pt-drill vs Practice Portuguese for European Portuguese

What Practice Portuguese does well

Let's get one thing straight before we look at the gaps: Practice Portuguese is the most comprehensive European Portuguese learning platform that exists, and its core reputation is mostly earned. Founded by Joel Rendall and Rui Coimbra — a Lisbon-based native speaker — it is the only learning platform of its scope that is exclusively European Portuguese. No Brazilian variant to dilute the content, no algorithmic confusion about which "you" form to teach. Every sentence you hear is pt-PT, recorded by people who actually speak it.

The content depth is the headline feature. 100+ structured Units, 800+ interactive lessons, and 950+ accumulated podcast episodes (the podcast has been running since 2012). Each podcast episode and Shorty ships with a time-stamped transcript that scrolls in sync with the audio — a small thing that makes intensive listening practice genuinely workable. There is a verb conjugation module with audio per conjugated form, which is rare and useful even where the broader Smart Review system has limits.

Crucially, the podcast feed is actually free. Through any standard podcast app — Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast — you can listen to all 950+ episodes without paying. Many learners do exactly this for years and never sign up for the paid platform. If your goal is ear training for European Portuguese, this is the best free listening resource on the internet, full stop. Nothing in pt-drill comes within shouting distance.

The reputation data backs up the content quality. Trustpilot gives Practice Portuguese 4.9 stars across 238 ratings, with under 1% one-star reviews — a remarkable distribution for any consumer product. Portugalist's May 2026 review calls it "probably the best single app option" for European Portuguese, and that judgement is widely echoed in EU-PT learner communities.

Compared to learning from a spreadsheet (which is approximately what pt-drill is), Practice Portuguese is a complete, polished, native-speaker-led product. If you are a beginner who wants one app and is happy to pay €15/month for it, the recommendation is straightforward.

Where Practice Portuguese falls short

The strengths are real. The weaknesses are also real, well-sourced, and — in one case — confirmed by Practice Portuguese's own staff on their public forum. None of this is hypothetical.

The iOS app is glitchy as of December 2025

The App Store reviews in December 2025 are blunt. Skcaj007 wrote on 19 December 2025:

"The app is super glitchy and seriously lacking on the development side… I frequently have to close the app and restart it… It can often times be slow to load lessons… It's also very slow to check your pronunciation… The last time they did any updates on this app was two years ago."Skcaj007, App Store, 19 December 2025

Nine days earlier, Clk936 echoed the same problems on 10 December 2025:

"I ran into so many bugs and crashes that it felt unusable… It still does crash every now and then… it will prompt me to re-login in error so I have to reboot the app."Clk936, App Store, 10 December 2025

The Google Play reviews repeat the same themes. Practice Portuguese's own help center has a troubleshooting article covering seven failure modes — the closing line claims the article solves "approximately 82% of reported issues", which is a tacit acknowledgement of how much surface area there is to begin with. Anecdotally, the web app has also felt slow to this reviewer in everyday use.

Smart Review cannot drill full conjugation paradigms

This is the finding that matters most for anyone choosing between Practice Portuguese and a dedicated verb drill. On 3 March 2025, a paying user posted in the Practice Portuguese forum asking for flashcards that show a full tense paradigm — e.g. "ser — present" on the front, the six forms on the back. PP staff member Joseph replied the next day:

"It's not possible to add full conjugations in the current setup, but it's a suggestion we can add to our list of possible future features."Joseph, PP staff, forum.practiceportuguese.com, 4 March 2025

That limitation is exactly what pt-drill's verb drill does as its core loop. It's also the one weakness Portugalist (May 2026) lists about the product: "We wish there were even more verbs to play with!"

Smart Review is deliberately opaque

In February 2022, a user (Ken1000) asked PP for a clearer description of how the spaced repetition algorithm actually works — intervals, advancement, what happens on right and wrong. PP staff member Molly responded that the team deliberately hides algorithm details because "many people are overwhelmed by the details." Compare with pt-drill, where the six Leitner boxes (0–5) and intervals (1/2/4/8/16/32 days) are on screen and predictable. Whether opacity is a feature or a bug depends on whether you trust the algorithm; some learners want to see what's coming.

