Learn a language from the books and videos you actually love.

Drop in a film. Paste a YouTube link. Open a novel. Octopus transcribes the audio, tracks every word across films and books, and you pay once.

Download for Mac

22 languages Mac & Windows One-time payment

// 01 — TRANSCRIPTION

Drop a film. Get a transcript before your coffee's ready.

Watch a film, paste a YouTube link, drop a podcast file. Octopus runs Whisper on your machine and writes out everything everyone says, line by line. A 90-minute film finishes in about five minutes — eighteen times faster than playback.

No upload, no API key, no per-minute fees. The file never leaves your computer. Works with any video file.

18× faster than playback

0 KB uploaded

22 languages today

Read why we run Whisper on your machine →

// FRENCH · transcribing 00:30 / 90:00 · 18× speed

00:14 Vous parlez français ?
00:17 Oui, je parle un peu.
00:21 Mes parents ont parlé toute leur vie en français,
00:25 et nous parlons souvent ensemble.
00:28 Quand j'étais petit, ma mère me parlait…

// 02 — VOCABULARY

Tag a word once. Recognise every form of it forever.

Most language tools count parler, parle, parles, parlons, and parlent as five separate words. Octopus knows they're one verb. Mark parler known and the conjugations are known too — across every film and every book.

For Romance languages, this changes the math. A regular Spanish verb has roughly fifty conjugated forms. In LingQ, that's fifty separate clicks. In Octopus, it's one. Your known-word count is honest. Your study time stays on words you actually don't know.

1 click vs ~50 in LingQ

3–5× less re-tagging

See how Octopus compares to LingQ →

// FRENCH · example passage 5 forms · 1 lemma

« Vous parlez français ? — Oui, je parle un peu. Mes parents ont parlé toute leur vie en français, et nous parlons souvent ensemble. Quand j'étais petit, ma mère me parlait des histoires de son enfance. »

All five highlights are forms of parler. One mark in Octopus. Five in LingQ.

// 03 — READER

A reader for actual reading.

EPUB, two-page spread, the typography you'd expect in a real book. No browser chrome, no marketing sidebar, no session that times out. Pages turn with the keyboard. Click any word, the dictionary opens instantly — no network round-trip.

If you read for an hour at a time, the difference compounds. After an hour in a web-app reader, you're still aware you're inside a SaaS product. After an hour in Octopus, you're just reading.

Native desktop app

0 ms lookups

Offline by design

Octopus's two-page EPUB reader with inline dictionary

// 04 — DICTIONARIES

The dictionary you trust. Not whatever they bundled.

Octopus reads two of the largest open dictionary projects: FreeDict (50+ language pairs) and WikDict (generated from Wiktionary across 100+ languages). Drop in the one that's actually good for your language pair.

Most tools ship a single bundled dictionary and call it a day. Quality varies wildly by language — what works for Spanish is mediocre for Finnish. With Octopus, you choose. And if a pair you need is missing, the data's open — wire it up yourself.

50+ FreeDict pairs

100+ WikDict languages

DICT any open format

See language coverage →

// EN–PT · DICTIONARY LOOKUP 3 sources active

relinquish /rɪˈlɪŋkwɪʃ/ verb · transitive

1. voluntarily cease to keep or claim; give up.

→ desistir, abandonar

2. relax one's grasp on something.

→ soltar, largar

Switch sources with one click. The dictionary you choose is the dictionary you get.

// 05 — ANKI

Flashcards that remember the scene.

Every word you save can become an Anki card with the sentence it came from and the audio clip of how it was actually said. Drilling a word reminds you of the film, the chapter, the exact second you met it.

Audio from the source

AnkiConnect direct sync

.apkg standard format

// ANKI CARD · auto-generated with audio clip

FRONT

relinquish

BACK

"…I will not relinquish my claim to this title."

▶ audio · 2.4 s

Cards remember where you met the word. Open Anki tomorrow and you're back inside the scene.

