they are so similar as to be confusing in written form.
but I believe for english speakers spanish is considerably easier to learn to speak/understand. what you see written is more or less what you hear. iberian spoken portugues is almost unintelligible coming from a latin american spanish background (or at least it was for me), and brazilian is a challenge as well given just how different pronunciation is.
I have pretty much come to the conclusion that I should have learned Spanish first.
The app I’m using is Duolingo, it’s free and free to use so I know it’s not the best but it suits my purposes.
Spanish does seem much easier. I thought it may have been because I had spent a year on Portuguese but now that you mention it the pronunciations are close enough to English to be, I guess, more intuitive to English speakers. As long as you remember to roll your R’s and get the word gender right.
Masculine and feminine really threw me for a loop. I still have the occasional nightmare about trying to speak Portuguese and having people laugh at me for getting the word genders all wrong.
Duolingo uses the Brazilian Portuguese for it’s app and I completely understand what you say about pronunciation. The Brazilian Portuguese is also a bit less strict on the grammar than the Iberian Portuguese.