Duolingo Reviews 

It's not very good. You aren't really learning anything - it's just fancy flashcards.

There's no lesson, no rationale, no explanation. Nothing to say "that's wrong because...", "remember in French that the verb...". You're just left to figure it out

Aside from that - what it teaches you is often false. The further I've got with learning new language, I've realised what Duolingo says is correct often is not. Then I read most of their content is AI generated so it makes sense.

You'd learn faster and more accurately if you just asked chat gpt for some guided lessons in your chosen language

I’m very disappointed with this app.
They are “teaching” me the same 20 words! Over and over with little variation. I know repetition is important, but COME ON!!!

Duolingo promised to remind me before the free trial ended, but I never received any notification. Instead, they automatically charged me for a full year subscription, which I absolutely did not need or plan to buy. Very disappointing and misleading subscription experience.

There are a serval reasons why Duolingo is bad.
First the stalking. Image you’re being stalked by an app to do your lesson? It sounds terrifying. He is just begging you to do a lesson. It means he wants a streak.
Second the streak. Speaking of stalking, you’re forced to do a streak no matter what. I just can’t believe it that you have to do it even you’re with school, work, being sick, or being too lazy. It’s no joke.
Third the energy. Image you’re in a middle of a lesson and a few seconds later you’re out of juice. It’s lowkey horrible when you try to gain do to prevent yourself from getting demoted or competing with others. You have to watch an ad to gain energy or buy 600 gems to gain full power.
Forth the 60% off new years scam. Every year, the app does a discount for super thinking it’s worth it and you should get it. If you read the app store’s in purchase section, the pricing stays the same. People are encouraged to not buy super due to a scam. I highly doubt it’s not ideal.
Overall this app will get a 1 star as it’s terrible and not worth to learn with.
I think it’s time for Duolingo to improve themselves.

Terrible customer service. The features on my oral course for French kept going wrong and despite FIVE emails to ask them to investigate nothing was done so I could make NO progress at all and had to give up. Totally ignored my requests for help.

The app is a scam. They don't teach you anything about the language, they just throw a bunch of sentences into an AI translator and call it good enough. No support staff, no responses to feedback, questions, or concerns. They paywall and remove any feature that might be helpful and then force you to pay crazy high fees for the basic functions. They annoy and irritate you every chance they get with a stupid icon that changes without a way to turn it off. Even if you do turn off the annoying pop up messages, you better be ready for a hundred of them whenever you log on. But no, you shouldn't expect them to actually be able to tell you anything helpful. Truly a glowing example of enshittification

Many kids use this app, so why are many of the Spanish lessons talking about drinking wine and beer and girls dating girls and guys dating guys. The content creators of Duolingo are horrible examples for kids.

Amateurish at best. Annoying mascot harassment, no option for umlaut keyboard when typing answers—and then failing for not having umlaut—absolutely poor in design, poor pronunciation, and the list goes on . They look for any excuse to get more money out of subscribers. Also, app caused total failure of Iphone translation app. Stay away. Pimsleur or Rocket are both much better options.

Apart from frequently grammatically incorrect - the system places you into competitive ‘tournaments’. However difficult to compete with those who ‘cheat’ for position by obtaining huge scores clearly impossible to achieve honestly. Very demoralising as not able to make progress against unfair competition. I do not recommend Duolingo. Many better alternatives to assist in learning another language.

Terrible. I find it marks you down for silly mistakes so you run out of free attempts. But it doesn’t even tell you why you got it wrong it is totally aimed at making you pay. If you get it wrong you have to pay to be corrected. It’s so annoying. I don’t think the paid version would be much better and they wonder why you don’t carry on. It’s not encouraging you to learn a new language. It wants you to subscribe.

A lot of pressure to sign up to free trials having downloaded from Apple store.
Nowhere near as much attention to remind you they’re about to take £68.99 from the card on your Apple account.
Not been used for a significant time prior or at all since the charges , but refused the refund request through Apple.
So this company is happy to add to their profits from a charity worker’s wage because I was too busy working to give medical aid to thousands of people dying…
They’re at no loss from the service not used and £68.99 doesn’t really mean much to their profits and shares, but does to a charity worker.
Not the kind of company that you might want to expose yourself to if profits let them lose sight of fair/ sensible treatment which Apple seems to be supporting/ enabling.

