The best apps to improve communication skills at work

A grammar checker can tidy an email before you send it, and a speaking coach can tell you how your practice talk sounded. Neither one is there when someone asks you a question on a call and you only have a few seconds to put the answer into words. The best app to start with for that moment is Elevate, a brain training app whose short games help you practice clear writing and speaking, so the right words come more easily when nobody is checking them.

Quick answer: What's the best app to improve your communication skills?

• Elevate is the app to start with. Its games train concise writing, word choice, and finding the right word quickly, and each workout takes a few minutes a day.

• Grammarly and Hemingway Editor are writing tools. They check the draft in front of you and flag what to fix.

• Orai, Yoodli, and Wellspoken are speaking coaches. You talk to them, and they give you feedback on things like filler words, pace, and structure.

• Elevate suits anyone who wants clearer emails and steadier answers in meetings and would rather build them with a small daily habit than fix one message at a time.

What are the best apps to improve professional writing and speaking at work?

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What are the best apps to improve writing skills at work?

Elevate builds the writing habits themselves, so your first draft needs less fixing. These are a few of its writing and vocabulary games, each with the moment it helps:

• Brevity teaches you to spot and remove unnecessary words from sentences, the habit behind an email that gets to the point. ("They might possibly go to the store today" becomes "They might go to the store today.")

• Synonyms helps you vary your language to avoid sounding repetitive, which matters in a long report where the same word keeps coming back.

• Clarity helps you learn how to express yourself clearly and directly, for the update your team should understand on the first read.

Here's what that habit looks like on a real work message. A first draft might say, "I just wanted to quickly reach out to let you know that I think we should probably move the review meeting to Thursday if that works for everyone." After a few weeks of spotting extra words, you'd write, "Can we move the review meeting to Thursday?" It's the same request in about a third of the words, and the reader knows what you're asking before they finish the first line.

Elevate's 40+ games also cover speaking, reading, math, and memory, and the app adjusts each game's difficulty to how you play. You can find more everyday writing tips in our guides to writing effective emails and improving written communication at work.

Grammarly works inside the places you already write. It checks grammar, clarity, and tone as you type in email, documents, and chat, and its Pro plan can rewrite a whole sentence or change its tone with a click.

Hemingway Editor is a page you paste a draft into. It highlights sentences that are hard to read and spots passive voice, and its Plus plan adds AI rewrites and grammar fixes.

What's the best app for public speaking and speaking clearly at work?

Elevate trains what you say, the word you choose, and how fast it comes to you. Here are a few of its speaking games:

• Eloquence teaches you how to choose the best words to communicate tone and meaning, for the moment in a meeting when "fine" isn't quite what you mean. Anna Braunsdorf, The Mind Company's VP of Educational Content, plays it before a meeting "to make sure the words I'm using match the moment."

• Recall helps you practice rapidly retrieving words from memory, for the answer you need to give on the spot.

• Transitions teaches you how to connect complex ideas and become a more persuasive speaker, for a presentation that moves from one point to the next.

Finding words quickly is a skill you can practice. Most people have a tip-of-the-tongue moment, meaning they know a word but can't find it, about once a week. In a well-known study of vocabulary learning, testing yourself on words had a large effect on how many you remembered later, while studying them again had none. Elevate's games are built on that idea. You recall words instead of rereading them, and you see them again over time. Players notice the difference. A reviewer called "All knees shall bow" wrote in a five-star App Store review in July 2026: "I am able to more quickly retrieve words before speaking."

Word choice is where a lot of meeting answers go wrong. Say your manager asks how a project is going. "It's fine" tells them almost nothing, while "We're on schedule, but the budget is tight" gives them the two facts they need in about the same time. That's the kind of choice Eloquence has you practice, a few seconds at a time, until the more precise word is the one that comes first.

Clear speaking also depends on how well you followed what was said before you spoke. A few of Elevate's memory games work on that side of a conversation:

• Attention helps you become a more attentive listener and exercise your short-term memory, for the meeting where you need to respond to the point someone just made.

• Synthesis practices keeping track of the details of a conversation, like which dates go with which names and places, for the call where three people give you three deadlines.

• Name Recall teaches you a mnemonic for putting names to faces, for the new client you'd like to address by name before the call ends.

For more ways to practice away from the app, see our guides on becoming more articulate and conversation skills.

Orai is a speaking coach for presentations, speeches, interviews, meetings, and sales pitches. You practice out loud and get instant feedback on filler words, pace, clarity, energy, confidence, and conciseness, along with short lessons.

Yoodli runs AI role-plays. You can rehearse a job interview, a pitch, or a talk, or upload a recording of a call, and get feedback on how it went. Its plans also cover sales and team training.

Wellspoken offers structured daily speaking practice, about five minutes a day. It analyzes recordings of your practice or a real meeting for filler words, pace, and structure, and it has an AI coach for mock interviews and difficult conversations.

ELSA Speak is for people learning English. It helps with pronunciation, accent, and exam prep, and it has a workplace coach for meetings and presentations.

How do I increase my communication skills with an app?

You increase your communication skills with an app the same way you build any skill, with a little practice most days. Elevate picks three to five short games for each day's workout, so all you have to do is show up. For your first week, try this:

1. Play your daily workout at the same time each day, like before you open your email.

2. Add one writing game, such as Brevity, and one speaking game, such as Eloquence.

3. At the end of the week, reread an email you sent on day one and notice what you'd cut now.

The app works best alongside a few small habits at work. Before a meeting where you expect a question, say your answer out loud once in a single sentence. Before you send an important email, read the first line on its own and ask whether it says what you need. Elevate also shows you which skills are your strengths and how you compare with other players, so after a couple of weeks you can see whether your writing and speaking games are moving and choose where to spend your next few minutes.

Elevate has its own research behind it. In a four-week study from 2015, the 146 people who used Elevate improved more on independent tests of grammar, writing, listening, and math than a comparison group of 125 who didn't. In a 2025 peer-reviewed survey of 3,367 Elevate users, people who had used the app for more weeks were more likely to report that their writing and speaking had improved.

Are there free apps to improve communication skills?

Yes. Elevate is free to download, and its free version gives you one three-game workout a day, a game of the week, and basic performance tracking. Elevate Premium unlocks every game and custom workouts for $9.99 a month or $39.99 a year, with a seven-day free trial on the yearly plan only. The free version is a fair way to find out whether the habit fits your day. Play the free workout most mornings for two weeks, and you'll know whether you keep coming back to it before you pay for anything.

Grammarly has a free plan, Yoodli's Starter plan includes five free sessions, and ELSA Speak has a free tier.

If you want to start with the free version, download Elevate and play today's workout before your next meeting. It takes a few minutes, and you'll see which games stretch you most.