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- Comprehensive courses
- High quality dialogues
- Video role plays on every dialogue
- Lifetime access with a 60 day refund grace period
- Free mobile app access included
- Downloadable audio (app-only)
- Inbuilt gamification and leaderboard
- Slightly pricey
- Slow forum replies
- Spammy affiliates
Rocket German is one of the better German courses, is comprehensive in its content, covering all skills, and uses high quality, natural dialogues.
NOTE: If you
I announced not too long ago that after doing some ancestry research on my family and finding strong links to Germany, my interest in learning the German language really piqued.
Learning German quickly became important and personal to me knowing my family’s history.
So naturally, I started to look into the best resources for learning German. There’s not a whole lot available unfortunately but the one that really stuck out to me was Rocket German.
Rocket German describes itself as a market leader and has been around since 2004 (over two decades now).
It’s also often touted as a far better and more practical alternative to household names like Rosetta Stone (review), Babbel (review) and Pimsleur (review).
Like most of the different language editions available, Rocket German has 3 levels of difficulty (sold as Level 1, Levels 1 & 2, and Levels 1, 2 & 3) plus a Play the Part add-on. There’s a fairly substantial difference in the amount of content depending on what you buy too - Level 1 on its own is 73 lessons whereas all three levels plus Play the Part come to a total of 231 lessons.
Although it comes with a higher price tag, I found that the best and most interesting content is in the higher levels.
I spoke to the CEO of Rocket German and asked for full access to examine the quality and method of all three levels of the course which I’ve shared with you below. Here you’ll find points where I think Rocket does an excellent job and points where I believe it needs serious improvement.
Since I first reviewed it, Rocket German has also picked up video role plays in every audio lesson and the Play the Part add-on (30 extra role play lessons set in Germany), both of which I’ll cover below.
Make sure to share your feedback if you used Rocket German before in the comment section.
Also before you read on, here’s a video demo I made a while back of the French, Spanish and Arabic versions. The latest edition has several significant improvements since:
Why it’s so hard to find a reliable and accurate Rocket German review
I need to get one thing out of the way first.
Before you landed here on this page, you may have looked around for a sound review of Rocket German and had to sift through a frustrating pile of fake reviews and videos on YouTube.
Rocket German has a sizeable commission scheme in place that attracts a lot of disingenuous profiteers. They spam people with links to Rocket German which has (in my opinion) caused major damage to the reputation of the company.
In fact, it’s so bad that I avoided reviewing the course for a long time.
But what I can assure you of after using it myself and speaking with the CEO is that Rocket German is not in any way connected to abusive marketers and profiteers.
I personally wish they’d find a way to stop people from doing it as it makes it difficult for consumers to find reliable information.
Just be aware of it and make sure you’re not being taken advantage of.
The Rocket German course at first glance
As soon as you log in to Rocket German, you see that each level is made up of three main lesson types:
1. ‘Language and Culture’
These are lessons on grammar and aspects of German culture.
2. ‘Audio Lessons’
Here you’ll get to listen to podcast-style lessons (casual chat) on German hosted by an English speaker together with native German speakers.
3. ‘Survival Kit’
These are survival and core phrases/expressions needed to get by in Germany. This used to be a paid extra but it’s now included in every level.
Each level finishes with a Benchmark Test to gauge where you’re at. Beyond that there’s the separate Play the Part add-on (more on that below) and a Tools section with search, favorites, custom flashcards, the leaderboard, the forum and certification tests.
When I first reviewed the course there was also a fourth section with an in-built flashcard app where you could add vocab and expressions from anywhere in the course to be studied later on. That’s now the Favorites and Custom Flashcards tools (see below).
The interface is simple and clutter-free; you have dialogues and expressions, and every audio lesson is followed up with five practice activities to test you: flashcards (spaced repetition style, where you rate how well you knew each card), listening (hear the phrase, then record it), writing (hear the phrase, then type it), speaking (record the phrase) and a short multiple-choice quiz.
