RainbowSay Free Plan: What You Get and What It Costs

RainbowSay is a Mac app that turns TV shows, movies, videos and podcasts into language lessons. It listens to the audio your Mac is playing, pauses at the end of each sentence, and shows a translation with vocabulary, readings and grammar notes. It also offers speaking practice with an AI coach and live subtitles. The official site is rainbowsay.ai.

The first question most people ask is what the RainbowSay free plan actually gives them. The answer is specific and fairly small: a one-time starter credit, not a monthly free allowance. This guide covers what that credit pays for, where it runs out, what Pro and Max add, and who should skip RainbowSay altogether.

What RainbowSay is and who it is for

RainbowSay is built around real media rather than a scripted course. You play something you already want to watch or listen to, and the app works sentence by sentence: it pauses at the end of each line, shows the translation, breaks out vocabulary with readings, and adds grammar notes. You can replay the original or a spoken translation with word-by-word highlighting, and set the voice pace from half speed upward. There is also a chat box for questions about the sentence in front of you, and a speaking mode where a coach tells you what your sentence meant, every word you used, and the one thing worth fixing.

It is aimed at two groups: learners who want to study from native-speaker media at real pace, and teachers who want to build lessons around clips, films or podcasts. It is also a reasonable fit if live subtitles are the main draw — RainbowSay puts live subtitles into 13 languages, while listening and speaking work across 57 languages.

Typical uses the app is designed for:

• Learning a language from shows, films, videos and podcasts.
• Teaching with real-world media instead of textbook dialogues.
• Speaking practice with an AI coach that gives short, specific feedback.
• Live subtitles for whatever is playing on your Mac.

Two platform facts matter before anything else. RainbowSay is a Mac app for macOS 14.2 or later, and it needs a Mac with Apple Silicon. There is no Windows, Android or iOS version mentioned on the official pages.

RainbowSay free plan: what you get

The free plan is confirmed on the official site, and it works differently from most free tiers. There is no monthly refresh. You get a one-time starter credit, and no credit card is required to start.

The starter credit covers up to:

• Listening: roughly 45 translated sentences.
• Speaking: roughly 14 minutes of speaking practice.
• Subtitles: roughly 19 minutes of live subtitles.

Those are not three separate pots of credit. It is one shared allowance, so you can spend it in any mix — fifteen sentences of listening plus a few minutes of speaking come out of the same balance. Long sentences and chat questions use a little more of the allowance than short ones.

Two more things come with Free: subtitles in one language at a time, and study history saved on your Mac. Every feature and every language is available from the first minute, so Free is not a cut-down feature set — it is the same app with a much smaller allowance.

Free plan and pricing

A few details sit alongside those numbers. On Pro and Max, subtitles can run in up to 3 languages at once; Free is limited to 1 at a time. Add-on credit is available on Pro and Max only. Yearly billing is described on the official pages as two months free, a 17% saving: Pro at $24.17/month billed $290 yearly, and Max at $83.33/month billed $1,000 yearly.

There is also an invitation scheme: invite friends from inside the app, and if they subscribe you receive $5 in usage credits, currently up to 25 friends. Separately, students, teachers and creators are invited to email the address listed on the official site for extra free credit — students from a school or university address, teachers from a school address saying what they teach.

Treat the credit offers, the yearly discount and the student scheme as things that may have ended or changed. Free plans and promotions in this category move around, so confirm current terms on the pricing page before you rely on any of it.

Where the free plan runs out

The honest answer is: quickly, if you use it the way the app is meant to be used. Watching a show with sentence-by-sentence pauses and translation burns through sentences fast, and roughly 45 translated sentences is a short sitting rather than a week of study. The same applies to the speaking and subtitle portions of the credit — roughly 14 minutes and roughly 19 minutes respectively.

The important distinction is that Free does not reset. Pro and Max allowances are monthly; the free starter credit is one-time. When it is gone, sessions stop until you subscribe or, on Pro and Max, add credit. Chat questions come out of the same allowance, so leaning on the chat box shortens everything else.

Two smaller walls are worth knowing in advance: subtitles in 2 or 3 languages at once are not included on Free, and nothing here runs outside a Mac with Apple Silicon and macOS 14.2 or later.

