It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that Duo, formally known as The Duolingo Owl, is dead.

The internet mourned. Social media bypassers got curious. And marketers took notes.

12 days later Duolingo posted:

Duo is back

Legends don’t die

To say Duolingo’s marketing team is talented is an understatement. LinkedIn users write posts on it and email marketers rave about it in inboxes. For good reason.

Duo’s crush on Dua Lipa, his battle with Google Translate—-the owl is so “human” that people love him and in turn, the brand.

But what about the app, the real business? Is that as great as the “brand”?

Five years ago, I took up Spanish with Duo and quit three days later. I was learning the same sentences for 2-3 days. This month, I downloaded it for German.

As someone who likes a seamless learning experience, there were too many elements. For instance, you have five hearts, and with every mistake you lose one. Once you’re out of hearts, you can buy more with gems, which (I believe) you earn through playing/learning.

After learning the same words for three days, I quit, again. Then, I started researching on the alternatives.

The Need for Alternatives

Duolingo has 37.2 million daily active users and a market cap of $17.5 billion (more than Coursera and Udemy combined).

With a 54% growth in daily active users (DAUs) from the previous quarter and a 4X increase since 2020, Duolingo is soaring. But, as the number of users increases, so do the reported problems.

Lack of grammatical knowledge

Duolingo doesn’t explicitly teach you grammar rules, which are essential to constructing sentences. For instance, the usage of many adjectives in French is based on gender. Once you know this rule initially, you’ll apply it in the future.

Duolingo doesn’t state such rules and in one of its blog posts, it claims that explicit information about grammar is (mostly) not necessary for successful learning and we can learn it implicitly (by noticing patterns as we’re learning).

THE notifications

Duolingo is known to be “unhinged” in their marketing and notifications. People are loving the marketing, but users are disliking the owl’s tone.

For Debugger, a user shared that when she was taking time off the app, it sent her incessant notifications (‘We haven’t seen you in a while’, ‘Keep Duo happy!’, etc). The last straw was the app sending her one final, passive-aggressive message—-‘These reminders don’t seem to be working. We’ll stop sending them for now.’

On Reddit too, learners are upset with these notifications and the time they receive them.

Learning without conversations

A common complaint is from the self-aware, streak-maintaining learners who think they haven’t learned much from the app even after months. As a Trustpilot user said, “…teaches about pink avocados, toast and dancing in museums with my grandmother.”

People learn a language to understand and speak it. But I didn’t learn the basics of conversing on Duolingo like introductions, ordering food, etc.

The non-existent customer support

At Class Central, after observing the r/Duolingo sub-reddit for months, we’ve noticed learners are breaking multi-year streaks and canceling subscriptions due to growing frustration with the platform.

Reddit moderators from r/Duolingo contacted Luis von Ahn, the CEO, in December 2024 with detailed concerns, but his January response defended the status quo while focusing on automating support functions.

The demand for support and the lack of it was so overwhelming that the moderators of the r/Duolingo community announced they would no longer serve as Duolingo’s unofficial customer support channel. They implemented immediate changes, including removing troubleshooting guides, and launched a petition demanding Duolingo hire more customer service employees, arguing that the burden shouldn’t fall on volunteering community members.

These issues, teamed with others such as inappropriate language for kids, the lack of choice in learning, excessive gamification, and more have paved the way for other apps that aim to create holistic learning experiences rather than gamified ones. Here they are:

Busuu

Cost: Free (with ads)

Premium subscription: $83/year, $50/6 months, or $14/month (has ongoing discounts)

Busuu is one of my favorites! It trains you for conversations without excessive repetitions, in the backdrop of a fun user interface.

It also creates breaks between lessons to teach grammar rules for proper conjugations and sentences. Their grammar section is accessible too, making it easy to switch from practical lessons to theory, especially when you’re unsure.

Busuu is also a Reddit favorite with people claiming to prefer it over Duolingo.

Pro tip: I got 60% off after using it for a day which brought my yearly subscription to around $15. So instead of getting a subscription when you sign up, check for a good deal in the upcoming days.

Babbel

Cost: $29.85/3 months, $50.70/6 months, $83.40/year, $299 lifetime

Babbel is another crowd-puller! The interface is sophisticated and the experience feels genuine. The seamless yet comprehensive app makes language learning a breeze, giving you the option to opt for live sessions, work on your vocabulary, and talk to an AI bot.

It also asked about my long-term goals and fixed a time to send me a reminder to learn every day (how considerate!).

While the app needs a subscription plan (initial conversations with an AI bot and two love conversations are free), it justifies those charges (for me) because of its holistic learning experience.

Mango

Cost: Free

If you want an app that is conversation-focused, this is it. Mango is a simple, no-fluff app that aims for your fluency in conversations.

Apart from the grammar rules, it decodes the phrases and the place’s culture. For instance, one cultural note explained the formal and informal ways to say ‘How are you?’ in French while another one spoke about the act of kissing on the cheek in France.

Mango is an app for dedicated learners who don’t need gamified versions to stay motivated. The solid structure and the knowledge about the language and the place seem enough to keep learning.

LingoDeer

Cost: $14.99/month, $39.99/3 months, or $79.99/year, $159.99 (lifetime) (has ongoing discounts)

LingoDeer is vocabulary-heavy, but it introduces you to relevant words. With their ‘story listening’ and ‘story speaking’ features, the app helps you practice the words in conversations. Plus, it has a ‘Leaning Tips’ section that discusses grammar rules.

LingoDeer also has listening lessons that help get acquainted with the language. The vocabulary lessons can feel repetitive but the diverse mediums of learning (writing, speaking, and listening) help with understanding sentence structures.

Overall, LingoDeer comes across as a pleasant and efficient platform as it encompasses the prerequisites of learning a language.

Pimsleur

Cost: $20/month (approx), $205 for all-access (approx)

This is one of the great ones! Pimsleur ensures you get those r’s and ‘tsch’s right. It pushes you to perfect your pronunciation with research-backed learning methods.

It has around 30-minute units that help you listen and practice phrases. The aim is to build your confidence and your long-term memory. The best part is that you can take the units during your work commute, walk, or even swap it with your podcast.

You get to apply the vocabulary to quizzes and challenges, which help you ruminate the words and phrases even more.

Pimsleur is the ideal app if you love learning languages or are traveling for education or work. It’s more expensive than the rest, but the wholesome learning makes it seem like a good deal (again, for me).

Cool fact: Pimsleur is based on the Pimsleur Method of language learning by Dr. Paul Pimsleur, a French-English Linguist. And the FBI, State Department, and more use it for mastering languages.

Anki

Cost: Open source and free (paid for iPhone users)

One of the complaints that Duolingo users have is the lack of choice in lessons and learning styles. Anki gives you the right to choose what you learn and how you learn it.

The approach is fun—learn with downloadable and customizable flashcards. This is great for language learners as you can download one of their community-shared flashcard decks and start right away.

The best part about Anki is its flexibility—adjust review time, change the flashcard layout, and more. Plus, you can embed videos, images, and audio to strengthen your speech.

Anki is intuitive, it captures your learning needs and helps you remember better. As one of the users said, “It guarantees I will remember something, with minimal effort. That is, Anki makes memory a choice.”

When I tried these apps, I realized that language learning doesn’t need fluff or games to motivate you to practice. It can be a pure, interesting, and enriching experience—something these apps (aim to) offer.

I hope this selection helps you speak like a local and fit in during your work, travel, and life adventures!