As you complete each lesson and testing component, the program marks it as complete.
Unlike other competitor German courses (e.g. RS and Pimsleur), the Rocket lessons are presented in a humorous way and they don’t follow a ‘cookie-cutter’ approach (meaning that the lessons in Rocket German are very different to those in every language edition).
The English-speaking host is very engaging and fun to listen to when chatting with the native German speakers.
Rating the comprehensiveness, clarity and overall quality of Rocket German
As I mentioned above, Rocket German provides a staggering 231 lessons across all three levels plus Play the Part (Level 1 alone is 73 lessons, and Levels 2 and 3 are 64 each).
For the average person learning German, this is a lot.
It’s potentially years worth of material to work through or at least many months for motivated learners. In terms of the scope of its content and overall comprehensiveness, there doesn’t seem to be any comparison to a competitor like Rosetta Stone whose lesson scope is minimal (I talked about the issue of shallow content depth in my Mango Languages review, for instance).
Throughout the Rocket German course, you’ll find naturally spoken dialogues on all kinds of topics such as sport, literature, politics, German culture, relationships, business and more, making it suitable for an array of learner types.
The scenarios are just as you’d find them on the streets in Germany - something that’s not typically found in other German programs.
Content difficulty ranges from absolute beginner level through to advanced in Level 3 and all lessons come with 100% natural audio recordings to improve listening comprehension.
Rocket German now has video role plays (this is new)
When I first reviewed Rocket German it was audio and text only, and I said at the time that more images and video would be nice.
That’s changed.
Inside the Role Playing part of every audio lesson, the two speakers from the dialogue are now filmed (vertical, phone-style clips) and you watch them deliver the conversation one line at a time. You can Watch the Full Conversation to see it play through, or Talk To one of the characters, which means you take one side of the dialogue and record yourself while the other speaker responds on video.
This isn’t a video course in the sense of a teacher standing in front of a camera giving you a 20 minute lesson. The podcast-style audio is still the core of every lesson. But it makes the dialogues feel a lot less like a listening drill and a lot more like an actual exchange with a person.
It’s on the audio lessons and the Play the Part lessons. The Language and Culture lessons and the Survival Kit don’t have it. There’s an Audio only mode toggle if you’d rather skip the video, and you can set how much text you see under it: the full German, every second word, or just the English.
Play the Part: the Rocket German add-on (worth getting)
This is new since I first reviewed the course.
Play the Part is a separate add-on of 30 lessons (3 modules of 10) built entirely around role play conversations set in Germany, following a character called Simon through everyday situations: buying bread at the bakery, a day at the fair, a trip to the doctor, a football match, Christmas and so on.
Each lesson gives you a short culture note, two role play conversations (with the video role plays I described above) and vocab lists. It’s light on grammar by design so it works best once you’ve got some of the language under your belt.
It’s priced at $149.95 on its own, but you’ll be able to get it at a much lower price when adding it on to the main course package.
Take my advice and get it.
The Rocket German forum is still alive, but don’t expect a quick reply
One of the criticisms I still have of Rocket German is the forum/community section.
Members get a German learners forum as well as a general forum for everyone. When I first reviewed the course I said the German forum might as well not exist, because while there were thousands of members, very few of them bothered using it to communicate with each other.
Community’s very important for learning a language (for practice, motivation and to seek help) but the Rocket German forum still doesn’t seem to be popular.
It’s a bit better than it was though. The forums are moderated by Rocket’s own tutors who do reply, but on a lag of months rather than days, so treat it as a reference library more than a live help desk.
It would be far better, in my opinion, to have an AI expert built in to this, so that instead of waiting months for a reply, you get an instant answer - especially if it’s a simple grammar question.
One handy thing: the main search tool in the app searches the forum posts too, so you’ll often find your question already answered without needing to post.
Now, it’s probably just a case of members not wanting to use it and preferring to work alone but I think it’s unfortunate that the community aspect is not taken advantage of.
