The best social skills apps

How we evaluated

Every "best of" list should state its methodology, because otherwise it's just marketing. Here's ours.

We evaluated apps on five criteria:

• General-audience social training. A lot of "social skills apps" in the App Store are actually clinical intervention tools for specific populations. Those are great products for the people they're built for. We excluded them from this list because they're a different category.
• Actually trains skills. The app has to do something more than journal, meditate, or chat. It has to put you into specific training reps.
• Realistic context. The training has to resemble real social situations, not abstract theory or personality quizzes.
• Feedback loop. You have to get meaningful feedback on what you're doing right or wrong — not just a streak counter.
• Not a clinical tool. If it's actually a therapy product (CBT-based social anxiety apps), we put it in a separate section because it's a different category.

The short list

App by app

Altiora — best for scenario-based practice

Altiora teaches social skills as trainable sub-skills and drills them through realistic scenarios. Seven modules cover self mastery, perception, timing, expression, social dynamics, influence, and applied real-world scenarios. The format is simple: read the concept, face the scenario, pick your answer, learn why one response worked and the others didn't. Strong fit for people who know they struggle with specific social situations and want to practice specific responses rather than read abstract advice.

Honest downsides: iOS only right now. New app, smaller library than a 10-year-old incumbent would have. Not a therapy tool — if your struggle is clinical anxiety, this isn't where you start.

Dare — best for social anxiety (CBT-based)

Dare is built specifically around anxiety, not social skills. It uses exposure-style exercises and cognitive reframing drawn from CBT. If your problem is "I know what to say but I can't get myself into the situation," Dare helps more than a skill-training app would. If your problem is "I have no idea what to say once I'm in the situation," it won't.

Sanvello — best for general wellness adjacent to social situations

Sanvello is a broader mental wellness app with mood tracking, guided CBT, and meditation. It's a good tool for general anxiety management and it can complement skill training, but it is not itself a social skills app. Calling it one confuses the category.

Orai and Ummo — best for public speaking specifically

Both apps analyze your speech — filler words, pace, pauses, clarity — and give feedback. They are excellent for presentations, interviews, and anything with a monologue format. They are not built for two-way conversation, group dynamics, or the kind of skills you need at a dinner party.

Poised — best for live video calls

Poised sits on top of Zoom, Meet, and Teams and gives you live and post-call feedback on your speech, tone, and body language. It's a desktop tool rather than a mobile app, and it works on what's happening during a call rather than training you in advance. Useful for remote professionals, not a replacement for skill building.

Apps we deliberately left off

• AI chatbot "conversation partners." These sound useful in theory. In practice, chatting with an LLM doesn't train social reflexes because the AI has no stakes, no internal state, and no reason to react honestly. You're not practicing a social skill — you're practicing talking to a machine that agrees with you.
• Journaling apps marketed as social skills tools. Writing down your feelings is a real activity with real benefits. It is not skill training. Don't let a pretty UI convince you otherwise.
• Clinical-intervention apps. These are great products for the specific populations they're built for. They are not appropriate general-audience tools for building broader social range.
• "Charisma" apps. Most are thin, gamified self-help wrappers. A few have useful content, but none rose to the level of the apps above.

Which one should you pick?

• If you want to practice specific conversations and train reflexes: Altiora.
• If anxiety itself is the blocker, not skills: Dare (or see a therapist first).
• If you present for a living and that's your focus: Orai or Ummo.
• If you're on video calls all day and want live feedback: Poised.
• If you're dealing with clinical anxiety or depression: A licensed therapist. Apps are supplements, not substitutes.