Best European Alternatives to Duolingo
Looking for a European alternative to Duolingo? Duolingo is a US company with a substantial advertising business, and its gamified model is better at building streaks than at getting you to speak.
Europe has the deepest bench in language learning of any software category — from Berlin-built conversation courses to Estonian adaptive engines and live classes with certified teachers.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA or Switzerland, and processes customer data in Europe. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
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Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
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Compliance and pricing check
GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.
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Position on this page
Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.
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7 European Alternatives to Duolingo
Babbel
Conversation-first courses written by linguists
Busuu
Courses with corrections from native speakers
Lingoda
Live online classes with certified teachers
Memrise
Vocabulary through spaced repetition and native-speaker video
Mondly
41 languages with speech recognition and AR lessons
Lingvist
Adaptive vocabulary training that skips what you know
Speakly
Teaches the 4,000 statistically most useful words first
Key takeaways
- Duolingo's entire course library is free, so leaving it costs between €6 and €80 a month depending on which tool you pick.
- Duolingo, Inc. is listed on NASDAQ as DUOL and reports daily active users to shareholders, which is what the streak mechanics exist to protect.
- The April 2025 AI-first announcement is the substantive change: content that was contracted out to people is now partly generated.
- Three of the seven tools here are not a clean escape from a large listed company — Busuu is a London company owned by Chegg, Mondly is Romanian but owned by Pearson, and Memrise sits in London outside the EEA.
- Only Lingoda puts a qualified teacher in front of you, and it is roughly ten times the price of anything else on this page for that reason.
Why people leave Duolingo
Leaving Duolingo is the only switch on this site that reliably makes your bill go up. The course library is free, all of it, and has been for fifteen years. Babbel starts around €6 a month, Lingvist and Speakly around €10, and Lingoda is about €80 depending on how many classes you book. Anyone selling you a cheaper European Duolingo has not looked at a price list.
So the reason to move is not the invoice, it is what the free price is funded by. Duolingo, Inc. is a Pittsburgh company listed on NASDAQ as DUOL, and the number it reports to shareholders is how many people opened the app today.
Everything the app does to keep you — the streak, the leagues, the evening notification, the character who looks disappointed — serves a retention metric first and a curriculum second. That is not a conspiracy, it is a business model, and it explains why the app is so much better at keeping you than at teaching you.
The second reason arrived in April 2025, when Duolingo said it would become "AI-first" and stop paying contractors for work that generative models could do. The internal note asked staff to accept "occasional small hits on quality" rather than miss the moment.
Users answered by cancelling and by ending long streaks in protest, and the company pulled its own Instagram and TikTok posts. If you are choosing a course written by employed linguists over one assembled by a model, that announcement is the reason the question is now live.
- The streak is a shareholder metric Duolingo is a listed company whose headline figure is daily active users, and the gamification is engineered against that figure. Streak freezes, leagues, hearts and the push notification at nine in the evening are retention mechanics, not teaching mechanics. The tell is that you can protect a two-year streak with one-minute lessons and learn nothing, and the app will congratulate you every day for it.
- The content strategy changed in 2025 In April 2025 Duolingo announced it would become AI-first and would stop giving contractors work that a model could do. Whatever you think of the policy, it changes the answer to a simple question: who wrote the sentence you are being taught? On Babbel it is a linguist working on that specific language pair, and on Lingoda it is a certified teacher in the room with you. That difference used to be a matter of degree and is now a matter of kind.
- Speaking exercises are voice recordings Every pronunciation check and every Duolingo Max conversation produces a recording of you speaking, held by a US corporation with no European region to select. For most learners that is a small thing. For a public employee, a lawyer or anyone whose voice is an identifier in another system, it is worth knowing that the recording sits under a different legal order from the one you live in, and that Max's conversation features were built on OpenAI's models rather than Duolingo's own.
- The catalogue is enormous and shallow Duolingo teaches more than forty languages, which no European app comes close to matching, and the depth is uneven across them. A well-resourced course carries you a long way; a thin one runs out while you are still a beginner, and there is no fixed standard telling you which you are in. The European tools here cover between five and forty-one languages and tend to know which they do well, because none of them is trying to teach Klingon.
What you have to replace, not just match
Duolingo is doing three jobs for you at once, and the switch only works if you name which one you actually want back.
