Reading app for language learners · iPhone, iPad and the web
Read real French, Spanish, Italian or German books with a translation one tap away. Start with the free classics on the shelf, or bring any book you own.
Lexico is an extensive-reading app: you learn a language by reading whole books in it, with the dictionary work handled for you. Instead of word lists and drills, you read a book you actually want to finish — one from the shelf, or one you bring. Every sentence can be translated in a tap, every word explained, and every new word saved for spaced-repetition review.
Choose a classic from the free shelf, prepared sentence by sentence for learners. Once downloaded, it works fully offline.
The translation slides in underneath. Every word shows its dictionary form and meaning, and verbs open a full conjugation table.
Save a word or expression with one tap. It comes back on a spaced-repetition schedule, right before you would forget it.
Upload an EPUB, a Word file or a text and it comes back as a Lexico book, every sentence translated. It works the same as the classics. Convert a book →
Lexico is built for intermediate learners who are ready for real books in a foreign language and tired of stopping every other line to look something up.
The page stays a page. Tap one sentence and Lexico shows its translation and lays the sentence out word by word, so you see exactly which word tripped you up and keep reading in the original.
Vocabulary you review is vocabulary you actually met on the page. Cards follow the same spaced-repetition schedule Anki uses: a new word returns after a minute, then ten, then a day, and the gaps grow every time you remember it.
Set a goal in sentences per day, not minutes. Meet it and your streak grows. Earn freezes to protect it on the days you can't read.
The shelf of classics is free, and it is the proof: every title on it was made the same way your own books are. Pick up where you left off, keep several books on the go, and let your progress, flashcards and streak follow you between devices.
Convert any EPUB, Word document, web page or pasted text into a Lexico book: every sentence translated, every word explained, every verb conjugated, before you open page one. Sign in with your Lexico account, see the price, pay once. A short story is ready in minutes, a novel in a few hours, and the finished book appears on that account's shelf.
Any EPUB without DRMWord, web page, Markdown or plain textOr paste the text
Your file stays yours: a Lexico book is an open format you can keep, back up and open in any reader that supports it. We don't host, sell or share the books you convert; the upload and the result are deleted 30 days after the book is ready. Read about the format.
The reader is free. You pay only for the books you bring, once, when they are made.
Open the web app
From €2.99 per book
Conversions are paid by card, once per book. A short story costs a few euros; a long novel around twenty.
Reading is the most enjoyable form of comprehensible input there is. Lexico makes it work at any level.
You already read for pleasure. Lexico lets you do it in the language you're learning without losing the thread: the story stays in the original, help is one tap away, and the words you look up come back for review later. Finishing a real novel in another language is the milestone that makes everything else click.
Maupassant, Wilde and more: when the set text is a classic, Lexico's shelf may have it prepared sentence by sentence for learners — and when it doesn't, convert it. Read the book for class, tap through the hard passages instead of skimming a summary, and walk into the exam with a flashcard deck of exactly the vocabulary the text uses. Useful for school and university literature courses, DELF and DELE preparation, and book clubs.
Apps got you to intermediate and stopped helping. Real books are how you get further: thousands of sentences of authentic language, at your own pace, with your lookup rate falling week by week. Lexico tracks that curve so you can see yourself improve. The way off the plateau is a book you care about, and that is rarely a book in a catalogue. Bring yours.
The reading itself gets the same care as the learning.
From paper to night, each tuned so the highlights stay readable.
Adjustable size, line spacing and a handful of fonts, or the publisher's own.
Jump between chapters; your position is remembered on every book.
Once a book is on your device, reading, lookups and review need no connection.
Milestones for your first chapter, first finished book, first month of streak and more.
Your reading data is yours. Analytics can be switched off in a tap.
A Lexico book is one file in an open, documented format: the text, every sentence's translation, every word's dictionary entry and the verb tables, together. Anyone can make one and anyone can read one, other apps included, and no one — including us — can take it away. The specification is public.
Lexico is free in your browser, with a shelf of free classics; the iPhone and iPad app is on its way through App Store review. Or bring the book you've been meaning to read.
