If you are looking for an app to learn Turkish or Swedish, sooner or later you run into Babbel. It is not a points-and-streaks app: it is a paid service with short lessons and the structure of a real course. That makes the comparison with Kolay more interesting than the one with Duolingo, and harder to do honestly, because the two apps share more than you might expect. Here I try to say where they overlap, where they don't, and who should pick which. One note before we start: for Babbel I report what the company says on its own site, and for Kolay what the app does today. Babbel's prices and details change often, so treat anything about them as a pointer and check the official page.
What Babbel does well
Babbel has a simple, solid idea: short lessons, which the company itself describes as usually around 10 to 15 minutes, built on concrete situations like introducing yourself, ordering at a restaurant or asking for directions. The pages where Babbel explains how it works keep returning to two things: speaking early, thanks to speech recognition that has you repeat sentences and checks your pronunciation, and not forgetting, thanks to a review section that brings back words and phrases you have already seen.
Those are two real strengths. Speech recognition, with all its limits (no software replaces a native speaker correcting you), makes you say sentences out loud from day one, and that is a big advantage over studying only with your eyes. Babbel also covers more than ten languages in one app, Turkish and Swedish among them: if you later want German or Spanish, you stay where you are. Kolay has three today.
Where Kolay takes a different road
The first difference is practical and the most basic one: price and entry. On Kolay, lessons and flashcards are free, with no time limit and no credit card. The Pro plan costs 3.99 euros a month or 29.99 euros a year and adds native-speaker pronunciation audio, reading texts, the grammar reference and more messages with the AI tutor. Babbel is a subscription service: as far as I know you need to pay to use it continuously, but plans and promotions change all the time, so look at the site before deciding. If you simply want to find out whether a language is for you without opening your wallet, a genuinely free plan matters.
The second difference is grammar. Kolay ties grammar to the lessons: you tap, read the rule in English with tables and examples, and go back to the exercise. For languages far from English, like Turkish with its endings glued onto the root, or Swedish with the article that ends up at the back of the word (we covered that in the article on why Swedish puts the article at the end of the word), having the rule one tap from the exercise changes how you study. An honest note: in the app, the full grammar reference is part of the Pro plan. Babbel does explain grammar inside its lessons, but I can't tell you how extensive that is language by language, so try a course before judging.
The third difference is writing. Kolay has a text-based AI tutor: you pick a scenario (at a cafe, with a friend, with family, with a colleague), write in your own words in Turkish or Swedish and get corrections explained in English. Be careful not to misread this: it is a tutor that reads and corrects what you write, not one that listens to you. For speaking, the Pro plan gives you native-speaker audio to listen to and repeat, but there is no microphone grading your pronunciation. On that point Babbel is ahead, and I'll say it plainly.
Review: here the two apps look alike
Babbel has its Review Manager, which according to the official explanation moves each word through successive knowledge levels and brings it back at intervals that depend on how often you got it right. Kolay has flashcards with spaced repetition based on the SM-2 algorithm, the same principle behind Anki: the word returns when you are close to forgetting it. They are two versions of the same idea, and it is the right idea (we talk about it in why 15 minutes a day beats the weekend cram session). If you were wondering which one reviews better, the honest answer is that this is not the point to choose on.
Where Babbel is simply ahead
Let's list it without pretending otherwise. Babbel has many more languages. It has speech recognition. It is a large company with years of experience, while Kolay is a small project built by one person. And Kolay currently stops at B1: a complete A1 to B1 path for each of the three languages, but nothing beyond. If your goal is B2 or C1, you need to check how far Babbel's course goes in the language you want (I can't say for sure for Turkish and Swedish), and accept that after B1 Kolay has nothing to offer you yet.
There is a less visible side too. A small project is free to focus on a few languages and on learners starting from English or Italian, but it has fewer resources for every feature. If you need something and it isn't there, that limit is not a detail.
Three questions to decide
The first: what holds you back more, grammar or speaking? If your fear is opening your mouth, Babbel's speech recognition is a concrete advantage. If you get lost in the rules (cases, endings, word order), Kolay's path, with grammar attached to the lessons, is built for that.
The second: how much do you want to spend before you know whether you like the language? With Kolay you can do lessons and flashcards for free, forever, and decide later whether Pro is worth it. With Babbel you will need to check the current terms of the service.
The third: where do you want to get to? For a trip, for talking with a partner's family, for getting by after a move for work, the A2 to B1 level in Kolay is a concrete target. For a higher goal, or for studying several languages in one app, Babbel has more room.
How to test them without wasting time
The most reliable way to choose is to try both for a week, under the same rules. Do the first lessons of the same language in each, with the same effort (fifteen minutes a day is enough) and watch three signals. When you get an exercise wrong, do you understand why, or do you just try again? Two days later, do you remember the first day's words without looking? And finally: do you feel like reopening the app on your own, without anything reminding you? The answers to those three questions are worth more than any review, this one included, because they depend on how you learn.
Using both is not cheating
They are not incompatible. Some people will use Kolay for structure and grammar and another resource for spoken pronunciation, others will do the reverse. What matters is knowing what you are asking of each tool. If you want to see how Kolay's path is laid out level by level, the languages page shows Turkish, English and Swedish with the number of lessons and words. And if you are curious about the other big app, there is also Kolay vs Duolingo.