Peter Kortvel
We learned a lot from reviewing your feedback, looking at the data, talking and chatting with you over the past months. Plus, Raffa and I had been sitting on few ideas for a while. We took a few months and rebuilt around all of it.
Here's how each piece helps you learn German better.
Practice your vocabulary from every story you’ve read
Spaced repetition and flashcards, but different
Spaced repetition came up a lot. Many of you love Anki, and every learner knows it works – the question we kept asking ourselves was how to build it so it actually feels worth doing every day.
Every word you meet in a story drops into your vocabulary deck. Five Leitner boxes – new, seen once, reviewing, known, and mastered. Practice a word and it moves up.
The bit we're a little proud of is the layout: the boxes are tabs at the top of the Words page, always visible, with the words inside them right there. You can see your whole deck and your progress on a single screen.
You asked for flashcards, but we didn't want to build the same flashcard experience. So we built list flashcards: you can constantly see the full list during the practice.
It reminds the "good old way of learning" from a notebook where you used to write all new words under each other and then go one by one to see how much you can translate.
It helps to learn better because:
you don't lose the visual context (every word isn't a new screen),
and you can quickly glance at the learned words during the practice.
See all of German grammar in one place – and see where you stand
A reference book, a progress map, and a link back into your stories.
This one started more as an idea than something you brought up. I went through the full Goethe Institut grammar curriculum – and I was honestly surprised – you can lay all topics of A1 to B2 on a single page.
The problem with grammar is that it is intimidating. And the main reason is that it is usually scattered all over the place… in many language books for each level, pieces of information from the teacher.
We thought: if you can see all your grammar in a single place, with marks of what you have encountered… little by little you will see how it all fills up.
You can buy a full grammar book, but it can get overwhelming… so we decided for a lightweight approach: Each topic has three layers: a one-line summary, a fuller explanation with German/English examples, and a deeper "the why and edge cases" view when you want to go further.
The special bit: the topics you've already practiced through your stories are marked. Tap any topic and you can see every paragraph from your read stories that uses it — click through and you jump straight back into the story.
Grammar stops being a separate subject. One place to look anything up, with real examples you've already read.
Build a daily habit, at your own pace
A habit you build. Quiet personal messages along the way. No streaks.
Daily practice is what actually moves the needle in a language. Raffa and I wanted something that pulls you back without the streak-guilt thing other apps do – and a few of you had told us that the methodical story format already felt like a lot of pressure on busy days.
So: a 30-day calendar showing the days you practiced, and a Habit Strength % next to it. Not a streak, but a recency-weighted number. Show up, it grows. When you skip a day, it dips a little, but show up again, and it climbs back.
The bit we put real care into is making it feel personal. Below the calendar, short coaching messages give you personal tips based on what you've done in the app and remind you to appreciate showing up.
So now you keep coming back and feel great, and missing a day doesn't feel bad :)
Fit practice into your day, and repeat across stories
A story can sit in progress for a week. Or pick one exercise, run it across many.
Five exercise steps in a single sitting felt a lot for many of you, so a story can now sit in progress as long as you need – pick it up tomorrow, the day after, no rush.
We also added a new mode: multi-story practice. Pick one exercise type – Comprehension, Vocabulary, Phrases, or Write – choose a few of the stories you've already finished, and Upwordo runs that one exercise back-to-back across all of them. A small playlist of the practice you're in the mood for.
Five minutes is enough. And now you can get the most from your time.
A1 course for free
The 30-episode A1 course is free, forever.
Many of you love Nico's Weg – a really cool video series done by Deutsche Welle. A great way to start with German. But once you finish it… you are still A1 level… so what do you do next?
We wanted to giveaway also something substantial for the beginners who like our methodical learning approach and want to learn in the context of stories.
So we unlocked the full 30-episode series 'Neu Hier' in A1. 10 stories, 30 episodes are now free, forever. Three friends from Turkey, Brazil and the USA, who start a life in Berlin.
Additionally: For A2, B1, and B2, you also get two welcome stories per level on top of the weekly free one.
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We hope Upwordo now feels like your companion… and a very useful one :)
We keep working on Upwordo. If something works for you – or doesn't – tell us. We read everything.
Try Upwordo.