Comparison

LinguaKata vs SayShape

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ€” with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

LinguaKata

Features
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See a word pronounced. Type any word. An avatar's mouth, lips and tongue move through it slowly enough to copy โ€” and a cross-section of the head shows the part you can never see in a mirror: where the tongue actually goes. WHY A CROSS-SECTION /p/ and /m/ look identical from the front. The lips do exactly the same thing. The only difference is the soft palate, which sends the air out through the nose instead โ€” so the app draws the air as well as the mouth. "Thin" and "sin" differ by where the tongue tip sits. If you cannot see it, you cannot copy it. WHAT IT SHOWS - All 39 sounds of English, with the jaw, lips, tongue, soft palate and voicing each modelled separately - A front view and a mid-sagittal cross-section, both drawn from the same underlying position - Airflow, drawn as it happens: through the mouth, out of the nose for a nasal, or trapped behind a closure - Aspiration where English actually has it โ€” "pin" puffs, "spin" does not - Syllables and stress, with the stressed syllable drawn larger and the weak ones smaller - Vowel reduction, so an unstressed vowel looks as vague as it sounds - Three notation systems side by side โ€” IPA, dictionary respelling and plain letters โ€” each highlighting the sound being spoken HOW YOU USE IT Choose a speed from 0.25x to 1x. Tap any sound to freeze it and study the shape. Drag through a word syllable by syllable, forwards or back. Pick from seven avatars: four anime-style people and three characters. The mouth is identical on every one of them, because the mouth is the thing you came for. Three themes, and every colour checked for contrast rather than eyeballed. WORKS OFFLINE 126,036 words are built in. No account, no network, no ads and nothing to subscribe to. A word outside the dictionary is worked out from its spelling and labelled clearly as an estimate โ€” because a guess presented as a fact would be worse than no answer at all. HONEST ABOUT WHAT IT IS NOT The shapes are accurate. The timing of each individual sound is modelled rather than measured, so a sound can fall a little early or late inside a word, and the app tells you so on screen instead of pretending otherwise. At slower speeds the voice cannot stretch as far as the animation does, because phones do not slow speech as far as they are asked to. So the voice says the real word and finishes first, and the mouth carries on through the rest of it โ€” every sound you hear is right, and the screen says so. It shows; it does not listen. There is no recording and no scoring. For anyone learning English pronunciation, for teachers who need to point at what the tongue is doing, and for speech and language work where seeing the articulation is the point.

About

SayShape

Features
Read full description

Unlock clear, confident English speech with SayShape โ€” the definitive visual pronunciation trainer powered by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Whether you are preparing for IELTS or TOEFL, reducing your native accent, or learning English from scratch, SayShape helps you master all 43 English sounds with anatomical clarity, authentic audio examples, and instant voice recognition feedback.

Screenshots

LinguaKata4 screens
SayShape4 screens

Verdict

The call

LinguaKata and SayShape are too close to call on the numbers: across 5 compared parameters โ€” price, ads, in-app purchases and device support among them โ€” neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ScorecardNo meaningful differences
LinguaKata versus SayShape: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterLinguaKataSayShape
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyMonthlyโ€”
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPod
Requires iOS16.415.0 โ€” better
Further details โ€” not scored
Size51 MB47 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperSpaikz LLCVan Sao Vu

In-app purchases

None

LinguaKata

No in-app purchases

None

SayShape

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is LinguaKata free?
LinguaKata is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is SayShape free?
SayShape is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do LinguaKata or SayShape have ads?
Neither LinguaKata nor SayShape shows ads.

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