Any film. Any YouTube link. Any novel. Octopus turns media you already own into your language course.

It transcribes the audio on your machine — no subtitles needed — and tracks every word you learn across every film and book you bring in.

Download for Mac

Free to try — 20 videos & 5 books. No card, no account.

Desktop app, free to try. We'll send the download link — no card, no account.

22 languages Mac & Windows Free to try, pay once

// 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 subtitle file? Doesn't matter — Octopus writes the transcript from the audio itself, so any video works, captions or not. No upload, no API key, no per-minute fees. The file never leaves your computer.

18× faster than playback

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22 languages today

Read why we run Whisper on your machine →

Octopus — transcribing 00:30 / 90:00 · 18×

// FRENCH · TRANSCRIPT

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.

This changes the math in every language — not just the easy ones. A regular Spanish verb has roughly fifty conjugated forms. Polish declines nouns through seven cases and Russian through six, and both split verbs into aspect pairs — exactly where most tools' word-tracking quietly gives up. Octopus lemmatizes all 22 languages, Slavic included, so your known-word count stays honest and your study time stays on words you actually don't know.

1 click vs ~50 in LingQ

Ru · Uk · Pl · Cz Slavic, fully lemmatized

See how Octopus compares to LingQ →

Vocabulary

// 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 — Le Comte de Monte-Cristo ch 1 · p. 2–3

Le 24 février 1815, la vigie de Notre-Dame de la Garde signala le trois-mâts le Pharaon, venant de Smyrne, Trieste et Naples.

Comme d'habitude, un pilote côtier partit aussitôt du port, rasa le château d'If, et alla aborder le bâtiment entre le cap de Morgion et l'île de Rion.

Aussitôt, comme d'habitude encore, la plate-forme du fort Saint-Jean s'était couverte de curieux ; car c'est toujours une grande affaire à Marseille que l'arrivée d'un navire, surtout quand ce navire a été construit, gréé, arrimé sur les chantiers de la vieille Phocée.

// 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 →

Dictionaries

// 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 export

// ANKI CARD · auto-generated with audio clip

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 →

Reader — 銀河鉄道の夜

夜よるの汽車きしゃの窓まどから銀河ぎんがが見みえた。

銀河ぎんが pitch [0]

galaxy; the Milky Way

jmdict noun JLPT N1 ＋単語帳へ

// 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 on the roadmap — included free for paid-license holders when they ship.

Every language above ships with the full toolkit — transcription, vocabulary tracking, and lemmatization (one tag covers every conjugation and declension, in every language — including the Slavic ones most tools give up on).

Don't see yours? Request a language →

// FROM AN EARLY USER

Why a LingQ user switched.

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
Vocabulary across films + books	Yes	Books only	No	Limited
Works with your own films	Yes	No	No	No
Works when no subtitles exist	Yes (Whisper)	No	No	No
YouTube transcription	Yes (Whisper)	Captions only	Captions only	Captions only
Lemma-based vocabulary	Yes — all 22 languages incl. Slavic	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
Pricing	$49.99 once	$12+/month	Free + $5/mo	$5–10/month
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.

// IT'S YOURS

Buy it once. It's yours — even if we disappear.

No account, no server, nothing to cancel. Octopus runs on your machine, your library lives on your disk, and one payment is the only pricing model there is.

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Transcribed on your machine

Whisper runs locally. Your films, audio, and books never leave your computer — there's nothing to upload and nothing to leak.
Offline
Works even if we vanish

Your vocabulary and notes already live on your disk. If Octopus the company disappeared tomorrow, the app you installed keeps working. It's already yours.
Anytime
Your words leave with you

Every saved word exports to Anki with the audio from the scene. There's no cancel state that locks your progress — nothing to stop paying, nothing to lose.

// WHAT IT COSTS

Pay once. Keep it for good.

Five months of LingQ pays for Octopus forever. One payment, every future feature included. No subscriptions, no renewal nudge in your inbox next year.

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

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

A real try, not a teaser

RECOMMENDED

PAY ONCE

Full license

$49^.99 once · yours forever

Everything Octopus does, unlimited, on your desktop.

Unlimited videos, books & YouTube
Unlimited lookups & vocabulary
Anki export with audio clips
Import your own Yomitan dictionaries

Get Octopus · $49.99 → One desktop, complete.

Free updates · forever. Every future feature ships free — see what's shipping.

14-day refund on every paid plan · no questions asked

// TRY IT

Tonight's film can be tonight's lesson.

Download free and bring in 20 videos and 5 books of your own — no card required. One payment unlocks the rest when it earns its place.

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.
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.
What happens to my vocabulary if I stop paying?

Nothing — there’s nothing to stop paying. Octopus is a one-time purchase, not a subscription: you bought the app, your words live in local files, and they export to Anki anytime. There’s no cancel state that locks your progress.
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.
Is it really pay once?

Yes — one payment, no subscription exists. You buy the license once and every feature we ship afterwards lands in your app free, forever. No upgrade tiers, no renewal, no nudges.
Which languages work?

See the full list above — 22 supported today, with 🇯🇵 Japanese now shipped and 🇰🇷 Korean and 🇨🇳 Chinese 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.