The 5 Best Free English Dictionary Apps for Android

Updated August 2026 · offline behaviour and the free tier re read at each developer’s own source rather than the store blurb · Verified against the Play Store listings on 20 August 2026 · full breakdown below.

Five free English dictionaries for Android, compared on the two things a store page makes hardest to see: whether the app answers with no connection, and what the free tier quietly withholds.

Best overall

Rating 4.6 from 415,218 reviews · Installs 10,000,000+ · Free, no in-app purchases listed · Developer Livio · Requires Android 6.0 or newer · Listing updated 1 June 2026 · Data Safety declares no data collected and none shared with third parties · Contains ads: No · checked 20 August 2026

Google Play listing · 4.6 (415,218) · read 20 August 2026

This is the pick for most people. It is free, its Play listing carries no advertising label and nothing at all to buy, and it holds the highest rating of the five here at 4.6 from 415,218 reviews. The blunt caveat is where the words come from: the same listing says the content is powered by English Wiktionary, which is community edited rather than an editorially curated house dictionary.

On the question this page exists to answer, its own listing is explicit. The app is described there as a free offline English dictionary, and the listing states that no internet connection is required. There is no separate dictionary pack to fetch after installing, which is exactly what separates it from the Oxford entry further down. Two qualifications come from the same listing rather than from anywhere else. The app declares an INTERNET permission, described as retrieving the definition of unknown words, so offline covers the word list it ships with rather than every possible lookup. And pronunciation leans on the phone: the listing notes that word pronunciation works only if voice data have been installed in the phone as a text to speech engine.

• Good: Free with no advertising label and nothing to buy, which only one other entry here can say
• Good: The largest English only word list here: its listing claims more than 608,000 English definitions held in the app rather than fetched on demand. The Oxford entry below publishes a larger total of words, phrases and definitions, spread across its bundled dictionaries, several of them bilingual
• Good: Wildcard search suits crosswords and word games: a question mark stands for one unknown letter, an asterisk for any run of them, and a full stop marks the end of the word, all of it set out with worked examples on the listing itself and on the developer’s own help page
• Con: The content is English Wiktionary, community edited, so entries vary in depth in a way an editorial dictionary does not
• Con: Its Data Safety section declares that data cannot be deleted, the one line in it that is not a clean no
• Con: Pronunciation ships no recordings of its own and needs the phone’s text to speech voice data already installed

Skip this one if: you want an editorially curated dictionary rather than one built on a community edited source.

Choose it over Dictionary - WordWeb when raw coverage matters more than edited entries, and the other way round when it does not.

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Best edited dictionary

Rating 4.4 from 138,179 reviews · Installs 5,000,000+ · Free, no in-app purchases listed · Developer WordWeb Software · Listing updated 20 June 2026 · Google Play Editors’ Choice badge on the listing · Data Safety declares no data collected and none shared with third parties · Contains ads: No · checked 20 August 2026

Google Play listing · 4.4 (138,179) · read 20 August 2026

Take this one if you want a properly edited dictionary without the usual free app baggage. It is free, its Play listing carries no advertising label and nothing to buy, that listing states that no internet connection is required to use it, and it rates 4.4 from 138,179 reviews. The blunt catch is spoken audio, and it is blunt because the developer answers it in two places and the two answers do not agree.

The disagreement is worth setting out, because it decides whether this app suits you. Its Play listing, read on 20 August 2026, says Audio pronunciations are available with the separate Audio Edition app, and itemises 85,000 text pronunciations with no recorded audio line at all. WordWeb Software’s own Android page, read the same day, describes the very package that link opens as Full audio pronunciations and many related words. Both pages belong to the developer. This page follows the listing, because the listing is the one that itemises what ships, but anyone installing this specifically for recorded pronunciation should treat the free app as unsettled rather than settled either way. The number 70,000 has the same shape and a cleaner answer. The listing itemises the database as 285,000 words, phrases and derived forms, 225,000 word sense definitions, 70,000 usage examples and 85,000 text pronunciations. The developer’s Android page gives no count for usage examples and attaches 70,000 to something else entirely: 70,000 offline audio pronunciations, in the Audio Edition. Same number, two different things, both of them the developer’s own.

