Duolingo: Language Lessons reviews
What users love and hate, from real reviews
A gamified language-learning app that turned studying into an addictive daily habit, but increasingly squeezes users with energy-based monetization and ads.
What users love
Gamification turns studying into an addictive daily habit
The app's core strength: learning feels like a game, lessons are engaging, and points and streaks motivate daily return. Many admit they got hooked and have kept their streak for years.
The way the app manages to gamify learning a language is simply incredible.
I have been using Duolingo for years now and I have only become more addicted to it.
The gamified system keeps me motivated to practice every day, and I genuinely enjoy learning with it.
Great to start from scratch, but doesn't teach real fluency
Users value how the app gently eases a beginner in from the very basics and simple phrases — an excellent starting point for a new language.
Great for people who want to start out learning a language from scratch. Builds up well.
This app is a great way to learn a new language
Honestly great app for learning other languages it won't make you a mastermind at it but its nice for basic phrases
Expansion beyond languages: chess, music, math
Users love the new courses — chess, music and math; the chess character Oscar is a particular favorite. Being able to learn it all in one app is seen as a big plus.
Love it! you can try math, chess, music and learn multiple languages at the same time.
I loved its chess and on math it is a great tutor
Oscar makes me laugh every time he admires himself it's soo much fun love it
A patient 'strict teacher' that keeps you motivated
Many see Duo as a kind but persistent mentor: the character reminds you to study daily, encourages you, and makes the process feel warmly human.
it's really good I love how it acts as a strict teacher .
Duolingo is a very good teacher, and she tries to make sure I take my lessons each day 😅
good for learning languages really patient an helpful teacher
What users hate
Swapping hearts for energy is felt as ruining a once-loved app
The switch from hearts to energy is the single most frequent and painful complaint: energy drains on every question, runs out after a couple of lessons, and forces you to wait or pay. Many users came back specifically to change their review and drop their rating over it.
I really hate this energy thing. the hearts were better. this energy thing won't even let you do anything unless you buy super or something
Gone down to one star for replacing the hearts with "energy" what a bad end to such a good app. Also, every question now drains energy, I started a lesson with 22 and finished with 8, what's that about?
BRING BACK HEARTS! I DO 2.5 LESSONS AND MY ENERGY IS EMPTY!
Teaches entertainment, not real speaking: no grammar, no depth
Experienced users note the app consumes time via 'allegedly fun exercises' but gives no systematic grammar explanations and no real language progress. Removing the discussion centre with native speakers made it worse.
No comprehensive grammar explanations.
it's better at consuming your time by allegedly fun exercises. But as for real potential to improve your language skills? Absolutely not.
Do Not expect it to teach a language.
Aggressive ads feel like pressure to subscribe
Ad volume has grown to 'egregious' levels: refilling energy means watching ever more videos, and users feel like 'hostages' to ads in an app that's supposed to teach a language.
I'm just a hostage to insanely frequent ads. Thought this was meant to be a language learning app!
the adverts are getting egregious, basically pushing to get super or the new "max"
ads are too much and forcing you to buy a super plan
Turned from a good cause into a money-extraction machine
Long-time users mourn that the app went from a free public good to a 'for-profit' product manipulating micro-transactions: on top of regular Super there's now an even pricier Max.
it has turned into a for-profit, pay-for-play scam that manipulates users into micro-transactions
Money hungry, really just wants to suck your money. Not worth it.
Duolingo will keep on finding ways to get money from it's users.
Bugs: correct answers marked wrong, progress lost
Serious technical failures: the app marks correct answers as wrong, breaks long streaks of right answers, energy drops from 20 to 10 by itself with no mistake, and levels sometimes have to be redone.
it has been marking correct answers as incorrect, which is hurting my score.
the energy drops from 20 to 10 suddenly without making any mistake
my grades keep disappearing and I have to repeat the same level four five times before I get back to the real level I was
Speech recognition rejects correct pronunciation
Voice exercises and the paid Max conversation mode often fail to register correctly spoken words: recognition ignores context and produces nonsense matches, undermining an expensive feature.
if the pronunciation is not perfect, which never is with a foreign language, it scans the whole language dictionary for matching words and more often than not these are totally nonsense words. Hence it is pointless.
sometimes when I speak a word like helado it says it's wrong but they say it exactly how I did!
this would be the second day that none of my read alond parts are being accepted
The app freezes and crashes, sometimes losing access entirely
Instability breaks study sessions: the app crashes mid-lesson, won't open for days, won't log in via Google account — even for paying users who lose paid time and hard-won progress.
this app is crashing so often, pmo so bad 😡 totally not worth to buy super and max at all
the app was not opening for several days, and even if I trying uninstalling and installing again a few time, it was not logging with my Google account. I'm a paying user
extremely worst application it stops in the middle of the test
No support: AI bot can't help, no human to reach
When something breaks with a subscription or account, users hit a useless AI assistant and silent support — ten days with no reply, a child's lost progress, and no way to get a refund.
The AI is useless with customer support. I would like to talk to a human being about my subscription and it could not recognize my issue. Also, no help number.
I wrote to the help center - no replies for 10 days. My daughter lost all her progress that she worked hard for
can't get money back for the unused period -sad 😭