There is no single best way to learn Indonesian. There is a combination, and the useful question is what each resource is actually good at, because most of them are good at exactly one thing and useless at the rest.
So here is the full landscape, with prices and an opinion on each. One warning first, because it decides how you read the whole list: almost every app teaches you the formal register and does not tell you it is doing so, starting with the saya and aku split that decides how every sentence lands. That is the gap this site exists to close, and it is worth keeping in mind every time you see a five-star review below.
Apps
Indonesian is better served than most Southeast Asian languages, and much better than Thai or Tagalog. It is also worth knowing before you start comparing that two of the biggest names, Rosetta Stone and Busuu, do not offer Indonesian at all.
The short version. LingoDeer explains the grammar, which is the part that decides whether you get past week three. Pimsleur is audio only and makes you produce sentences out loud. Memrise is built on short clips of ordinary people talking, so it is the one place an app lets you hear the real speed. Duolingo is free and keeps you turning up, which is a different job from teaching you. Babbel has Indonesian as its only non-European language and caps it at A2 in its own documentation. Drops, Ling, Mondly and Clozemaster build word count and nothing else, and one of them is plenty.
Prices, ceilings and the register test that reorders that whole list are in the best app to learn Indonesian. Duolingo gets a piece of its own, because it is where most people start and where most people stop: how far it actually gets you.
Talk In Indonesian and IndonesianPod101 are the two Indonesian-only services. They go further than any general app for the obvious reason that Indonesian is the whole product rather than one language of forty.
KBBI. Free, and not a learning app at all: it is the official Indonesian dictionary, published by the national language agency. Indonesian-to-Indonesian only, so it is useless in month one and indispensable in month six.
My take: one app, not four. Pimsleur if you have a commute, LingoDeer if you do not, and Duolingo alongside either one only if the streak genuinely keeps you at it.
The one book worth buying
Indonesian: A Comprehensive Grammar by James Neil Sneddon, published by Routledge, is the reference work in English. It is not a course and you will not read it front to back. It is what you open when an app has told you me- changes shape and has not told you why.
Sneddon also wrote Understanding Indonesian Grammar: A student’s reference and workbook, which is the approachable version of the same material and the better first purchase.
My take: buy the workbook now, the grammar later, and only when a specific question sends you looking for it.
A private teacher, which is the highest-value hour you can buy
This is where the money should go if you have any to spend. An hour with a native speaker who corrects you is worth ten hours of tapping.
Preply. Indonesian tutors run from about $5 to $35 for a fifty-minute lesson, with most sitting between $12 and $25. It runs on a subscription: you commit to a number of hours a week and get billed every four weeks.
italki. Community tutors, who are native speakers rather than trained teachers, start around $4 to $8. Professional teachers run $10 to $40. You buy credits and book lessons when you want, with no weekly commitment, and credits do not expire.
My take: italki, and specifically a community tutor rather than a professional one. You are not buying pedagogy at this stage, you are buying an Indonesian who will talk to you and correct you, and at $6 a session you can afford two a week. Take the subscription model only if you know you will not show up otherwise.
Say this in your first lesson and you will get much more out of it:
Tolong koreksi saya ‘Please correct me’
Pakai bahasa sehari-hari, ya ‘Use everyday language, please’
That second sentence is the one that stops a well-meaning teacher from spending your money on Apakah Anda, the textbook question form almost nobody says out loud.
If a physical teacher is an option where you live, take it over an online one. In Indonesia itself, asking around a neighbourhood usually turns one up faster than any platform.
Series and films
Indonesian cinema is genuinely good, which is a relief when a language’s media catalogue is often the weak point.
On Netflix: Cigarette Girl (Gadis Kretek) is a period drama with clear, unhurried dialogue, which makes it the friendliest starting point. Ratu Ratu Queens and Losmen Bu Broto are the everyday-conversation end of the catalogue. Joko Anwar’s Nightmares and Daydreams is the ambitious one, and its dialogue moves faster.
Films: Laskar Pelangi is the national favourite and the most quotable. Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts and Impetigore are the two that travelled internationally. Watch one with a plate of food and you will pick up half the ordering vocabulary by accident. The Raid is superb and almost useless for this purpose, because it is ninety minutes of fighting and about forty lines of dialogue.
My take: Indonesian subtitles, not English ones, as soon as you can stand it. English subtitles mean you read a film instead of hearing it, and the illusion of understanding is total.
What Indonesians actually watch
This is where the spoken register lives, and it is nothing like an app.
Close The Door, Deddy Corbuzier’s podcast, is the biggest in the country by some distance. It and ten other channels are broken down in the best YouTube channels for Indonesian, with what each is actually good for. Long unscripted conversation, exactly the speed and slang you will meet in real life, and exactly the thing you will not follow for months. Raditya Dika, a comedian turned YouTuber, is the other name everyone knows.
You will understand almost none of it at first. Put it on anyway. The point at this stage is not comprehension, it is getting your ear used to nggak, udah, gue and the swallowed prefixes that no textbook writes down: mengerti becomes ngerti, sudah becomes udah. The sudah, belum and masih lesson covers the three you will hear most.
Music
Songs are the cheapest vocabulary you will ever acquire, because the melody does the memorising.
Tulus is the one to start with: slow, clearly enunciated, ordinary words. Payung Teduh is similar and gentler still. Raisa for pop, Hindia for something closer to how people under thirty actually talk.
My take: one song, lyrics open in the other tab, translated once properly. That single exercise sticks harder than a week of flashcards.
Language exchange, which is free
HelloTalk and Tandem pair you with someone learning your language. You get corrections, they get corrections, nobody pays. The quality varies wildly and it takes several tries to find someone who actually keeps it up, but the price is right and the language is real.
Indonesians are unusually willing here, partly because English is widely studied and partly because foreigners attempting Indonesian is still rare enough to be interesting. One correct greeting usually opens the conversation.
Podcasts for learners
Learning Indonesian, the self-paced course, and Learn Indonesian with IndonesianPod101 are the two long-running ones with real back catalogues. Both are free at the podcast level.
My take: these are for the gap between “I have finished a beginner course” and “I can follow Close The Door”, which is a long gap and the one where most people give up.
What I would actually do
If you want the short version, here it is, and it costs about $15 a month.
Start with two days on pronunciation, which is a short job in Indonesian and pays for the entire year. Keep forty everyday phrases open in another tab, because they are what you will need on day one and they cost nothing. Then take the beginner course here, free, which labels the register on every example so you are learning both from the start rather than discovering the second one on arrival.
Add Pimsleur for dead time if you have a commute. Book two community-tutor lessons a week on italki and tell the tutor to use everyday language. Put on music you like and one Indonesian podcast you do not understand yet, every day, in the background.
Buy Sneddon’s workbook when the affixes start to bite, which will be around week three. That affix system is the one genuinely hard thing in Indonesian, and no app on this page teaches it properly.
And if you have already studied some and don’t know where to start, the level test is twenty questions and places you deliberately on the low side. Reading three easy pages costs you an evening. Starting three levels too high costs you the habit.