AI · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to I made a language tool that forces you to talk
Hey HN! I created Hanasu.ai after my 9-5 job as a side project. Previously I'd used Duolingo to learn Japanese, but failed spectacularly when I actually spoke with my roommate from Tokyo. Now, after OpenAI improved their Realtime audio model in December and reduced pricing, I spent my entire winter break building. So how does it work? Just choose a daily topic and converse with the AI model: (1) Didn't catch a phrase? Double tap to reveal a transcript. (2) Couldn't understand? Double tap for translations powered by Google. (3) Can't recall that intricate Chinese/Japanese character? Just…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1IB
Hello Hacker News, When learning foreign languages, I made the most progress by speaking them throughout the day, every day. So I made a site where you can *speak* to an AI language teacher to practice both listening and speaking. # The product *What I have now:* * Multilingual speech recognition: You can ask a question in English and get an answer in your target language. * Feedback on your grammar. * Suggestions: See examples of what to say next to keep the conversation flowing. * Speed: Choose a lower speed for beginners or a faster one for advanced levels. * Translations: Click to see a…
2023 · gliglish.com · its alternatives →
- 2
Pinch▲535Hey HN! I’m Christian, daily lurker and some might remember our original launch post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42935355). Today we're launching Pinch for Mac, which we believe is a step-change improvement in real-time AI translation. Our vision is to make cross-lingual conversations feel as natural as regular conversations. TL:DR During an online meeting, the app instantly transcribes and translates all audio you hear, and allows you to decide when you translate your voice and when you don't. It's invisible to others (like Granola), and works everywhere without any…
2025 · startpinch.com · its alternatives →
- 3AD
Hey HN! I love watching YouTube with my 7-year-old daughter. Unfortunately, the best stuff is often in English (we're German). So I made an AI tool that translates videos directly, using the original voices. All other sounds, as well as background music, are preserved, too. Turns out that it works for many other language pairs, too. So far, it can create dubs in English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, French, Russian, German, Italian, Korean, Polish and Dutch. The main challenge in building this was to get the balance right between translating the original meaning and getting the timing…
2024 · speakz.ai · its alternatives →
- 4
Fujiyama▲192Practice natural Japanese conversation in real-time with AI
2024 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
- 5
Hi HN! Last year the project I launched here got a lot of good feedback on creating speech to speech AI on the ESP32. Recently I revamped the whole stack, iterated on that feedback and made our project fully open-source—all of the client, hardware, firmware code. This Github repo turns an ESP32-S3 into a realtime AI speech companion using the OpenAI Realtime API, Arduino WebSockets, Deno Edge Functions, and a full-stack web interface. You can talk to your own custom AI character, and it responds instantly. I couldn't find a resource that helped set up a reliable, secure websocket (WSS) AI…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6
A few years ago, right after high school, I decided to try to make a simultaneous translation app for Android as a side project, it took longer than expected (about 2 years) and I had to make a lot of compromises (I had to use Google's API and therefore make users use a developer key because at the time there were no free solutions for speech recognition and translation that had good quality). At the end of university, I decided to pick it up again and finally, using OpenAi's Whisper for speech recognition and Meta's NLLB for translation (with both running locally on the phone), I managed to…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 7
HanaVerse▲87Talking anime character WebUI for Ollama
2025 · hanaverse.vercel.app · its alternatives →
- 8IU
Hi Hacker News, This is definitely out of my comfort zone. I just wanted to show you guys because I'm super proud of it. It's a 100% faithful recreation based off of the schematics, patents, and ROMs that were found online. So please watch the video and tell me what you think https://youtu.be/auOlZXI1VxA The reason why I think this is relevant is because I've been a programmer for 25 years and AI scares the shit out of me. I'm not a programmer anymore. I'm something else now. I don't know what it is but it's multi-disciplinary, and it doesn't involve writing code myself--for…
Jan 2026 · its alternatives →
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- 11
Could I get some opinions on my experiential learning language app? When I learned Japanese with new friends, I didn't know how to ask where we were going or where the bathroom was. It was really motivating. As in-country immersion isn't option in most cases, language exchange is next best option. However, in-person language exchange can be expensive or difficult to schedule. So I built ConvoLive to make language practice more engaging for myself. Open Beta on Android and iOS https://convolive.com Technically interesting bits: - Lip-synced avatars using WebGL. - Continuous speech…
Nov 2025 · convolive.com · its alternatives →
- 12RT
Hi HN -- voice chat with AI is very popular these days, especially with YC startups (https://twitter.com/k7agar/status/1769078697661804795). The current approaches all do a cascaded approach, with audio -> transcription -> language model -> text synthesis. This approach is easy to get started with, but requires lots of complexity and has a few glaring limitations. Most notably, transcription is slow, is lossy and any error propagates to the rest of the system, cannot capture emotional affect, is often not robust to code-switching/accents, and more. Instead, what…
2024 · demo.tincans.ai · its alternatives →
- 13
Hi, I built TalkBits because most language apps focus on vocabulary or exercises, but not actual conversation. The hard part of learning a language is speaking naturally under pressure. TalkBits lets you have real-time spoken conversations with an AI that acts like a native speaker. You can choose different scenarios (travel, daily life, work, etc.), speak naturally, and the AI responds with natural speech back. The goal is to make it feel like talking to a real person rather than doing lessons. Techwise, it uses realtime speech input, transcription, LLM responses, and tts streaming to keep…
Jan 2026 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
- 14
Hi friends, I'm Dmitry, co-founder of Ordemio. I'd like to share with you what we have accomplished in 30 days of non-stop, 10-hour workdays. It was launched on August 1st, 2024. Is it good enough to attract our first customers? We have launched a new product in the highly competitive niche of "ChatGPT AI chatbot for a website," facing over 100 existing competitors on purpose. It's a gamble, and I'm unsure if it was the right decision. Feel free to ask any questions. Cheers.