The first is the habit: a short daily session you do without deciding to. The second is vocabulary: several thousand words drilled until they stick. The third is the course, meaning grammar taught in an order somebody chose deliberately. Duolingo is outstanding at the first, decent at the second and thin on the third, which is why long-term users often have a large passive vocabulary and no idea how the tenses work.
Babbel and Mondly replace the course. Lingvist, Speakly and Memrise replace the vocabulary, and do it faster. Nothing here replaces the habit, because no European app on this list has spent a decade and a listed company's engineering budget on making you come back. Expect to supply that yourself, and treat it as the real cost of leaving rather than the subscription fee.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Babbel | Berlin, Germany | From about €6/month on longer plans; Babbel Live higher | EU (Germany) |
| #2 | Busuu | London, United Kingdom | Free tier / Premium from about €6/month | United Kingdom and Spain; US parent company |
| #3 | Lingoda | Berlin, Germany | From about €80/month depending on class volume | EU (Germany) |
| #4 | Memrise | London, United Kingdom | Free tier / Pro from about €8/month | United Kingdom (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #5 | Mondly | Brasov, Romania | Free tier / Premium from about €10/month; lifetime option | EU (Romania); UK parent company |
| #6 | Lingvist | Tallinn, Estonia | Limited free tier / Unlimited from about €10/month | EU (Estonia) |
| #7 | Speakly | Tallinn, Estonia | Limited free trial / from about €10/month | EU (Estonia) |
How each alternative compares to Duolingo
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Duolingo is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Duolingo is.
Best for: Adults who want a structured course rather than a daily score
Babbel GmbH has been in Berlin since 2007 and employs linguists to write each course for a specific pair of languages. Set against Duolingo's April 2025 commitment to let models take over contracted content work, that is the sharpest available contrast on this page: two products answering the question "who wrote this sentence" in opposite directions.
The experience differs in a way that is obvious within a week. Duolingo hands you a short exercise and a reward; Babbel hands you a dialogue you might plausibly have, with an explanation of why the grammar does what it does, and no league table waiting at the end. Adults who found Duolingo pleasant but weightless usually describe this as the first time the language felt explained rather than drilled.
What you give up is the free tier and the breadth. Only the first lesson is free, the catalogue is 14 languages against Duolingo's forty-plus, and nothing in the product will nag you to come back. From about €6 a month on longer plans, with Babbel Live classes priced well above that.
What Babbel does better than Duolingo
- Courses written by linguists for each language pair, where Duolingo runs one curriculum shape across its catalogue
- German company and EU processing, against a Pittsburgh corporation with no European region
- Grammar is explained rather than inferred from repetition, which is the gap most long-term Duolingo users report
- Speech recognition and a spaced-repetition review manager without hearts, leagues or a streak to defend
- Babbel Live adds classes with real teachers, which Duolingo has never offered at any tier
Where Babbel is a step down from Duolingo
- No free course library at all — only the first lesson, where Duolingo gives away everything
- 14 languages against more than forty
- Nothing in the product works to rebuild the daily habit you are leaving behind
- Babbel Live costs considerably more than the app subscription
Standout against Duolingo. It is the clearest human-written alternative on this page at a moment when the incumbent has publicly decided to write less of its own material by hand.
- Which law reaches it. United Kingdom and Spain; US parent company. Duolingo is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU/UK.
- Source code. Closed source, as Duolingo is.
- Independently checked. McGraw Hill certificates.
Best for: Learners who want feedback on language they produced rather than a mark
Busuu Online S.L. operates from London and Madrid, and its distinguishing feature is that other learners who are native speakers correct your written and spoken exercises for free. Duolingo checks your answer against an expected string and tells you whether it matched; Busuu gets someone to read what you actually said and explain what is wrong with it.
It also keeps a free tier that is worth using, which matters more here than on most pages, because the step down from a free Duolingo to a paid subscription is the friction that stops people leaving. Premium is around €6 a month, and the McGraw Hill certificates give you something to show an employer, which Duolingo's XP does not.
The honest caveat is ownership. Chegg, Inc. bought Busuu in November 2021 for about $436 million, so leaving Duolingo for Busuu swaps one American listed parent for another. If your reason for going is jurisdiction rather than teaching quality, this entry is not the answer and Babbel or Lingvist is.