Rocket German’s iOS and Android app shouldn’t be free (but it is)
What do you mean it “shouldn’t be free”?
I’m not complaining that it’s free by any means! 🙂
I say it shouldn’t be free because it’s such a great app that works flawlessly on all mobile devices and yet Rocket doesn’t charge for it - it’s a part of the membership.
The Android app which I use on my Samsung tablet (also the iOS version on my wife’s iPhone) is a joy to use and I can access all the same lesson content in Rocket German and all other language editions that I have access to with a few swipes.
Pretty much everything from the web version is in there: the audio lessons, video role plays, Rocket Record, the practice activities, flashcards, favorites and the leaderboard.
There are only two real differences between the app and the website that you need to know about:
- Audio downloads are app-only. If you want the lessons offline for a commute or a flight, this is where you download them (see below).
- Certification tests are web-only. You’ll need to sit those on a computer.
This makes it super convenient to study German during commutes or while I’m out waiting somewhere trying to squeeze in a few minutes of extra study.
If you do end up using Rocket German, I highly recommend downloading the app as well.
Rocket German: You own what you pay for (mostly)
One of the best and most underrated features of Rocket German is that it’s a lifetime membership, not a recurring one, and you can still download the audio lessons for offline use (though only through the mobile app now).
It seems odd to point this out but with many programs (especially nowadays with the rise of subscription-based learning products) you don’t actually own what you pay for.
For example, if you sign up to Rosetta Stone’s online courses, you get limited access and for a limited time. After that time is up, you’re shut out and have to pay again.
You also can’t download the audio to load into a portable listening device or print out the lesson content.
With Rocket German, you pay once and you own it for life.
The downloads point has been watered down a bit since I first reviewed the course though. Back then, every bit of audio was downloadable as MP3 files straight from the web dashboard, along with printable PDF lesson notes. The PDFs disappeared a while ago and now the MP3 downloads have gone from the web app too.
That’s unfortunate. Downloading MP3s from the website was one of the things that set Rocket apart from Duolingo and Rosetta Stone and it felt like you actually owned the content you paid for.
The good news is that you can still download the audio lessons through the mobile app (Android and iOS) for offline listening, so commutes and flights are still covered. You just can’t pull the files onto your computer anymore. For the Language and Culture lessons, Print to PDF from your browser works fine if you want them saved locally.
You still own what you pay for, you just have to use their app to take it with you.
The search and favorites tools (previously ‘Saved Vocab’) and the leaderboard
In addition to this, there are two other great little features:
1) A gamified leaderboard/points reward system
This makes it possible to earn points and compete with other members as you progress. It’s a great little extrinsic motivator to keep you coming back and learning - to help on days where you lose motivation.
You get points for every lesson and activity you complete (and for posting in the forum), with a daily goal of 400 points that you can hide if it annoys you. Hitting your goal each day keeps your streak going (much like Duolingo), and the points move you up a leaderboard where you can compare yourself against other German learners or across all of Rocket’s languages, over the last day, week, month or year.
2) The Search and Favorites tools
This has been through a few names over the years (it was ‘Saved Vocab’ when I first reviewed the course) and it’s now split into Search and Favorites. Functionality and appearance are a lot better than they were.
I love this feature as it’s a high-powered search tool that allows you to look for any word, collocation or phrase in the entire course. The search results display the word in context along with the audio, and it searches the forum posts too.
Favorites is the part I like most. Every phrase in every lesson has a little heart icon next to it and anything you heart goes into your Favorites list, where it gets its own set of flashcards, listening, writing and speaking drills. So you can build a personal practice deck out of whatever you’re struggling with, without leaving the lesson. There’s also a Custom Flashcards tool if you want to build your own sets from scratch (or use sets other members have made public).