I was thinking of upgrading to the paid version but all the negative reviews have turned me off that idea!

I have used this app since 2016 and in the beginning it was good for use alongside actual language acquisition. However it the past two years it has gone so far downhill to the point I wouldn't even give it a single star if I could rate it that way. The app is essentially nothing more than a scratched vinyl, just repeating the same laborious lessons day in day out. Everything is about boosting energy to stay ahead of the competition. Language acquisition has nothing to do with that, it is about getting to fluency and being able to speak, listen, understand and write in the targeted language. If this is the quality of their free version, who genuinely wants to pay them money for a paid subscription???? I have had countless free trials of their paid plan and I would rather spend that money elsewhere. These days there are lots of AI based language apps out there that will eventually see the end of poor quality products like this where the only focus is profit, rather than a quality product.

After the recent update, I’ve been experiencing significant stress while learning on Duolingo(((. The new Energy system (instead of hearts) is completely broken. I don't know what "genius" came up with this, but energy gets drained even when you give correct answers, and you often just can’t finish a lesson. On top of that, it tops up completely unpredictably. As a result, the stress of being unable to complete a lesson despite answering correctly far outweighs any enjoyment from using the app. I have already asked support to permanently delete my profile with no possibility of recovery. And no, I don't feel sorry at all, the app is simply not worth using right now.
Additionally, the constant, aggressive pop-ups pushing you to upgrade to a paid account are unbearable. It would be much better if you split the content fairly, f.e. keep standard lessons for free users, and unlock new features, bonuses, or special lessons for those who pay. Or, just stop positioning your app as free and be honest with people. Offer a standard 7-day free trial like most apps do, and then charge for it. At least that would be honest and save people from the illusion of a free version.

Very disappointing experience with Duolingo. I tried multiple times to cancel my subscription and stop the charges, but nothing worked. I don’t even use the app and customer support ignored the messages I sent. Now I’m still being charged for something I never wanted to continue. Completely frustrating and unacceptable service.

I initially enjoyed the app but after a while they put fake people on there who are put there to make you compete and buy extra XP to do so ....luckily I worked it out and did not fall for their trap ...Ive now left and will source a genuine langauge site

I signed up to Duolingo in November 2024 and for the first year was very happy with it so renewed in November 2025. Now I'm beginning to regret it. As others have commented it has become very frustrating and buggy. I'v repeatedly reported a bug that means if you get something wrong the correct answer is partially hidden below a banner and you can only see it if you realise you can CAREFULLY slide the page down and read the correct answer in the narrow gap!! I don't know about other people but this isn't helping my learning experience and these constant bugs may make me cancel my subscription at the next renewal and look elsewhere. It would be a pity because I have found that it has helped me learn the basics of French, Italian and Chess and I can live with the Americanisation of the English. Perhaps Duolingo needs to bring back more real people and not be so reliant on AI - I have Google Translate for that and it's free.

Duolingo is good for learning languages, but there are bugs and the pronunciation decently sounds like AI and doesn't sound real. Also the achievements suck and if you get things wrong it doesn't help you unless you pay for unlimited.

I like Duolingo,it is a fun app,with cute features,funny at times,fun learning features YET to a point!

Here comes the "Big But"

This is suppose to be a learning app,then tell me why the regular Leaderboard Tournaments and people just racing for the XPs to be on top.It is annoying to see that it seems people are just watching how you crawl along learning,then they double their XPs within 1/2 an hour. I don't care,but I prefer to learn with REAL SERIOUS learners!!!

Duolingo should have a separate place for students and us who just want to learn for fun,not for marks!!! That way normal learners who just want to learn can learn undistracted.
What is the ridiculous purpose of constant tournaments ? If I don't want to participate,I have to slow down to learn or skip some hours of good useful learning or they move me a level down,which I earned proudly.That is truly not fair!!!

I am tired of those nonsense tournaments and they are no longer fun for me and many who I know who do Duolingo.

Please Duolingo take this in consideration and think about this!?!

It will be much more of a fun experience for a Duolingo learner, especially when you are NOT a student!!!

Thank you!

They automatically renewed my annual subscription and charged my account without sending any confirmation or warning email beforehand. I tried finding a human support form in the settings menu, but everything just loops back to an automated chatbot.