• Good: Free with no advertising label and nothing to buy, over a Data Safety section declaring no data collected and none shared with third parties
• Good: An edited dictionary rather than a community edited one, itemised on its listing as 285,000 words, phrases and derived forms and 225,000 word sense definitions, on the one listing of the seven read for this page that carries Google Play’s Editors’ Choice badge
• Good: Works with no connection in its own listing’s words, and a word can be selected inside another app and looked up without switching out of it, which that listing notes needs Android M or higher
• Con: The developer contradicts itself on recorded audio: its Play listing itemises 85,000 text pronunciations and sends spoken audio to a separate paid app, while its own website describes this package as having full audio pronunciations
• Con: A smaller dictionary than the entry above it on the count that compares directly: 225,000 word sense definitions on its own listing, against a larger count of English definitions on that one
• Con: Its Play listing publishes no Requires Android field and no version number, alone among the seven read for this page; the description names Android M and higher only for looking words up from inside other apps, and its paid sibling’s listing gives 6.0

Skip this one if: recorded pronunciation is the reason you are installing a dictionary at all, because the developer’s own two pages do not agree that this one has it.

The paid sibling is the one unambiguous route to recorded audio. WordWeb Audio Dictionary is listed at $3.99 in the same storefront, carries no advertising label either, and its own database list names 70,000 audio pronunciations outright rather than leaving them to be inferred. It is also the only one of the seven listings read here that publishes a storage figure: it requires about 280MB of space, which is worth knowing before fetching anything on mobile data.

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Best for depth

Rating 4.4 from 541,057 reviews · Installs 50,000,000+ · Free to install, in-app purchases $0.99 to $39.99 per item · Developer MobiSystems · Requires Android 8.0 or newer · Listing updated 13 August 2026 · Data Safety declares no data shared with third parties, collection of Financial info, App activity and 2 others, that data is not encrypted, and that data cannot be deleted · Contains ads: Yes · checked 20 August 2026

Google Play listing · 4.4 (541,057) · read 20 August 2026

This has the deepest content of the five by a distance, and the heaviest terms attached to it. Its Play listing carries the Contains ads label and in-app purchases from $0.99 to $39.99 per item, and offline use is not part of the free tier at all. The blunt catch is its own Data Safety section, which lists the collected types as Financial info, App activity and 2 others, and declares that data is not encrypted and cannot be deleted.

MobiSystems answers the offline question itself, and its answer is the reason this entry sits third rather than first. The product FAQ on the developer’s own site, read on 20 August 2026, asks whether the app works offline and replies Yes. With Premium, you can download 15 Oxford Dictionaries. Once downloaded, definitions, thesaurus content, pronunciations, and more are available without an internet connection (mobisystems.com). Offline here is therefore two things in sequence: a purchase, and a separate download after it. Read the top of that same page and you would not know it: its feature summary promises the database available even without an internet connection with no mention of Premium at all, and only the FAQ further down attaches the condition. The listing itself agrees with the FAQ rather than the summary, filing offline under a heading that reads GET THE MOST WITH PREMIUM. The FAQ is equally plain about what the free tier does give, and it is not nothing: the 15 Oxford dictionaries, word definitions, example sentences, Word of the Day, Favourites, Recent Searches, and advanced search tools including camera and voice search. What Premium adds on top is complete audio pronunciations, offline mode, the full English Thesaurus and an ad free experience, all inside the same purchase.

• Good: The deepest reference here, built on the 2023 Oxford Languages database and bundling 15 Oxford dictionaries, several of them bilingual
• Good: Camera and voice search sit in the free tier by the developer’s own FAQ, and fuzzy and wildcard search are listed among the app’s search tools on the listing itself, outside its Premium block
• Good: The most recently updated listing of the five, on 13 August 2026, and tied for the largest install band here at 50,000,000+
• Con: Its Data Safety section names Financial info and App activity among the collected types, with two more it does not name on the summary, and declares that data is not encrypted and cannot be deleted
• Con: Offline use sits behind Premium and needs a separate download after that, so the free tier is an online dictionary
• Con: The listing carries the Contains ads label, and in-app purchases run $0.99 to $39.99 per item

Skip this one if: you want the dictionary to work with no connection without paying, or the Data Safety declarations above give you pause.

Choose it over the two free picks only when the bilingual dictionaries or the Oxford editorial content are the reason you are here.

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Best broad free reference

Rating 4.1 from 969,508 reviews · Installs 10,000,000+ · Free, no in-app purchases listed · Developer Dictionary LLC · Requires Android 8.0 or newer · Listing updated 29 July 2026 · Data Safety declares no data shared with third parties, collection of App activity, App info and performance, and Device or other IDs, encrypted in transit, and deletion on request · Contains ads: Yes · checked 20 August 2026

Google Play listing · 4.1 (969,508) · read 20 August 2026

This is the broadest free general reference of the five, and the one whose limits are worth understanding before you lean on it. Its Play listing carries the Contains ads label and shows nothing whatever to buy, which together mean there is no purchase that takes the advertising away. It rates 4.1 from 969,508 reviews. The blunt catch is offline: its listing describes no offline mode, and it is the only one of the five that makes no offline claim of any kind.

