Is Memrise Premium Worth The Price?

Is Memrise Premium Worth The Price?

Memrise released its premium or “pro” version a while back now but questions regarding its value have continued to circulate ever since.

As you may know by now, I’m a pretty big Memrise fan so of course I had to check out the premium version and write you a little review and how-to guide.

If you’re not already familiar with the king of crowd sourced mnemonics and my personal favorite free vocabulary builder check out a much more thorough review of Memrise here:

To recap briefly; Memrise allows users to create visual representations of the words in a given lesson; the idea being that associating a word with a picture, even a mental one, can significantly help boost retention.

With hundreds of languages offered, and more courses being added all the time, Memrise is easily one of the most popular options among polyglots and language enthusiasts as well as one of my personal favorite programs and I highly recommend it to all language learners.

Premium membership offers users an all new array of performance tracking features to help learners study and retain vocabulary more effectively by showing detailed statistics that make it clear what’s working and what could use some improvement.

At around $10 USD per month though, this VIP status is not without its costs and some have called into question the value of the paid option.

Lets take a look at some of the new features:

These screenshots are taken directly from my personal Memrise dashboard, so now you can see just how poorly I’ve been studying lately!

The performance monitor window is an interactive tool that allows you to compare the rates at which words are added to your ‘long term memory’ word bank and the rate at which you lose new vocabulary.

 

This window shows you the amount of time you’ve spent learning with Memrise over the past 60 days. It allows you to see the days and weeks in which you spent the most time learning. A great tool for those trying to figure out which days of the week to cram the most language study!

Obviously I have been slacking for the past few weeks.

Moving forward;  you can now determine which time of day is the best for you. This window; a continuation of the last one, really lets you dig into when you’re at your best and how long it takes you, on average, to answer a question.

Find out how just much your performance suffers on an empty stomach, after coffee, late at night lying in bed, or on your mobile phone under your desk in  economics class.

Don’t worry, I’m sure your professors will understand.

Hopefully your trends are a little bit less scattered than mine.

Sadly, the premium features are not yet accessible via the mobile app, though use from of the app does still factor into pro-reports. You’ll still have to access your desktop though.

This is an annoyance for users like me who spend the majority of their Memrise study time on a phone or tablet.

Difficult words

One of the most appealing of the premium offerings, the new “difficult words” option allows you to separate the words you’ve memorized from the ones you still need to work on.

Every time you get a word wrong it is added to your “difficult words” queue, which you can then study separately later.

It’s a really good way to keep track of the words that you struggle the most with and gives you an indicator of what you should be devoting more time to.

This feature is accessible via the mobile version as well.

Is Memrise Premium really worth it?

Anyway, the million dollar question is of course; is it worth it for me to pay for these features?

Unfortunately there isn’t really much of a clear cut answer here.

Do you need these features? Absolutely not. Memrise will remain free to all and the benefits offered by Memrise Premium are not likely to make or break your project if you’re dedicated enough and able to diversify your learning.

But if you’re really looking to perfect your technique and want to harness every possible edge, the price isn’t super steep.

At the very least you can console your wallet with the knowledge that your money goes to paying the salaries of a bunch of hard working language enthusiasts who provide millions with a free learning platform. This allows them to continue to expand their features, create new apps such as Cat Spanish, and to regularly stock Mousha’s dressing room with snazzy new bow ties.

Languages Around the Globe will always be free. However there are expenses with keeping a website up and running and devoting time and energy to provide you with more, high quality content. LATG is supported by Patreon. Click below to become a patron and earn some cool stuff for your generosity. We’re currently working to make the website advertisement free for your convenience!Become an LATG Patron

Apex-editor of Languages Around the Globe, collector of linguists, regaler of history, accidental emmigrant, serial dork and English language mercenary and solutions fabricator. Potentially a necromancer. All typos are my own.