What Busuu does better than Duolingo
- Native speakers correct your written and spoken work for free, where Duolingo grades against a stored answer
- A free tier substantial enough to test properly before paying anything
- McGraw Hill certificates give you a level you can show someone, which XP and streaks cannot
- Structured study plans with offline mode, so the course survives a commute without signal
Where Busuu is a step down from Duolingo
- A London company owned by Chegg, Inc., a US listed company, so neither EU establishment nor an escape from the corporate jurisdiction argument
- Correction quality depends entirely on which volunteer picks up your submission
- 14 languages against Duolingo's forty-plus
- Community response times are unpredictable, so feedback is not guaranteed to arrive when you need it
Standout against Duolingo. A human being reading your sentence and explaining the error is the one thing Duolingo has never done, at any price, on any plan.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Duolingo is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Duolingo is.
- Independently checked. CEFR-aligned certificates.
Best for: Learners with a deadline who need to speak and be corrected by a teacher
Lingoda GmbH sells live online classes with certified teachers from Berlin, and it belongs on a Duolingo page because it is what the app is not. There is a person in the room, the group is small enough that you will be asked something directly, and the curriculum follows CEFR so completing a level means something outside the product.
The price gap is the whole conversation: free against roughly €80 a month, depending on how many classes you book. Nobody moves from Duolingo to Lingoda to save money. They move because a job, a visa, a university place or a relocation has put a date on the calendar, and four hundred days of streak have not produced a person who can speak.
Five languages only, and teacher quality varies the way it does in any organisation that employs hundreds of them. Trial classes exist, and taking one is the fastest way to find out whether the gap between what you recognise and what you can produce is as wide as most Duolingo users discover it to be.
What Lingoda does better than Duolingo
- A qualified teacher corrects you in real time, which no tier of Duolingo has ever offered
- CEFR-aligned certificates that a university or employer accepts, where Duolingo progress converts to nothing
- Classes run around the clock, so the habit attaches to a booking rather than to a notification
- German company with EU processing and no voice recordings held by a US corporation
- Small groups make silence impossible, which is the failure mode of every self-paced app
Where Lingoda is a step down from Duolingo
- About €80 a month against a product that costs nothing, the largest price jump on this page
- Only five languages, against more than forty on Duolingo
- Requires booking and showing up at a time, which is precisely the commitment app learners avoid
- Teacher quality varies between individuals in a way software never does
Standout against Duolingo. It is the only option here where you cannot stay quiet, which is why it works and why it costs what it costs.
- Which law reaches it. United Kingdom (adequacy decision, outside the EEA). Duolingo is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. UK/EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Duolingo is.
Best for: Learners who can read the language but freeze when someone speaks it
Memrise Ltd is in London and built its listening material out of clips of native speakers filmed talking normally, complete with speed, accent and swallowed syllables. That is a different training signal from clean studio audio, and it addresses the specific complaint of the long-term app user: the words are all there and a real person says them too fast to catch.
Underneath sits spaced repetition that schedules itself, so there is nothing to configure, and an AI conversation tutor for low-stakes production practice. The free tier is usable and Pro is around €8 a month.
Two honest marks against it on this page. It is a UK company, so it depends on the adequacy decision rather than being established in the EEA, which matters if the point of leaving Duolingo was jurisdiction. And Memrise has rebuilt its product more than once, retiring things users relied on, which is a different kind of instability from the one you are escaping but instability all the same.
What Memrise does better than Duolingo
- Listening drilled on recordings of people talking at natural speed, not on generated or slowed audio
- Spaced repetition scheduled automatically, so the review load is handled without you tuning anything
- A usable free tier, which softens the step down from a product that costs nothing
- An AI tutor for speaking practice where nobody is judging the first attempt
Where Memrise is a step down from Duolingo
- London company under the UK adequacy decision rather than EU establishment
- Weak on grammar explanation, so it builds vocabulary and leaves structure to something else
- The product has changed direction repeatedly and removed features people depended on
- Community-made courses vary wildly in quality, with no obvious signal of which are good
Standout against Duolingo. It trains the ear on speech as it is actually spoken, which is the skill a Duolingo streak measurably does not build.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Romania); UK parent company. Duolingo is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Duolingo is.