Read this first. If you ever bought anything from the paid edition that Google Play no longer lists, the publisher answers that on its own help centre, and the answer is blunt. Its refund article, read on 20 August 2026, states that all app and in-app purchases are final sale and not refundable, and adds Discontinued apps or in-app purchases are also not eligible for a refund (help.dictionary.com). Nothing on the current listing asks for money, so this is history rather than a warning about the app you would install today.

That last point needs stating precisely, because a finding about a listing is not a finding about the world. What can be checked today is this: the other four listings each describe their offline behaviour in their own words, and this one does not mention the subject at all. That is a statement about the listing as read on 20 August 2026, not a measurement of the app, and this page no longer dresses it up as more. The developer’s own site narrows the gap rather than closing it. Its help centre, read on 20 August 2026, publishes no article on using the app without a connection, but its article on hearing a word says of the pronunciation feature that you can listen to pronunciations when online (help.dictionary.com). That is one named feature the developer itself ties to a connection, and it is still not a statement about whether a plain lookup works without one. What can also be checked is the package that used to carry the paid edition: com.dictionary.paid returns not found on Google Play, re checked on 20 August 2026 alongside a control request for the free package, which answered normally on the same pass. On coverage the listing is not modest either, describing more than two million definitions and synonyms drawn from Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com, alongside idioms, rhymes, example sentences and grammar notes.

• Good: The broadest free general reference here, putting the dictionary and thesaurus together with idioms, rhymes and example sentences
• Good: Nothing to buy: the listing shows no in-app purchases and no subscription of any kind
• Good: Its listing adds audio pronunciations, a Word of the Day, a search history and an A to Z browse on top of the reference content, none of it behind a purchase
• Con: Its listing describes no offline capability, alone among the five, so nothing on it promises a lookup will work without a connection
• Con: The listing carries the Contains ads label, and with nothing on it to buy there is no documented route to remove the advertising
• Con: Its Data Safety summary names no Location among the collected types, while the developer’s own help centre describes an in-app location tracker and an opt out from the sale of user data (help.dictionary.com, read 20 August 2026), so the listing summary is not the whole of what the developer publishes

Skip this one if: you need a dictionary that is published as working without a signal, because this is the one listing here that does not say so either way.

Choose it over the Oxford entry when you want breadth for nothing rather than depth for a subscription, and the other way round when a lookup has to keep working underground.

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Best for American English

Rating 3.7 from 520,007 reviews · Installs 50,000,000+ · Free to install, in-app purchases $1.99 to $9.99 per item · Developer Merriam-Webster Inc. · Requires Android 6.0 or newer · Listing updated 29 June 2026 · Data Safety declares sharing of Location, App activity and 2 others with third parties, collection of Location, Personal info and 3 others, encrypted in transit, with deletion on request · Contains ads: Yes · checked 20 August 2026

Google Play listing · 3.7 (520,007) · read 20 August 2026

This is the American English reference of the group, and the only one of the five whose Data Safety section declares that it shares data with third parties, naming Location and App activity among the types. Its Play listing carries the Contains ads label and rates 3.7 from 520,007 reviews, the lowest of the five. The blunt catch is what offline actually covers here: definitions and synonyms work with no connection, and the recorded audio does not, because its own listing puts audio on the other side of that line.

Read the offline sentence in full before choosing this one for a flight. Its Play listing, read on 20 August 2026, promises complete access to definitions and synonyms whether or not you are connected, and then names three things that still need one: You will need a connection to view illustrations, hear audio pronunciations, and use voice search. The recorded audio is on the wrong side of that line, and it is genuinely recorded audio: the same listing describes it in its feature list as Audio Pronunciations: voiced by real English speakers, not text-to-speech robots. Two documented routes lead away from the advertising, and the in-app purchases are not automatically either of them: the listing describes those as additional vocabulary building resources, which is content rather than the removal of advertising. The first route is a subscription, stated on that same listing in its own words: The app is free, and supported by ads. To remove ads, a subscription is available. The second is a separate app, Dictionary - M-W Premium, listed at $7.99, whose feature list opens with No ads and whose Premium content adds over 1000 graphical illustrations and over 15,000 additional entries covering people and places.