Getting started

Check your Mac meets the requirements first — Apple Silicon and macOS 14.2 or later. Then download the app from the official site, install it and open it. Because the app listens to your Mac's audio, expect a system permission prompt for audio access early on; the app is designed to listen to audio only and never records your screen.

From there, play something in any app that produces sound and choose whether RainbowSay works with all system audio or just one app. The app is designed to pause at the end of each sentence and show the translation, vocabulary with readings, and grammar notes. Replay the original line or a spoken translation with word-by-word highlighting, and set the voice pace from half speed if the native delivery is too fast.

Use the chat sparingly at first — ask why a tense was used or what an idiom means, rather than running a conversation. When you switch to speaking practice, the coach reports back in a fixed pattern: what your sentence meant, every word you used, and the one thing to fix. Since all three modes draw on the same allowance, spend a session or two watching the balance before you commit to a routine.

Pros and cons

Strengths

• Built on real media and native speakers at real pace, not scripted audio.
• Sentence-by-sentence pause with translation, vocabulary and grammar in one view.
• One shared allowance across Listening, Speaking and Subtitles, so you choose where to spend it.
• Free to start with no credit card, and every feature and language is available from the first minute.
• Yearly billing is presented as two months free, a 17% saving.
• Audio-only listening, with screen recording explicitly excluded by design.
• Study history is saved locally on your Mac.

Weaknesses

• Mac only, Apple Silicon only, macOS 14.2 or later. No Windows, Android or iOS app is mentioned.
• The free tier is a one-time starter credit, not a recurring monthly allowance — it does not come back.
• Free subtitles are limited to 1 language at a time; 2 and 3 subtitle languages are not included.
• Allowances can run out mid-session, and you cannot buy add-on credit on Free.
• Roughly 45 translated sentences is a short trial, so the free plan shows you how the app feels rather than how it works over weeks.

Privacy and data notes to check

RainbowSay is designed to listen to audio only and never record your screen, which is a meaningful design choice for a tool that sits on top of everything you watch. The app can work with all system audio or a single app you pick, so you can narrow what it hears.

What the marketing pages do not settle is what leaves your Mac. Before you use it on anything private, read the privacy policy linked from the official site and look for answers to these questions:

• Which audio or transcripts are sent to servers for translation, chat answers, speaking feedback and live subtitles, and how long they are kept.
• Whether sessions are used to train models, and whether you can opt out.
• How study history stored on your Mac is deleted, and what happens to it when you uninstall.
• What account and payment data is held, and how cancellation and refunds work.

Who should skip RainbowSay

• Windows, Linux or Chromebook users. There is no version for you.
• Anyone on an Intel Mac or macOS older than 14.2. The app will not run.
• Phone-first learners. No iPhone, iPad or Android app is listed, so studying on the move is not an option here.
• People who want a genuinely free ongoing tier. The starter credit is one-time; if you need an allowance that renews every month without paying, look elsewhere.
• Anyone who needs subtitles in several languages at once without paying. Free is one language at a time.
• People who want a fixed, textbook-style syllabus. RainbowSay is built around whatever media you choose, so the structure is yours to supply.

Alternatives

• LingoPie — media-based language learning built around shows and films.
• Language Reactor — subtitle and dual-language tooling for streaming video.
• Migaku — learn from video and web content with built-in study tools.
• LingQ — reading and listening lessons built from real content.
• FluentU — language learning from authentic video clips.

Check each one's platform support and current free-tier terms before switching, because these differ a lot from RainbowSay's Mac-only, one-time-credit approach.

Verdict

RainbowSay is a well-shaped idea for a specific person: someone with an Apple Silicon Mac, macOS 14.2 or later, who already watches foreign-language shows and wants translation, vocabulary, grammar and speaking feedback in the same window. The audio-only design and the shared allowance across Listening, Speaking and Subtitles are the parts that stand out.

The free plan is a demo, not a habit. One-time starter credit of roughly 45 translated sentences, roughly 14 minutes of speaking or roughly 19 minutes of subtitles will tell you whether the sentence-by-sentence format clicks for you — nothing more. If it does, Pro at $29/month (or $24.17/month on yearly billing) is the realistic tier for regular study, and Max at $100/month (or $83.33/month yearly) is for heavy users who need a much larger monthly allowance. If you do not use a Mac, or you need a free tier that keeps giving, skip it and check the alternatives above.