Booklern vs LingQ for reading books

What each one is

Booklern is a bilingual book reader for learning English: 1,093 public-domain classics, or your own EPUB, shown in English with a translation into Russian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish or Arabic aligned to every sentence, with audio, a dictionary, vocabulary saving and pronunciation scoring, in the browser.

LingQ is a language-learning platform for more than 50 languages, on the web and in iOS and Android apps. Any text, video or audio becomes a lesson; unknown words are looked up on click and saved as LingQs, which return in a spaced-repetition review.

Reading a book

On Booklern the translation is part of the page: under each sentence or in a second column, and hidden with one setting when you want English only. Hovering a word lights up the phrase it belongs to in the translation. On LingQ the page shows the target language alone; a click translates a word, and a whole sentence is translated one at a time in Sentence Mode, which needs a paid plan.

Both approaches work, for different readers. The aligned translation suits someone reading a long novel who wants to check a sentence and move on. The click model suits someone who wants to be forced to try every word first.

Library and importing

Booklern's library is 1,093 classics with an estimated level, browsable by level and genre. LingQ's library is lesson-shaped: Mini Stories for beginners, thousands of user-shared lessons, public-domain courses; we found no curated catalogue of full-length classics.

Importing is where LingQ is stronger: EPUB, PDF, DOCX, TXT and MOBI, plus YouTube with captions, Netflix, podcasts and web pages through its extension. Booklern takes English EPUBs up to 30 MB and pasted text, and nothing else. LingQ's free plan allows 5 imports; Booklern's free account has no import cap but a daily allowance on translation.

Vocabulary and review

LingQ has the more developed review system: saved words come back at 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month and 3 months, as flashcards, multiple choice, cloze or dictation, with quizzes on the paid plan and a cap of 20 saved words on the free one. Booklern saves a word with one tap and practises it on a Practice page with short generated stories that reuse your words; there is no interval-based flashcard queue.

Audio and speaking

Booklern reads every chapter aloud with the current sentence highlighted, and scores a passage you read into the microphone word by word, with the sounds that went wrong shown per word. LingQ plays lesson audio where it exists and generates audio for imports on the paid plan; its own review calls it weak for speaking practice, which it covers with tutoring rather than scoring.

Languages

LingQ: more than 50 languages to learn. Booklern: English only, with translation into Russian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish or Arabic. If you are learning anything other than English, this comparison ends here in LingQ's favour.

Which to choose

Choose Booklern if you learn English, want to read real novels with a translation you can glance at, and want audio and pronunciation feedback in the same place, free in the browser. Choose LingQ if you learn several languages or something other than English, if your material is video, podcasts and articles rather than books, or if a strict spaced-repetition routine is the point.