• Good: Definitions and synonyms work with no connection, stated on the listing itself rather than inferred from silence
• Good: The audio is recorded by people, and the listing says so in its own words instead of leaving it to be assumed
• Good: Tied for the largest install band here at 50,000,000+, over a thesaurus the listing puts at more than 200,000 word choices
• Con: The only one of the five that declares sharing data with third parties, and the shared types it names first are Location and App activity, which is a lot to hand over for a definition
• Con: Its own listing says illustrations, audio pronunciations and voice search all need a connection, so the recorded audio it is recommended for is precisely the part offline does not cover
• Con: The lowest rating of the five at 3.7, over a listing that carries the Contains ads label

Skip this one if: you want a dictionary with no advertising and no payment, in which case the two entries at the top of this page already qualify.

Choose it over the two free picks when American English usage and recorded audio are the reason you are looking, and accept the advertising or the subscription as the price.

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How to check a dictionary yourself

Five checks separate a dictionary worth keeping from one worth uninstalling, and every one of them takes seconds on the listing or in the app.

• Definitions: look up three words you already know and confirm each entry gives clear wording plus a real example sentence.
• Offline: turn on airplane mode and repeat a lookup. This is the check that separates these five most sharply, and the section below sets out how.
• Audio: tap the speaker icon. Two of the five here leave spoken audio to the phone’s own text to speech voices or to a separate paid app, so it is not a given, and on one of them the developer’s own two pages do not agree.
• Price: read the in-app purchase line on the listing before you install. A free install and a free app are not the same thing.
• Data: open the Data safety section on the listing. It is the difference between an app declaring nothing collected and one naming Financial info among the types it does.

Offline means four different things across these five apps

This is the column the page is really about, and it does not reduce to yes or no. English Dictionary - Offline and Dictionary - WordWeb hold the word list inside the app, and both listings say in their own words that no internet connection is required; neither asks for a separate download afterwards. Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus is offline only after a Premium purchase and then a download of the dictionaries, which its developer’s own FAQ states plainly. Dictionary - Merriam-Webster is offline for definitions and synonyms and online for illustrations, audio and voice search, a split its listing spells out itself. Dictionary.com describes no offline capability on its listing at all. Four different answers in five rows is why this sits in the table rather than in a footnote.

What the ads reality actually looks like here

Advertising is not a given on a free dictionary. Two of the five carry no Contains ads label on Google Play at all, English Dictionary - Offline and Dictionary - WordWeb, and both are free with no in-app purchases. The other three carry the label, and they differ in what you can do about it. Oxford and Merriam-Webster both document a paid route away from advertising. Dictionary.com documents none, because its listing offers nothing to buy, which makes the advertising a permanent condition of using it rather than a tier. This page reports only whether that label is present on a listing, because presence is all the label itself records. It does not separate a banner at the edge from a full screen interstitial, and it counts nothing, so it is a yes or no and not a measure of how much advertising you will meet.

One developer does publish a storage figure

Exactly one of the seven listings read on 20 August 2026 publishes a size. WordWeb Audio Dictionary’s listing states that it requires about 280MB of space, which is a published number from the developer rather than an estimate. The other six say nothing on the subject, and the Google Play web listing does not show a download size either. So the honest form of the answer is narrow rather than absolute: one of the seven publishes a figure, six do not, and for those six the app’s own settings screen is the place to look before fetching anything on mobile data.

Read the Data Safety section before the feature list

A dictionary needs very little, and these mostly prove it. English Dictionary - Offline and Dictionary - WordWeb each declare no data collected and none shared with third parties. Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus names Financial info and App activity among its collected types and declares that data is not encrypted and cannot be deleted. Dictionary - Merriam-Webster is the only one declaring that it shares data with third parties, and it names Location among the shared types. Those are the developers’ own declarations on their own listings rather than an independent audit, and they are the part a reader can check without installing anything.

For the wider field around this one, our guide to language learning apps covers the study side, and the Books, News and Education hub collects the rest of the reference tools.

