blas. vs Drops for Irish — Which Vocabulary App Is Better?

Drops is a popular vocabulary app with a slick visual design and a unique 5-minute daily session format. It covers Irish, which makes it one of the relatively few apps in the space. blas. takes a very different approach — structured grammar, mutation drilling, and vocabulary taught in context. Here's what each actually does.

For a broader comparison of every Irish learning app, see the Best Apps to Learn Irish (2026) comparison.

What Drops Does Well

Drops is a vocabulary-only app. It teaches words through visual association: you see an illustration, swipe or tap to match the Irish word, and repeat. The design is beautiful, the animations are satisfying, and the 5-minute daily limit (on the free tier) creates a low-friction habit. For learning individual words — nouns especially — it's genuinely well made.

What Drops Doesn't Do

Drops has no grammar. No word order, no verb conjugation, no explanation of tá vs is. It has no mutations — you'll learn the word cat but never learn that it becomes chat after mo or gcat after seacht. There are no sentences, no reading, no conversation, and no context for how words behave in Irish.

This matters more for Irish than for most languages. Irish words change their first letter depending on context (mutations), have grammatical gender that affects surrounding words, and exist in a VSO word order that's unlike English. Learning a word in isolation, without its grammatical behaviour, leaves you unable to use it in a sentence.

Grammar and Mutations

Drops: None. Zero grammar content.

blas.: Structured grammar lessons covering every major topic — word order, verbs, the copula, prepositional pronouns, the article, and more. Plus dedicated mutation drilling with spaced repetition. See the complete guide to Irish mutations for what this involves.

Vocabulary Approach

Drops teaches vocabulary through visual-word association. You see a picture, learn the Irish word. No example sentences, no gender, no mutation forms, no grammatical context. It's effective for raw memorisation of isolated words.

blas. teaches vocabulary in grammatical context. Each word comes with its gender, mutation forms, example sentences, and the grammatical patterns it appears in. You learn not just what a word means but how it behaves — which is essential for a language where words change their first letter.

Spaced Repetition

Drops uses spaced repetition for word review, but the algorithm is simple and you have limited control over scheduling.

blas. uses FSRS (Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler), the same research-backed algorithm available in modern Anki. Each item is scheduled individually based on your performance history.

Reading, Writing, Conversation

Drops: None.

blas.: Graded reading passages A1-C1, writing exercises, and conversation practice with grammar feedback.

Pricing

Drops: Free (5 minutes/day). Premium (~€8/month) for unlimited time.

blas.: The whole course is free — grammar, mutations, and graded reading — with unlimited sessions. Premium adds smart sessions, analytics, and speaking practice.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Who Should Use Drops

Drops is a good supplement if you want a quick 5-minute vocabulary boost alongside a more comprehensive tool. The visual design makes it genuinely enjoyable to use. It's not a learning tool on its own for Irish — you can't learn Irish from vocabulary alone — but as a complement to grammar study, it has a place.

Who Should Use blas.

If you want to actually learn Irish — grammar, mutations, reading, conversation — blas. covers the ground that matters. Drops teaches you words; blas. teaches you the language. For a language as grammatically rich as Irish, that distinction is significant.

The Honest Answer

Drops and blas. aren't really competitors — they're in different categories. Drops is a vocabulary supplement. blas. is a learning platform. If you enjoy Drops, keep using it for the visual vocabulary practice. But don't rely on it as your primary Irish learning tool — it doesn't cover enough of what Irish requires.