No free trial

This is a real friction point and worth knowing upfront. Practice Portuguese explicitly does not offer a free trial — their help center states the policy is due to server costs. You get a 30-day money-back guarantee instead. That's better than nothing, but it puts the burden on the new user to commit financially before they can drill verbs or use Smart Review. The podcast is genuinely free; the rest of the platform is not.

Other documented gaps

• Pronunciation feedback regressed in 2025. Forum posts in September 2025 report that the previously useful "show me what the app thought I said" feature disappeared earlier that year, and that the underlying speech recognition has become harsher: "PP downgrades me for my spoken Portuguese, which forces me to speak in an unnatural manner like a robot."
• Offline mode is podcast-only. Only podcast/Shorty MP3s and PDF transcripts download. Lessons and Smart Review require a live connection (PP staff, Feb 2022).
• B2+ content is thin. A How-To-Portuguese review from a paid user (Jan 2021) found B2+ coverage "pretty limited", with "no lessons on pretérito mais-que-perfeito" (a C1/C2 exam requirement) and conjunctive lessons "pretty basic". pt-drill includes pretérito mais-que-perfeito with full paradigms.
• vós is de-emphasised. PP's own learning note "Introduction to Portuguese Verbs" describes vós as "rarely used", which is defensible for everyday Lisbon speech but a problem if you read literature, write formally, or sit DIPLE.

Where pt-drill is better

The list is short and specific. It's also, for a particular kind of learner, the difference between progress and frustration.

It actually drills full conjugation paradigms

pt-drill drills every form of every supported verb in every tense: Presente, Pretérito Perfeito, Pretérito Imperfeito, Futuro Imperfeito, Condicional, Mais-que-perfeito, Conjuntivo Presente, Conjuntivo Imperfeito, Conjuntivo Futuro, and Imperativo. Each card asks for the full six-row table — eu, tu, ele, nós, vós, eles — and grades you per slot with accent-insensitive matching. Practice Portuguese has a useful conjugation module with audio per form, but as PP staff confirmed in March 2025, Smart Review cannot drill full conjugation paradigms. This is the one thing pt-drill exists to do, and it's the one thing the much bigger competitor explicitly can't. See the tenses reference for the full list of paradigms covered.

Free, with no upsell mechanics

No ads, no paywall, no premium tier, no €15/month. The whole product is the free product. No growth team is trying to convert you. You can open the trainer right now without signing up; the magic-link email is only there if you want to sync between devices. Compare with Practice Portuguese's €153/year and explicit no-free-trial policy.

vós included in every tense

Practice Portuguese explicitly describes vós as "rarely used" in their own learning notes, and Smart Review doesn't drill it. pt-drill includes it in every paradigm — important if you read Portuguese literature, write formally, or sit DIPLE-level exams where archaic forms still appear.

Leitner with visible boxes

Six boxes (0–5), intervals 1/2/4/8/16/32 days, all on screen. You can see exactly where every card is. Practice Portuguese's Smart Review is proprietary and the algorithm is deliberately hidden from users — PP staff have confirmed they keep it opaque on purpose. The pt-drill model is the same algorithm Sebastian Leitner published in 1972: it works, it's auditable, and you can predict the next time you'll see any specific card.

Includes pretérito mais-que-perfeito and conjuntivo futuro

The 2021 How-To-Portuguese review specifically called out that Practice Portuguese had "no lessons on pretérito mais-que-perfeito" and that conjunctive coverage was "pretty basic". pt-drill includes pretérito mais-que-perfeito and conjuntivo futuro with full paradigms — they're in the standard rotation. If you're targeting CIPLE, DEPLE, or DIPLE this gap matters. If you're curious how pt-drill compares to other free-ish options, see Memrise and Drops.

Who should pick which

Pick Practice Portuguese if you want a complete European Portuguese learning platform with native-speaker audio, structured lessons, and a podcast, and €15/month is fine. It is the most comprehensive EU-PT product on the market and its reputation is earned.

Pick pt-drill if your conjugation is the thing actively holding you back, you want vós included, and you don't want to pay or be nagged. Open the trainer and the first verb is already loaded.

Or pick both. Many learners use Practice Portuguese's free podcast feed indefinitely (it really is free through any podcast app) for listening, and pt-drill for the verb paradigm drilling Smart Review can't do. That stack costs zero and covers a lot. If you eventually want lessons and transcripts, paying for PP is a reasonable bet with knowable tradeoffs.