Best for: Speakers of a European language other than English who are tired of the detour
Mondly is built in Brașov and teaches 41 languages, and it is unusual in letting you start from a first language other than English. That second point is the one to check against your own situation: if you are Polish, Dutch or Portuguese and learning Spanish, ask whether the course you want exists from your language or only from English, because routing every explanation through a third grammar is a tax that English speakers never notice they are not paying.
It is also the closest thing here to Duolingo in shape — daily lessons, speech recognition, a chatbot for conversation practice, leaderboards, plus AR and VR lessons that are more than a gimmick for spatial vocabulary. A learner who liked the rhythm of Duolingo and wanted it in their own language will recognise the product immediately.
Pearson plc acquired Mondly in May 2022, so the operating company is Romanian and the owner is a British FTSE company. On breadth Mondly is the only tool here in Duolingo's league; on depth it is thinner than the focused competitors, and the smaller languages get noticeably repetitive.
What Mondly does better than Duolingo
- 41 languages, with courses that start from first languages other than English, so you need not learn Spanish through English
- EU processing in Romania, where Duolingo offers no European region at all
- A lifetime purchase option, which no other tool here and no Duolingo tier offers
- Chatbot and speech practice that let you produce language without a person listening
- The closest thing on this page to Duolingo's daily rhythm, so the habit transfers more easily
Where Mondly is a step down from Duolingo
- Owned by Pearson plc, a British listed company, so this is not an escape from corporate scale
- Less depth per language than Babbel or Lingvist, and repetitive content in the smaller catalogues
- Keeps the leaderboards and streak logic you may be leaving Duolingo to get away from
- Still fewer languages than Duolingo, despite being the broadest option here
Standout against Duolingo. It is the only tool on this page where a Dutch or Polish speaker can learn without English sitting in the middle of every explanation.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Estonia). Duolingo is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Duolingo is.
Best for: Adults returning to a language they half know and resenting the beginner units
Lingvist Technologies is in Tallinn, and it opens by testing what you already know rather than by starting you at the beginning. For anyone with school French or a year of Spanish behind them, that removes the three weeks Duolingo spends confirming you can say hello, and it is the reason returning learners rate it so much higher than beginners do.
The other half of the argument is what is missing. There is no streak, no league, no hearts and nothing that lights up your phone at nine in the evening. If your objection to Duolingo is that the game has become the point, this is the cleanest expression of the opposite position available in Europe: words ordered by how often they actually occur, shown in real sentences, and a session that ends when the useful work is done.
The scope is narrow and stated plainly. Lingvist teaches vocabulary. It does not teach grammar and does not train speaking, the catalogue is small, and the interface gives you nothing to feel good about. About €10 a month for unlimited use, with a limited free tier.
What Lingvist does better than Duolingo
- Tests your existing vocabulary first, so a returning learner is not sent back to the first unit
- Words ordered by frequency, so time goes to language you will actually encounter
- No streak, leagues, hearts or evening notifications — the retention machinery is simply absent
- Estonian company with EU processing and no US parent anywhere in the chain
- Sessions are short because the work is finished, not because a timer rewarded you
Where Lingvist is a step down from Duolingo
- Vocabulary only: no grammar course and no speaking practice at all
- A small language catalogue next to Duolingo's forty-plus
- Austere to the point of joyless, which is a real problem if the game was what kept you going
- Needs pairing with something that teaches structure, so it is rarely a complete replacement on its own
Standout against Duolingo. It is the only tool here that deliberately refuses every mechanic Duolingo uses to keep you, and it does the vocabulary work faster than any of them.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Estonia). Duolingo is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Duolingo is.
Best for: Learners who want to be functional in months rather than complete in years
Speakly OÜ is also from Tallinn, and it is built on a single claim carried through the whole product: learn the 4,000 statistically most useful words first and you reach usable conversation far sooner than a themed syllabus allows. Week one gives you language you will hear in week one, rather than colours and classroom objects.
Against Duolingo the contrast is about ordering rather than gamification. A Duolingo tree advances by unit, so what you learn is decided by where you are in the path. Speakly decides by frequency, which feels arbitrary for a fortnight and then starts paying out when you catch a word in the wild that you were taught deliberately. Listening uses natural-speed speech, and the music integration gives you a form of daily exposure that people actually sustain.
