Bring the book on your shelf, the episode you’re mid-season on, the song stuck in your head. Photograph the page, paste the subtitles, drop in the lyrics. Apera finds the words you don’t yet know and teaches you those, then gets out of the way, so you read it, watch it, hear it on your own. A song takes days. An episode, about a week. A chapter, two to three weeks.
Find your level — two minutes ↓First, find where your words run out.
Two minutes, no signup — the result is yours either way. Best once you’re six months or so into the language; everything Apera teaches you afterwards starts from where this lands.
I’m learning
how the words stay
A word you meet once is a word you lose. Each one Apera teaches comes back — first in a quick card, then in a short story, then again a little later, the gap widening each time as it settles.
So the second book is easier than the first: every book, every episode, every song leaves its words behind — ready for the next one.
Now you know where your words run out. Bring the thing that stopped you.
the episode
You’re three episodes into a show, watching with English subtitles and calling it learning. You paste episode four’s subtitles. Apera teaches you the words you were missing. Episode five, you switch the subtitles to Italian. Episode eight, you try it with them off.
the paperback
The novel you bought on holiday, still on the shelf two years later. You photograph the first chapter. Two to three weeks later you read it — phone in another room.
the song
A chorus you’ve loved for a year and never quite understood. You paste the lyrics. A few days later it comes on the radio, and the chorus arrives as language, not sound.
Apera tells you the day you can read it on your own — never as a notification, only when you look. That’s the only progress it keeps.
we show our work
You bring a real text — whatever you actually want to read, not something written for learners.
Apera reads it once, keeps the words you’re missing, and throws the text away.
The readiness mark is the share of that text’s words you’ve recalled on the cards — nothing else moves it.
No grammar drills. No streaks. No chatbot tutor with a name. It doesn’t celebrate you and it doesn’t nag. It measures the text, not you — then leaves you to read it.
What it does. What it doesn’t.
How is this different from Duolingo, Anki, or LingQ?
It isn’t a game, a flashcard box, or a reader you live inside. It’s a route from a real text in your hands, through a few weeks of cards and short stories built from its words, back to that same text — read without us. We measure one thing: whether you still need the app.
Can I read my uploaded book inside the app?
No — and we don’t keep it. We read it once for the words you’re missing, then the text is gone. The reading happens outside the app — phone down, book open. Your book isn’t sitting on our servers, and you never end up living inside someone else’s reader. That’s the design, not a limitation we’re apologizing for.
The readiness mark — isn’t that just another number that lies?
It goes up because you learned the words, not because we’d like you to open the app. It’s the share of a given text’s words you’ve recalled on the cards — nothing else moves it. And it measures the text, not you: there is no score for the kind of learner you are.
I can already do this free with Anki and Yomitan.
Then keep your stack — we’re not trying to beat Yomitan at lookup. What we remove is the deck-building labor: picking the words, ranking them by how often people actually say them, knowing when you’re ready. If that labor isn’t your bottleneck, your free stack is the right tool.
What does Apera actually do?
It finds the words standing between you and something you want to read, teaches them in quick cards and short stories, and tells you the day you’re ready to go read the thing itself. The reading happens in the real text — not in here.
What does it cost?
There’s a free tier you can use without paying: the placement quiz, a weekly allowance of uploads, a few stories a day, and unlimited card review. A paid tier with higher allowances is coming — we haven’t set the price yet. No ads, ever.
Do I need to already know the language?
A little — roughly six months to two years in. The quiz above answers this better than you can from memory: if your words run out in the first few cards, come back in a few months. Below that you’d spend more time looking words up than reading.
What languages do you support?
Italian, Spanish, French, and German. Italian is furthest along — that’s where we started.
How long until I can read the book I uploaded?
It depends on how much you bring. A song, days. An episode, about a week. A chapter, two to three weeks. We tell you the day a given text is ready.
Will this fix my speaking plateau?
Honestly, no. Apera gets you reading and watching, not speaking. If speaking is your sharpest pain, this is the wrong tool, or at most a warm-up beside your own speaking practice.
Learning words you’re not going to use is boring.
Erik · founder of Apera
the reward is reading. there is no other reward.
Find your level — two minutes ↑