// JAPANESE

Japanese, done the way you'd do it by hand.

Furigana over the kanji. Pitch accent on every word. The Yomitan dictionaries you already trust — all inside the reader, not duct-taped together from three browser extensions. Tag 食べる once and 食べた, 食べて, 食べない all count as known.

Everything for Japanese →

Two note types, both built in. Word-first or sentence-first — furigana, pitch accent, and the JMdict gloss come with it.

Furigana over the kanji

Readings ride above every kanji — in subtitles, dialogue, and EPUB. Toggle them off when you're ready to wean.
Pitch accent, drawn inline

Every word shows its contour from the Kanjium dataset — the shape of the pitch, not just an accent number.
One click, one word

UniDic tokenization splits Japanese where words actually break, and every conjugation folds back to one entry.
Your Yomitan dictionaries

Import the term banks and frequency lists you already trust — monolingual dictionaries included.
Kanji at a glance

Tap any kanji for its JLPT level, frequency rank, and readings — straight from KANJIDIC2.
Transcribe raw Japanese

Drop a film or a JP YouTube link and Whisper writes the transcript on your machine. No official subs needed.

// LANGUAGES

22 languages today. More on the way.

Including the ones streaming services half-ignore. Japanese just landed — with furigana, pitch accent, and Yomitan support. Korean and Chinese are next on the roadmap — included free for Lifetime License holders.

English
Portuguese (BR)
Portuguese (PT)
French
Italian
Spanish
German
Dutch
Swedish
Danish
Norwegian
Finnish
Russian
Ukrainian
Polish
Czech
Romanian
Greek
Hungarian
Vietnamese
Indonesian
Japanese

Every language above ships with the full toolkit — transcription, vocabulary tracking, and lemmatization (one tag covers every conjugation, in every language).

Next on the roadmap · free for Lifetime

Korean
Chinese

Don't see yours? Request a language →

// REVIEWS

Wall of love.

Found this app from a post on r/Learnpolish and thought it was worth a try. Seriously impressed. I've used LingQ for a while so I'm familiar with this kind of app, but Octopus had a few differences that sold me:

Lemma-based vocab. Instead of having 20 different flashcards for every form of the verb "to deliver" (like in LingQ), Octopus knows to only keep one — the infinitive — and doesn't flag every new form as 'unknown'.

Any YouTube video. You don't need to search just for videos with captions.

Offline mode. So nice when I'm on planes, trains, buses.

One-time payment. I plan on studying languages for more than a few months. Those subscriptions accumulate over the months and years.

But I only hit buy after getting a feel for the UI in action, and trying it with a few languages and different media types. Very smooth and intuitive. So yeah, highly recommended!

// HOW WE COMPARE

How Octopus stacks up.

Here’s the honest tradeoff against the tools we built Octopus to replace.

Feature	Octopus	LingQ	Language Reactor	Migaku
Pricing	$49.99 once	$12+/month	Free + $5/mo	$5–10/month
YouTube transcription	Yes (Whisper)	Captions only	Captions only	Captions only
Works with your own films	Yes	No	No	No
Vocabulary across films + books	Yes	Books only	No	Limited
Lemma-based vocabulary	Yes	No (word forms)	Word forms only	Recognises forms, tracks per-form
Bring-your-own dictionaries	Yes	No	No	Limited
Works offline	Yes	No	No	Partial
Built-in content library	No	Yes (50+ languages)	Via streaming	Via streaming
Mobile apps	Not yet	Yes	Browser-based	Yes
Anki export with audio	Yes	Limited	Yes	Yes

Last verified May 2026 against each tool's public docs. Spot something out of date? Email support@octopuslang.com and we'll correct it.

// WHAT IT COSTS

Pay once. Keep it for good.

Five months of LingQ pays for Octopus forever. No subscriptions, no upgrade tiers, no nudge in your inbox next year asking you to renew.