There are also two kinds of proper tests now on top of the per-lesson activities. Benchmark tests sit at the end of each level to give you a rough gauge of where your ability is at, and certification tests live under the Tools menu (web only, not in the app), one for every module, which you unlock once you’ve finished that module. Rocket maps its levels to the CEFR roughly as A1 to A2 for Level 1, A2 to B1 for Level 2 and B1 to B2 for Level 3. Take that with a grain of salt though: a test set and marked by the same course you’re studying is never the same as a real CEFR exam, but as a way of checking the material actually stuck it’s a useful addition.
Rocket Record allows for highly accurate voice recognition in Rocket German
For a long time, Rocket German was miles behind its competitors in voice recognition capabilities.
Other programs like Rosetta Stone had for quite some time employed a fairly accurate form of automatic voice recognition for pronunciation checking. This was one of the few features that made RS as popular as it is.
Rocket German now has its own, called Rocket Record, and it works on both the website and the mobile app. Under the hood it uses your browser’s built-in speech recognition by default (the Google Web Speech API) with a second engine (Deepgram) as a fallback, and German is one of the languages the fallback supports.
You can record individual phrases in any lesson, but the place it really gets used is the Talk To mode in the role plays, where you take one side of a conversation and record your lines against the other speaker.
I’ve used this feature in a number of different languages including German and found it to be the most accurate I’ve seen anywhere (though of course not perfect).
At the end of the day, I’d much prefer and recommend using a partner or tutor on italki for pronunciation practice but this is the next best thing if you’re unable to do that.
Rocket German pricing and refund policy
The base pricing of Rocket German (one-time payment, lifetime access) is as follows:
Level 1 - $149.95
Levels 1 & 2 - $299.90
Levels 1, 2 & 3 - $449.85
Play the Part - $149.95 on its own (cheaper when bundled with the course)
If you don’t want to pay for all three levels up front, there’s a 6-month payment plan on the full bundle: six monthly payments and then it’s yours for life. There’s no ongoing monthly subscription option.
The best deal by far is the family discount. If someone in your household already owns a course, Rocket will sell a second copy (with its own login and progress) at 60% off. You have to arrange it through their support team rather than at checkout.
Periodically throughout the year, Rocket runs special promotions or sales which are good to look out for but these are unpredictable.
NOTE: You can also sign up to
You can also try the course for free before buying and it doesn’t ask for a credit card.
As for refunds, Rocket German has a generous 60 day satisfaction guarantee meaning you have two months to request a refund if you’re unhappy. One caveat: that only applies if you buy through the website. If you buy inside the iOS app, you’re under Apple’s refund policy instead, which is roughly two weeks, so buy on the web.
Overall: Is Rocket German worth it?
Rocket German could still do with a faster forum (an AI expert for quick grammar answers would be my first fix) and less spammy marketers.
But overall the comprehensive scope of its content (a whopping 231 lessons across three levels plus Play the Part), 100% natural German dialogue, the new video role plays, an outstanding mobile app, Rocket Record voice recognition and other excellent features make it well worth the price.
German is also one of the editions that gets the full three levels plus the Play the Part add-on, so unlike some of the other Rocket languages it’ll take you well past the beginner stage.
The price does seem a little high but considering that you’ll potentially get many months or even years out of the program, it’s worth it in my opinion.
You can test out Rocket German or sign up here:
Used Rocket German before? Let us know what you think below!
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3 COMMENTS
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David
Some of the pronunciation is simply dreadful. It sounds as though an immature child is speaking. Certainly I am unable to make it out and the speech recognition software in the course couldn’t either. Apart from that the course is quite useful.
Peter
im trying the course for a week now:
the language and culture lessons are pretty bad- all the vocabulary is just written down- to pass their testing part you have to just remember and repeat all of them over and over- nothing more than usual flashcards and quite boring in my opinion.
There are no paragraphs in german so you can’t see the words used in context.
There is one good thing- the audio lessons, but there are no creative excersises after them.
if you ask me- not even worth trying ( i wonder where are other bad opinions)
Donovan Nagel
Thanks for your feedback, Peter.
I often get emails (almost every week in fact) with both negative and positive experiences. You should direct that feedback at the guys over at Rocket and see if they fix it.