It is the smallest company on this page, the catalogue is limited, and grammar coverage is light enough that structure has to come from somewhere else. From about €10 a month after a limited free trial.
What Speakly does better than Duolingo
- Vocabulary ordered by real-world frequency rather than by the next unit in a path
- Natural-speed listening from the start, not slowed audio that flatters your comprehension
- Situational practice tied to contexts you will actually be in
- Estonian company, EU processing, no listed parent and no voice data leaving Europe
- Music in the target language as daily exposure, which is the only kind most people keep up
Where Speakly is a step down from Duolingo
- A small company with a limited language catalogue, against Duolingo's forty-plus
- Light grammar coverage, so it is a component rather than a whole course
- The frequency-first order feels random until it starts working, and some learners quit before that
- No free course library, where Duolingo gives away everything it has
Standout against Duolingo. It is the only tool here that decides what to teach you next from how often the word occurs in speech rather than from where you are in a path.
What actually breaks when you switch
The habit breaks first and it breaks immediately. Duolingo has spent a decade engineering the reasons you open it, and none of these tools has anything comparable. Whatever you choose, attach it to a fixed point in the day or to a booked class in week one, because the software will not come looking for you and most people who lapse do it inside a fortnight.
Then there is placement. Nothing transfers — no XP, no tree position, no word list — and Duolingo's progress is measured in units that map to no external standard, so you cannot tell a new provider where you are. Expect a placement test, and treat it as useful information rather than as lost ground. Lingvist works this out in the first session; Lingoda and Busuu will put you on a CEFR level.
Finally, do the sum before you commit. You are moving from nothing a month to somewhere between €6 and €80, and the cheapest version of that decision is to pick one tool and pay annually rather than to collect three subscriptions that each cover a third of what Duolingo did. The people who regret leaving are almost always the ones who bought a course, a vocabulary app and a class and then used none of them properly.
Will any of these cost less than Duolingo?
No. Duolingo gives away every course it has, funded by advertising and by the minority who upgrade, and no European company on this page can match a price of nothing. The cheapest real commitment here is Babbel or Busuu Premium at roughly €6 a month on a long plan, and the most expensive is Lingoda at about €80, which buys live classes rather than software.
Busuu and Mondly do run free tiers, and Busuu's is usable rather than decorative, so the step up from free is smaller there than elsewhere. Memrise also keeps a free level. But none of them gives away the full course the way Duolingo does.
If cost is your only objection to Duolingo, there is no move to make and this page will not pretend otherwise. The move makes sense when what bothers you is who wrote the material, who holds the recordings, or the fact that four hundred days of streak have not produced a conversation.
Is a European app automatically a European company?
Not on this page, and it matters enough to check before you switch. Busuu operates from London and Madrid as Busuu Online S.L., and its parent is Chegg, Inc., an American listed company that bought it in November 2021 for around $436 million. Mondly is built in Brașov and owned by Pearson plc, which is British and FTSE-listed. Memrise Ltd is a London company, so it relies on the UK adequacy decision rather than sitting inside the EEA.
That leaves Babbel GmbH in Berlin, Lingoda GmbH in Berlin, Lingvist Technologies in Tallinn and Speakly OÜ in Tallinn as the four whose ownership and establishment are both inside the EU.
If your objection to Duolingo is specifically that a US corporation holds your account, three of these seven move you to a different large listed company rather than out of the pattern. That is worth knowing in advance rather than discovering from a privacy policy.
What happens to my streak, my XP and my vocabulary?
None of it transfers. There is no export format that another app reads, and no equivalent of the Duolingo tree to resume. Your account history is yours to request a copy of under GDPR, and what arrives is a record of your activity rather than a level any other course can start you at.
The practical consequence is a placement problem. Duolingo's progress is measured in its own units, which do not map to the Common European Framework, so you cannot tell a new provider where you are. Lingvist handles this best by testing what you already know in the first session; Lingoda and Busuu use CEFR levels, so a placement test puts you somewhere defensible.
The streak itself is the harder loss and people underestimate it. A long streak is sunk cost with a number attached, and the apps here have nothing comparable. Several people find that breaking it deliberately, on a day they choose, is easier than letting it lapse by accident.
Do any of these teach you to actually hold a conversation?