Nov 2025 · ordemio.com · its alternatives →
- 15CC
Hey there HN! I believe the future of AI communication will be more voice and less text. Low-latency realistic voice interactions are finally becoming feasible. I've built a few voice-first apps on Retell AI using Elevenlabs voices. This one uses Claude Haiku for responses and Mixtral to switch between posts and comments. The AI knows about the top 30 posts and their comments on Hacker News right now. After a Google sign-in you can try it free for 10 minutes. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
2024 · callhackernews.com · its alternatives →
- 16IB
In 2023, I tried my luck with four different educational apps, but none of them really made any money. Then, while working on an English learning website, I added a simple feature where users could chat with AI. Surprisingly, this became super popular! This got me thinking: why not create an app that lets people practice speaking English with AI characters? I put together a basic version of the app in a month and shared it on voz.vn, a well-known forum in Vietnam. The app got 500 downloads on the first day alone, though I didn't earn any money from it initially. In the next 3 months, I only…
2024 · fluentpal.app · its alternatives →
- 17
My girlfriend relocated to Bangalore from Pune and was struggling to talk to cab drivers. So I built this simple app to instantly translate voice. The app even auto-detects the other person's language; ideal for when you have set the language to "Tamil" when the other person was actually speaking in "Kannada" and you didn't realize it. I used OpenAI's Whisper and TTS for this.
2025 · whisperglot.ai · its alternatives →
- 18
I had a successful startup exit five years ago (we got very lucky) but recently realized I'm most happy when building software products. I spend the last ~2 months building this as a fun way to get back into software development; and to find out what all the kids are up to these days. I am also a passionate life-long Japanese learner so this project was really fun. It's been nutz how different things are now with all the AI whatnot. This for sure would have taken me a year, without all the AI. I did not spend much time doing market analysis or any of that jazz. Mostly because I was…
2025 · seikai.tv · its alternatives →
- 19
Hear it. Say it. Perfect it. AI language pronunciation.
May 2026 · sonarilabs.ai · its alternatives →
- 20
Harku▲3Hi HN! I'm the founder of Harku (https://harku.io ), a video/audio transcription tool I've been working on for the past few months. The backstory: I was frustrated with existing transcription services - they either required expensive subscriptions upfront, had poor accuracy for non-English content, or forced you to create accounts just to try them. As someone who frequently works with meeting recordings and content in multiple languages, I needed something better. Technical approach: - Built on OpenAI's Whisper V3 (latest model) for 98.5% accuracy - GPU-optimized processing…
Feb 2026 · harku.io · its alternatives →
- 21
Hi! I created a platform that lets you have real video call lessons with an AI teacher that's available 24/7. What do you think? What should I improve? www.kylian.ai What we offer: - Full video conferencing: see and speak with your AI tutor in a natural setting - Structured lessons with clear objectives and progression - Interactive whiteboard for visual explanations - Real-time translations and grammar feedback - Cultural insights integrated into conversations - Progress tracking to monitor your improvement - Practice exercises and scenarios - Customizable lesson content What makes us…
2025 · kylian.ai · its alternatives →
- 22
Hi Everyone, I recently wanted to learn Japanese with duolingo but it kept giving me repetitive lessons. So I built an app that gives a variety of lessons from anime. You can try it out here:https://kanjieight.vercel.app/ Thanks everyone.
Nov 2025 · kanjieight.vercel.app · its alternatives →
- 23IM
Hi HN! I'm Amber (13) and my dad Raj, and we built Nityasha AI from Guna, India. After my dad's 12 years of failed startups (2012-2023), we created a personal AI assistant that handles email, coding help, research, and planning in one conversational interface. I started coding at 9 on a 4GB RAM laptop. We failed 8 times before this—coupon sites, freelancing platforms, consulting. Nityasha is different: it uses Thesys generative UI for visual charts, includes Study Mode with Socratic teaching, and integrates everything so you don't need 10 tabs open. 500+ active users now. We just launched…
2025 · ai.nityasha.com · its alternatives →
- 24
Hi HN, Today, we're launching Glowby Basic, our open-source, customizable AI assistant powered by OpenAI API. It allows you to easily recreate and adapt your own assistant for various needs, with multilingual voice capabilities. Key features include autonomous decision-making, customizable pre-set questions, support for 30+ languages, and effortless prompt switching for different tasks and scenarios. We've made interactions with LLMs and AI-related APIs open-source to encourage collaboration and enhance transparency. Try our live demo (no sign-up required) and explore the GitHub repo linked…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- I built an AI language teacher to get you speaking alternatives
- Pinch alternatives
- AI dub tool I made to watch foreign language videos with my 7-year-old alternatives
- Fujiyama alternatives
- I open-sourced my AI toy company that runs on ESP32 and OpenAI realtime alternatives
- I made an open source and local translation app alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →