Duolingo Reviews 

I enjoy using this to practice French during my daily commute. Setting up the daily goal took me a minute to find in the profile settings, but the byte-sized lessons fit perfectly into my schedule. The league system adds a nice touch of motivation to keep going. It is pretty much my default app for casual language learning when I have a few spare minutes.

The interface is simple enough to use every morning without much fuss. The daily sound exercises function well on my phone, though the app sometimes pushes too many notifications about maintaining the streak. It keeps me practicing my Spanish vocabulary, which is exactly what I wanted.

I started using this app to learn Spanish. They constantly pushed for me to try a free subscription and I specifically asked it to remind me before it ended. It never reminded me and has now taken £100+ out of my account. This has left me struggling for the rest of the month and is complete scam and fraud behaviour. Please do NOT sign up to this “FREE” trial as they DO NOT remind you and the money gets taken!!! I will never use this app ever again and will make sure people are aware of the sneaky tactics used.

I did not appreciate or like getting badgered or bullied to participate in the Duolingo app.
I deleted this app.

Duolingo is the only way of learning French I have ever managed to make work for me! The lessons are only bite sized so for someone like me who is often short of time, it is perfect. It incentivises you to keep going and although its graphics and some of its storylines are cheesy it doesn't last long enough for you to get fed up of the lesson. It takes a multi pronged approach to learning, sometimes you have to talk, sometimes understand, or read, or figure out how to write your own sentences. I've been doing it about 18 months and use the free version. It's greatly improved my spoken French and also my comprehension French just used to seem one long gabble and now I can make out the words most of the time. So I'm really happy with it .

They offered a weeks free subscription to Super, they advertised that they would remind me before the subscription for the Super membership went out from my account, they didn't and have just taken a full years subscription. This has placed me in a really difficult financial position.

So just to say that Duolingo have now reversed the payment so thanks for that, overall I do enjoy the app.

The constantly changing Duolingo icon on my phone is manipulative and annoying. I will not be bullied by your app and will deinstall if I can find no way to stop this behaviour.

I've been using Duolingo for learning French and Chess. The French course keeps using English sentences with incorrect grammar and non-colloquial structure as translation examples. Very annoying. In Chess, there's a glitch I've complained about several times, but no acknowledgement or response from Duolingo.
Idten, while playing chess matches, the screen suddenly sweeps green and ends the game as a loss. Weirdly, this only seems to happen when I'm winning the match. Frustrating.

The doulingo always frozen , or crash down during the learning. I finish the lesson, but i didn't get the score. Since i pay for it , the doulingo is rubbish . I'm very dissapointed . I thinking about to give up this learning .

I have had a terrible experience trying to learn Ukrainian with Duolingo! While I have managed to learn some words, overall Duolingo is useless!!! First, Duolingo doesn't teach the Ukrainian alphabet properly--they just expect you to put random words together and create sentences.

Duolingo also fails to identify words that could be feminine, masculine, or neutral. For example, in relation to Ukrainian, number "1" in Ukrainian has feminine, neutral, and masculine versions, depending on what's being described. Duolingo doesn't explain these differences to its users, forcing people to make needless mistakes.

Second, many sentences you are expected to put together are not related to real life, making them absolutely forgettable. I even came across one sentence loosely translated from Ukrainian as "He eats onions for lunch." I don't know about anybody else out there, but I don't know anybody who eats full onions for lunch!

Third, I find the concept of punishing users for making mistakes absolutely ridiculous, especially when the learning method sets users up to fail! Although I did have the option of signing up for Super Duolingo (I just deleted my account), I find the concept of buying unlimited hearts for a poorly designed language app absolutely absurd!!! I am surviving on disability benefits ($700 CAD/month), and I am not wasting $80+ (CAD)/year for a language app that barely teaches anything, and keeps you at a beginner's level!

Duolingo keeps crashing. It crashes in the middle of a game, so you receive no points for the game you have played, they do of course take the points that you have spent accessing the game, and when you complain, they send you a message, and say they can’t do anything about this. This happens increasingly frequently and frankly it’s very disappointing.

The app is okay for beginners, but the sentences they teach you are sometimes really weird and useless in real life. I mean, when am I ever going to need to say "the bear is eating an apple" in a foreign country? It feels more like a game than a serious learning tool.

Duolingo has helped me with English, and I’ve been using it since 2025. But the app feels too focused on paid features that’s why my impression is mixed.

