What is Ling?
Ling (ling-app.com) started in Chiang Mai as a Thai-learning app and grew into a 60-language platform with a strong Southeast Asian focus. The format will feel familiar to Duolingo users: units of short lessons, a streak, a leaderboard, and a mascot. What sets it apart is the languages — Ling has real courses for Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese, Khmer, Burmese and more, recorded by native speakers.
Each course runs through roughly 50 units from “greetings” to intermediate topics, with vocabulary cards, matching and ordering exercises, a dialogue, a grammar note and a chatbot conversation. Pronunciation is checked with speech recognition.
What Ling does well
It takes Indonesian and Malay seriously. Both courses are complete, the audio is recorded by native speakers, and the dialogues are everyday situations rather than textbook oddities. The chatbot and speaking exercises give you a reason to say things out loud, which most vocabulary apps never do.
The app is well-engineered and pleasant to use, the units are short enough for a commute, and the single subscription covers every language — a real advantage if you are learning Thai or Vietnamese at the same time.
Where Ling falls short
Depth. Each Ling course contains hundreds, not thousands, of words, and the units get repetitive once you know the format. Grammar notes are a paragraph each, so the Indonesian affix system (me-, ber-, -kan, -i, pe-an, ke-an) that unlocks the whole language is never taught properly. Intermediate learners finish the content and are left with a “review” mode.
For Indonesian–Malay learners the structural problem is that the two are entirely separate courses. If you learn both you study everything twice; if you learn one, Ling never tells you that Malaysians say “pejabat” where Indonesians say “kantor”. And at around $90 a year, it is expensive for what is ultimately a phrases-and-words app.
How BahasaSystem.com compares
BahasaSystem.com was designed around the thing Ling ignores: Indonesian and Malay are 80% the same language, so learn them together. Every one of the 1,500 words shows the Indonesian form, the Malay form and whether they differ (more than 680 do), with a flag on the card and a switchable voice for each. Learning one language gives you the other almost for free.
It also goes deeper on vocabulary — 1,500 words across three levels and 41 themes versus Ling’s hundreds — and on review, with an FSRS spaced-repetition deck instead of a simple review mode. Reading practice comes from 90+ dialogues and news articles with audio and quizzes. What it does not have is Ling’s speaking exercises, chatbot or native recordings; BahasaSystem.com uses high-quality Indonesian and Malay voices in your browser instead.
The verdict: which should you choose?
Ling is the better pick if you want a guided, game-like course with speaking practice and are happy to pay. BahasaSystem.com is the better pick if vocabulary, reading and the Indonesian–Malay relationship matter to you, or if you simply do not want another subscription.
If you are learning both languages, BahasaSystem.com saves you studying everything twice; add Ling if you want its dialogues and chatbot for speaking practice.