One does, and it is not an app. Lingoda runs live classes with certified teachers in groups small enough that you cannot sit quietly, aligned to CEFR with certificates at the end of a level. That is the thing Duolingo has never sold at any price, including on Max.
The closest software answers are Memrise's AI tutor and Mondly's chatbot, both of which let you produce language without a person judging you. They remove the fear, which is useful, and they do not remove the gap: a model will understand you when a person would not.
Duolingo Max added roleplay and a video call with a character, built on OpenAI models. If that is the feature keeping you, compare it against an hour with a teacher rather than against another app, because that is the comparison it invites.
Which one to pick
If you are leaving because you want to know that a person wrote the material, Babbel is the direct answer, and the fact that it employs linguists per language pair is the thing to weigh against Duolingo's stated shift towards generated content.
If you are leaving because a date is coming and you still cannot speak, none of the apps solve that and Lingoda does. It costs roughly ten times more than anything else here because it is buying a qualified person's hour, and that is the only thing on this page that reliably closes the gap.
If the streak became the point and you resent it, Lingvist and Speakly are the two tools built by people who agree with you: no leagues, no hearts, no evening notification, and vocabulary ordered by usefulness rather than by unit.
And if what you actually wanted was Duolingo in your own language rather than through English, Mondly is the only realistic choice — while remembering that Pearson owns it, Chegg owns Busuu, and a listed parent company is exactly the thing three of these seven do not save you from.
Frequently Asked Questions
Babbel if you want a proper course written for your language pair. Lingoda if the point is to speak and you have a deadline.
Lingvist or Speakly if you already know some of the language and want the vocabulary gap closed efficiently. Memrise if your weakness is understanding people at normal speed. Mondly if you want to learn from your own first language rather than through English. The wrong question is which is best overall, because they are not doing the same job.
No, and this is the page where that claim collapses. Duolingo gives away its whole course catalogue; the cheapest option here is roughly €6 a month and the most expensive is roughly €80. Leaving Duolingo is a decision to start paying for something you currently get for nothing, in exchange for knowing who wrote it and where it is processed.
Because of the AI-first announcement in April 2025, which said the company would stop giving contractors work that generative models could handle and asked staff to accept occasional small hits on quality in exchange for speed. The reaction was loud: subscriptions cancelled, long streaks ended in protest, and Duolingo eventually removed its own Instagram and TikTok posts. Whether that changes the product you use is a judgement, but it is the event that made this comparison worth writing.
Speaking exercises and Duolingo Max conversations work by capturing what you say, so yes, audio of you is processed. Duolingo, Inc. is in Pittsburgh and offers no European region to select, so there is no configuration that keeps that processing inside the EU. Babbel, Lingoda, Lingvist and Speakly all process in the EU under companies established there.
No. There is no import path into any of these tools and no shared format for what Duolingo stores. You can ask Duolingo for a copy of your data under GDPR, which gives you a record rather than a resumable position. Plan on taking a placement test wherever you land, and treat that as the first useful thing the new tool does for you.
It is a European operation with an American parent. Busuu Online S.L. runs from London and Madrid and processes in the EU and UK, but Chegg, Inc. bought it in November 2021 and Chegg is a US listed company. If your objection to Duolingo is the corporate jurisdiction rather than the app, Busuu moves you sideways. If your objection is that nobody reads what you write, its free native-speaker corrections are the best answer on this page.
Far fewer. Duolingo carries more than forty, including several nobody else bothers with. Mondly is the only tool here in the same range at 41, Babbel and Busuu cover 14 each, and Lingoda covers five. Check that your language exists before you compare anything else, because for less common targets Duolingo may genuinely be the only option and the rest of this page is then academic.
It makes you come back. A decade of engineering has gone into the streak, the leagues and the notification timing, and no European app here has spent anything like that on retention. It is also free, and it covers more languages than any of them. Those three things are the product, and any honest comparison starts by admitting that you are giving them up.
Give it six weeks before judging, because the first fortnight feels worse by design. Without streak mechanics the new app does not chase you, so the habit has to come from a calendar entry or a fixed time of day rather than from the software. Learners who book something with a person in it — a Lingoda class, a Babbel Live session — cross that gap more often than learners who swap one app for another and hope.
Who worked on this review
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