When comparing Clozemaster vs Memrise, the Slant community recommends Memrise for most people. In the question“What are the best sites for learning foreign languages?” Memrise is ranked 2nd while Clozemaster is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose Memrise is:
Memrise uses "mems" to increase your vocabulary, which are a way to connect a word to its meaning. A common example is associating a word with an image. Mnemonics are another one they use to help you remember new words. For example, "le parcours" (route or course) could be remembered with the mem "People who do parkour pick their own route".
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Helps you to remember vocabulary by giving you context
Clozemaster helps you learn vocabulary in a natural way by giving you regular sentences and asking you to fill in the missing word, either by typing or using multiple choice.
For example, "Apenas hay __ en esa ciudad". The additional context using natural speech helps get you comfortable with the language.
Pro Gets you used to hearing your target language
After completed a sentence, it is read out loud by a native speaker of your target language (some sentences will allow you to hear it spoken by multiple speakers). They read it out clearly, but at a conversational pace.
It gets you comfortable with hearing the words spoken in a normal, conversational way.
Pro Makes you write the vocabulary
This active approach helps save the words for active use.
Pro Free to play
There's a paid version with extra features, but it's free to sign up and play. The free version is quite generous and will give you plenty of material to learn from.
If you want to upgrade, the cost is $8/month. You can see the additional features here.
Pro Large variety of languages to choose from
Currently offers over 50 languages from around the world.
Pro Lots of repetition helps you remember new words
Words are used in a variety of different sentences to help you remember them.
Pro Lots of options for users who don't speak English
A lot of language learning sites expect your starting language to be English.
Clozemaster teaches target languages in a variety of different starting languages. For example: if you want to learn Spanish, the language used for explanations could be English, French, German, Italian, Russian, and a few others.
Pro Effective support
The developer is very receptive to user feedback and ideas. Bugs are fixed quickly and new features are regularly added.
Pro Helps grow your vocabulary quickly
Memrise uses "mems" to increase your vocabulary, which are a way to connect a word to its meaning.
A common example is associating a word with an image.
Mnemonics are another one they use to help you remember new words. For example,
"le parcours" (route or course) could be remembered with the mem "People who do parkour pick their own route".
Pro Free account without a time limit
The Basic account is totally free (has no time limit) and is very generous.
An upgrade (with more features) is available for 9 USD / month.
Pro Huge vocabulary
The courses can teach you a very large vocabulary (for example, the first level Spanish course has 1705 words).
Pro Android app can be used offline
You can download courses to use offline with the Android app. Great for when you're traveling.
Pro Easy to use
You will understand quickly what you should do, and you will begin to learn in less than a minute.
Pro Foreign keyboard on screen when necessary
This saves you from having to copy/paste characters or worry about your keyboard settings.
Pro It makes you write the words
If you choose this option, writing is a very efficient way of memorization.
Pro Learn from natives
Official courses have videos of natives, recorded recently, to help you along.
Pro Awesome community made courses
Pro Courses available using Tim Ferriss' method
Cons
Con Not a good starting place for beginners
Clozemaster jumps right in with expecting you to fill in word blanks in the language you are learning.
If you have little or no understanding of the language you wish to learn, it doesn't give you enough information to get started.
Con Translations are sometimes inaccurate
This can be a problem when in a given sentence there are multiple words that could go in the text field, and the translation narrows it down to one possible answer, but then it turns out the translation gave the wrong word for that slot. This is particularly an issue with pronouns for some reason.
Con Some sentences are inaccurate
Sentences are from the user-curated database Tatoeba and not all of them are written and checked by native speakers. It is impossible to know the original source of a sentence. Additionally, because they do not control the database they pull the words, reporting individual sentences will not help that much.
Con They do not know the languages they teach
You cannot teach something you do not know. The sentences are taken from [Tateoba], and most of the time, the developers have no clue about what the written sentences say.
Con The alphabets are not taught
There is no problem if you're learning a language that uses the same alphabet as your native language, but if you speak English and you want to learn Russian, Arabic, Yiddish, etc., this app is not a good start for you.
Con This app will ask you fill in the translations of given names in the blanks
The app randomly selects a word from the sentence and ask you translate it, and this word is frequently a given name, like Tom or Stuart. or the names of cities.
Con Doesn't teach much grammar
Memrise is more focused on increasing your vocabulary, so has very little on grammar and sentence structure.
Con No grammar
Con Typos and other mistakes in target languages
There is no guarantee that the word you just learned is the correct spelling, because there are so many errors throughout many of the user-made courses.
Con No context
Con Not really effective
Con Some useful functions like pinning your active courses were removed
It is hard to have an organized dashboard if you have more courses, which is most likely to happen, as starting them is the only way to bookmark them for later.
Con Lack of uniformity
It is driven by community, that can be good, but quality isn't always the same and it misses some uniformity.
Con Lack of diversity in some courses
Some courses will have a very poor diversity for vocabulary lessons. For example, a Russian reading lesson, will repeat the 5 same people names for 8 to 10 minutes. It can be annoying, or demotivating.
Con Low level and mistakes in the official courses
Memorization of a phrasebook is not a good system for many learners.
Con The search function is broken
It is very hard to find most courses, many user-made jewels are hidden at the bottom of the pile and are quite impossible to find without knowing precise details.
Con No way to rate courses in the official or the community made ones
Con Not funny
Con The staff doesn't communicate well with the userbase
Explanations of changes, responses to feedback by large groups of users, implementation of new stuff based on user's needs and not against them, all that could use improvement.