I’ve been using Duolingo since 2023, and it has genuinely helped me learn a lot in English. I like that the lessons are simple, regular, and easy to return to every day. At the same time, time, my experience has been mixed because the app often feels too focused on pushing the paid version. The free version can feel limited, and the constant reminders about subscriptions make learning less enjoyable. I still think it’s a useful app, but for me it’s not as user-friendly as it could be.

I started Duolingo a year ago. I had no previous experience with Spanish. I do not have a career related motive for wanting to learn Spanish, I am more casual but do want to learn. Duolingo is free and that is important to me as I am on fixed income. I spend about 20-30 minutes a day, every day, on lessons. I do not have a good knowledge of grammar, which hurts me. I did not know this journey would take me so long, but I am committed to try. After a year, I see progress, but have a long way to go. I spend more time with the lesson guide now and that has helped. I believe that someone very serious about adopting this language in a timely way, such as for a job, they may want a different method. For me, this has been a good start and I will stay with it—I will also try to take some classes at my senior citizen center and try some other methods for conversation. I am grateful that I have stayed with it. Thank you.

This is going to be difficult to write. I was a 7 year customer. Was is the keyword. I deleted the app.

Duolingo has lost its way. Going public has destroyed the app. The founding mission of free education for all no longer applies.

Greed has taken over.

At inception, Duolingo had lessons with an ad between each lesson. It wasn't bad. It was a little break between each lesson.

Hearts prompted users to retain information. If you ran out of hearts, you could practice or watch ads to earn more hearts.

After going public, there was a big shift to monetization. Duo made the free tier unusable. This was a clear effort to try to sell subscriptions.

A subscription wouldn't necessarily be bad, but they inflated the price, and most of what comes with the subscription are junk features that focus on gamification, not the actual customer learning.

Constant rewrites of courses now leave users getting out of whack. The rewrites could make you review information you know, or toss you far beyond where you were.

The unethical psychological games to manipulate users are obvious. Streaks and leagues truly are of no consequence to actual learning.

The subscription doesn't offer anything of value that wasn't available in the free version they disassembled to squeeze users for money.

The push to prioritize AI content is massively deteriorating the quality of lessons.

I was learning Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, Danish, and Esperanto. After AI came in, it became more and more common to find errors in translations. Contorted English sentences that made no sense were the basis of sentences in other languages, making it difficult.

Duolingo no longer cares about their customers. It's all about monetization and stock prices, which have tanked, by the way.

They are fine with long term customers walking away, because they still gain new users. I predict new users won't stay long.

Duolingo used to come up in conversations frequently. Now, if it comes up, people just say they stop using it because it sucks now.

It's really tragic that something so good chose to be so mediocre and useless. Going public was a big mistake.

Very bad experience. After I sent two sentences to the assistant via chat, the assistant gave the reply below and then disconnected me, very rude!. "I will escalate your concern to a supervisor who will respond to you within one business day via email. Escalating now. Have a nice day!"

Useless customer service department!
For the last few days I have been unable to progress with my Spanish studies because Duolingo will not allow me to select or type the correct answer to a question.
I have complained three times and have not received a response.
I honestly cannot recommend this product now, which is a real shame because I was such a fan.
Get your act together,Duolingo!

The free trial made this platform seem fun and easy to use, so I subscribed. As I advanced through levels, I found more and more forced DEI. You must repeat phrases to complete exercises. Some of these have you speaking in the context of a man and his husband, or a woman looking for a new girlfriend, or a man purchasing skirts.
Their stated reasoning is diversity and inclusion, but forced compliance that makes you compromise your values or faith, is not inclusion, it is exclusion.
My grandchildren were using this program as well and I had to advise their parents of the ideological teaching methods.
The bottom line is this company seems more interested in making you agree with their social positions than teaching language skills.
Stay away.

I am about 10 days away from deciding to renew my year 2 subscription. I won't be renewing. I have had a particular problem with the "Translate the Word" part of their program. I have taken my valuable time to point this problem out to them repeatedly over the last month or so. They acknowledge receipt of my feedback but nothing changes. I have contacted them at least a dozen times, to no avail. I am a subscriber not a free service user. I expect results when I pay someone to provide a service. Acknowledgement is simply not enough. I'm mad and frustrated that I am not receiving the service I expected. I am actively searching for an alternative provider. New subcribers should be aware of these frustrations to come, if they chose to buy this subscription service. Good luck in your language journey. Sincerely. John.