Duolingo: Language Lessons

Duolingo Review: 40+ Courses, Energy Instead of Hearts

A Lesson Lasts About Ninety Seconds

The exercises are short and varied: a spoken Japanese word with four pictures to choose between, a Spanish sentence rebuilt from word tiles, a café scene in French where a character orders a coffee and you answer. Each takes seconds, and a lesson runs a couple of minutes — the format that made the app a habit rather than a course. The counter in the corner is energy, shown at 25, then 24, then 23 across the store screens: it falls as you practise and stops the session when it empties, which is the free tier's real ceiling and the replacement for the older hearts system.

Chess, Maths and Music Sit Beside the Languages

The course list opens with Spanish, French, German, Italian and Japanese, then chess, maths and music, then Chinese and Korean — over 40 courses reachable from one screen. The chess lessons are genuine puzzles, with a board, a prompt to find checkmate and an arrow showing the piece in question, and they use the same structure of short repetitions and instant correction. Whether spreading into other subjects strengthens or dilutes the product is arguable, but the teaching method itself is not language-specific, and it transfers better than it has any right to.

Streaks, Adverts and $83.99 a Year

The streak screen is the retention engine: a day count, a week grid of ticks, and the owl promising to tell people about it. Free lessons carry advertising between them, and Apple rates the app 4+ while listing advertising and chat among the contents. The subscription is listed at $12.99 monthly and $83.99 annually, with higher tiers to $119.99 and gem packs from $0.99 to $19.99. Scale and consistency are both unusual: 500 million installs, 4.7 stars from 49.1 million Play reviews, and exactly 4.7 from 5.43 million App Store ratings.