FREE

Try the whole thing.

$0 no card needed

Bring in 20 films and 5 books, look up words without limits, save your first 500. Full features, generous caps.

20 videos · 5 books
Unlimited word lookups
Save up to 500 words to your vocabulary
Full transcripts & reader
Anki import

Download free for macOS Download free for Windows Download free → Linux build coming soon

A real try, not a teaser

RECOMMENDED

LIFETIME · LAUNCH PRICE

When it earns its place.

$49^.99 $79.99 pay once · yours forever

save $30 · price rises after beta

Free updates · forever. Every future feature ships free.

Unlimited videos, books & YouTube links
Unlimited word lookups
Unlimited saved vocabulary
Full transcripts & reader
Anki import & export

Get lifetime · $49.99 →

14-day refund · no questions asked

One purchase, no nudges.

// TRY IT

Free for 20 videos and 5 books.

No card required. The lifetime license unlocks the rest when you're ready — paid once, kept for good.

Download Octopus

Take Octopus to your desktop.

Drop your email and we'll send the download links to your inbox. Open them when you're back at your computer — free for 20 videos and 5 books.

// FAQ

Questions, answered.

The objections people actually have, addressed plainly. If yours isn’t here, write us at support@octopuslang.com.

How is this different from LingQ, Language Reactor, or Migaku?

Short version: those tools ask you to upload your library to their servers (or use theirs), and most charge a recurring fee. Octopus runs on your machine, transcribes your own films and any YouTube link locally, and is paid for once. The comparison table above has the row-by-row honest tradeoffs — including where they do things we don’t.
How does Octopus get transcripts for my films and YouTube videos?

Octopus runs Whisper locally on your computer. Drop a file in or paste a YouTube URL, walk away, come back to a synced transcript. Transcription runs roughly 18× faster than playback on a recent laptop — a 40-minute documentary finishes in about two minutes, a 90-minute film in around five. No upload, no API key, no per-minute fees.
Will the price really stay $49.99 for life?

Yes. The Lifetime License is paid once. You get every future update at no extra charge — no subscriptions, no upgrade tiers, no nudges to renew. We’ll raise the launch price to $79.99 once Octopus leaves beta, but anyone who bought before keeps the lower price forever.
Which languages work?

See the full list above — 22 supported today, with 🇯🇵 Japanese now shipped and 🇰🇷 Korean and 🇨🇳 Chinese next on the roadmap. Dictionary lookups go through FreeDict and WikDict, so any pair those projects ship will work. If a language you study isn’t covered yet, write to us — we add languages based on demand.
How well does Japanese actually work?

Properly. Octopus tokenizes with UniDic, so one click selects one word — not one character — and conjugations roll up to a single entry (tag 食べる once and 食べた, 食べて, 食べない all count as known). You get furigana over the kanji in subtitles, dialogue, and books, pitch-accent graphs from Kanjium, and JLPT level and frequency on every kanji from KANJIDIC2. Built-in definitions are English (JMdict) — prefer monolingual, or a dictionary you already trust? Import any Yomitan dictionary. Anki export ships a Japanese note type with furigana, pitch, and the audio clip from the scene.
What video and book formats are supported?

Video and audio: MP4, MKV, MOV, WebM, MP3, WAV, M4A. Books: EPUB. We add more on request — open an issue if your format isn’t in the list.
Can I use it with Netflix, Disney+, or other streaming services?

Octopus works with files on your computer and with YouTube links. For DRM-protected streaming services you’ll need to use them as inspiration — find the same film or show as a file you own, drop it in, and Octopus handles the rest. We don’t bypass DRM and we don’t pretend to.
What happens to my data if Octopus the company disappears?

Your films, books, vocabulary, and notes are already on your computer — they don’t live on our servers. If we vanish tomorrow, the app keeps working with the version you have installed, your library is unaffected, and there’s nothing to “export.” It’s already yours.