should start at A2 or B1. The free English vocabulary test in Polish tells you where in a few minutes, with no account. Every card also carries an English definition, and many have synonyms, for when you want to stop translating altogether.

Free tools and the study side

• the English vocabulary test in Polish
• English crosswords built from the same decks
• 15 English cards to study in the browser without an account

Studying is free on every plan: eight game modes (including listening, sentence building and a crossword), daily goals and reminders. The whole interface is available in Polish, where decks are called "zestawy".

Learning English from Real Content

Decks give you a base, but most Polish learners already have plenty of English around them: work emails, documentation, series, YouTube. The words worth learning next are in that material, and words met in something you chose to read stick better, which is what the research on learning words in context keeps finding.

Words on Repeat turns English content into cards with Polish translations: paste an article, a transcript, a document, or a YouTube link, and the AI picks out the words at your level along with the sentence they came from. Good starting points:

• Your own work material: a long email thread, a specification, a report. You will meet the same words next week, which makes them the best words to learn now.
• BBC Learning English, especially 6 Minute English, with full transcripts made for learners.
• YouTube with English subtitles: the YouTube subtitle guide shows how to pull vocabulary out of a video.

The free plan includes a few extractions a month, enough to try it on one article a week.

Frequently Asked Questions