The login page is a fork in the road, and for once that is a good thing. Two buttons, no detours: one says Sign In, the other says Start Free. Each one assumes something different about you, and each one hands you a different starting kit on the very first click. If you've ever closed a tab mid-onboarding because the app made you answer three questions before you could hear a single native speaker, this page is built for the opposite experience.
Sign In is for returners. If you've practiced here before, this is your door. Tapping it carries over your streak, your saved decks, and the SRS review queue you left mid-cycle on your phone. You land inside the app already in motion, not at the welcome gate again. Auth is one tap if you stayed logged in, or an email-link sign-in that takes about as long as it takes to switch apps and come back. There is no second onboarding. Lingua-Lab assumes you already know why you are here.
Start Free is for first-timers, and the word Free is doing real work. No credit card, no email verification wall before you can hear anything, no "choose your level" quiz. You give yourself a display name, pick an interface language from the 31 we ship, and you are in. The free tier is a 14-day full-feature window: every deck, every review mode, every spaced-repetition algorithm is live. After that, you stay on free and keep your basic decks and your streak, or you upgrade to keep unlimited decks, offline mode, and the pronunciation feedback loop.
The two paths also differ in what happens to your first answer. Sign In users get dropped into their next-due review item immediately, because the system already knows where they stopped. Start Free users get a short diagnostic in the first session, four short prompts that calibrate the SRS interval to their actual response speed rather than a default curve. That calibration is what makes the next morning's reviews feel right instead of punishing.
Both buttons end in the same place: a practice session with native audio, a tap-to-reveal gloss, and a record-your-answer button that compares your waveform to the model. The difference is what that first session carries forward.
Start free today and your first deck is waiting on the other side of the sign-up form.