Checked 20 August 2026: all seven Play listings behind this page were read again at source, and this pass is mostly a correction of the previous one. Three claims about Dictionary - Merriam-Webster had been changed in the wrong direction and are put back. Its displayed rating is 3.7: an earlier pass moved 3.7 to 3.6 and logged it as a correction, and the listing header does not support that. The statement that a subscription removes the advertising had been withdrawn, and the listing states it in its own words, so it is restored. The claim that the pronunciations are recorded by people rather than synthesised had been withdrawn as unsourced, and the listing sources it in its own feature list, so it is restored too. The offline column, which is what this page is for, was rebuilt from each developer’s own source rather than the store blurb, and it gained the part it had been missing: whether the offline dictionary needs a separate download. It does for one app. MobiSystems’ own FAQ answers the question directly and is now quoted and linked. The free tier is now a column of its own instead of being folded into price. The price column was removed from the table: every entry is free to install, so it read the same in every row and decided nothing while looking verified. Prices and purchase ranges stay in each section, where they carry their own date. The WordWeb figure that has caused trouble here twice is settled. Its Play listing itemises 70,000 usage examples; the developer’s own Android page gives no count for usage examples and attaches 70,000 to offline audio pronunciations, in the paid Audio Edition. Both are the developer’s own and the page now names which is which instead of choosing one. That same developer page overturned a flat assertion this page carried: that WordWeb has no spoken pronunciations at all. Its Play listing does say audio lives in the separate Audio Edition, but the developer’s own website describes the free package as having full audio pronunciations. Same developer, two answers, so the page now reports the disagreement instead of picking one. Oxford needed the same treatment. MobiSystems’ product page markets the database as available without an internet connection in its feature summary, with no mention of Premium, and qualifies it only in the FAQ lower down the same page. Both halves are now on the page. A claim of absence is corrected. The FAQ said, in these words, None of these developers publishes a size for its offline English data. WordWeb Audio Dictionary publishes about 280MB on its own listing, so the answer is now narrow rather than absolute: one of the seven publishes a figure, six do not. Retracted from the How we verify box: its first tier, headed Installed and examined, and with it the two paragraphs in the app sections that described opening the apps and what appeared. The standing rule here is verified, not tested, and that box exists to replace exactly those sentences rather than to host them. The three screenshots go with them, because their captions and the paragraphs around them described launching the apps rather than describing what a listing publishes. The image files themselves are sound and the live site still serves all three, re checked on 20 August 2026, so a later pass can put them back under captions that describe only what each screen shows. A cut proposed for the WordWeb entry was re derived before being accepted, and it did not survive. Its Play listing does carry a Google Play Editors’ Choice badge, and of the seven listings read for this page it is the only one that does, so the fact stays with its date and its scope rather than being withdrawn. That reverses a withdrawal this page made on 18 August, which had treated the comparison as unsourced: it is sourced now, and scoped to the seven listings read for this page rather than to Google Play as a whole. The rule this page keeps relearning cuts both ways: a withdrawal is not evidence, and neither is a proposal to withdraw. Retracted from the Dictionary.com entry: the account of nine listed capabilities removed by a 2025 rebuild, sourced to publisher release notes. That source could not be reached on the run date, and a claim this page cannot re read is not repeated with a fresh date on it. What is checkable stays and is dated: the listing describes no offline mode, and com.dictionary.paid returns not found, re checked against a control request that answered normally. The sentence about offline is also narrowed from a claim about the app to a claim about its listing, which is all the evidence supports. Four claims are withdrawn because a source this page already carried refutes them. The Livio entry called its word list the largest word list of the five; the Oxford listing on the same page counts over 1 million words, phrases and definitions, so the claim is narrowed to the largest English only count here. The Oxford entry said the developer’s FAQ places all of that in the free tier, of four search features; that FAQ names two of them, and the other two are listed on the Play listing with no tier attached, so the sourcing is split to match. The Dictionary.com entry said its developer’s help centre published nothing on offline use; the help centre opens, and its article on hearing a word ties the pronunciation feature to being online, which is now quoted and linked. And Merriam-Webster’s free tier was described as the whole app with advertising in it, while its own listing sells additional vocabulary building resources inside the app, so the table cell and the FAQ now say what is withheld. The WordWeb entry no longer tells a reader with an older phone to check the app itself: its listing publishes no Requires Android field, which is what the page can say, and its description does name Android M and higher for lookups from inside other apps. Restored with a source read again on the run date: the Dictionary.com refund note, which the publisher’s own help centre states in its own words, and which had been dropped without account. The Dictionary.com Data Safety declaration moves out of the pros: the summary names no Location, while the same developer’s help centre describes an in-app location tracker and an opt out from the sale of user data, so it is reported beside the declaration instead of standing as praise. The answer capsule was rebuilt: its Oxford pick had attributed a purchase range to MobiSystems’ FAQ, which publishes no price at all, and had dropped the words per item, so the range is back on the Play listing where it belongs and each pick now states the price as well as the ads reality. Removed: the paragraph on Vocabulary.com, which the page named without linking and whose listing date and characterisation could not be re derived from any source this page carries. Every rating, review count and install band was re read: the Oxford entry moved to 541,057 reviews, Merriam-Webster to 520,007, Dictionary.com to 969,508, English Dictionary - Offline to 415,218 and WordWeb to 138,179. Added: a quotable answer capsule under the headline, a choose one over the other line in each section, and the free tier detail from MobiSystems’ own FAQ that the page had never carried.