Jordan Bevan
What is Duolingo?
According to Google, searches for apps related to learning a language have grown 85% year over year. The people in quarantine who want to develop new skills have started to have a tendency towards popular language learning apps.
Duolingo is one of those most popular language learning platforms that offers personalized education to users who want to learn a language. Supporting more than 38 languages including both endangered and the most speaking languages.
Duolingo’s language content is mostly created by language learning scientists, machine learning engineers, and AI experts.
The language learning app offers Duolingo users different kinds of content including quizzes, podcasts, in-person events, and interactive stories. Duolingo app supports reading, listening, and writing at the same time to let users build grammar, speaking, and vocabulary skills.
What is Duolingo Plus?
Duolingo is a free to use and free to download app. Duolingo Plus is Duolingo’s paid subscription package that enables users to
- Avoid in-app ads
- Download lessons to continue learning offline
- Have unlimited access with unlimited hearts
- Unlock monthly streak repair
- Track their progress with mastery quizzes
- Have unlimited skill test-outs
Duolingo Plus costs $9.99 per month with a discount if you pay for yearly subscription ($79.99)
What languages does Duolingo offer? As of July 2021, English speaking Duolingo users are offered the following language courses:
| Spanish (26.2M learners) | Dutch (1.49M learners) | Indonesian (531K learners) |
| French (16.4M learners) | Latin (1.35M learners) | Scottish Gaelic (424K learners) |
| German (8.86M learners) | Swedish (1.20M learners) | Welsh (461K learners) |
| Japanese (10.3M learners) | Greek (1.05M learners) | Romanian (466K learners) |
| Italian (5.79M learners) | Irish (1.10M learners) | Czech (413K learners) |
| Korean (6.51M learners) | Polish (942K learners) | Swahili (363K learners) |
| Chinese (5.04M learners) | Norwegian (932K learners) | Hungarian (305K learners) |
| Russian (4.03M learners) | Hebrew (846K learners) | Ukrainian (314K learners) |
| Hindi (4.74M learners) | Vietnamese (818K learners) | Klingon (292K learners) |
| Arabic (3.10M learners) | Hawaaiian (559K learners) | Esperanto (279K learners) |
| Portuguese (2.36M learners) | Danish (522K learners) | Navajo (272K learners) |
| Turkish (2.39M learners) | High Valyrian (452K learners) | Finnish (573K learners) |
Duolingo Usage & Download Statistics (2021)
- As of the first quarter of 2021, Duolingo has reached 40 million monthly active users, up from 30 million in December 2019. (Techcrunch)
- As of July 2021, English is the most popular language that is preferred by millions of Duolingo users.
- Each month, approximately 7 billion Duolingo exercises are completed. (Duolingo)
- An average Duolingo user spends 10 minutes per day in the app to learn a language.
- In May 2021, Duolingo mobile app counted more than seven hundred thousand daily active users worldwide via the Google Play Store. Its monthly active users via the Google Play Store for the same time period were almost 3.6 million worldwide.
- In May 2021, language learning app Duolingo had approximately 16.8 million monthly active users on iPhone and iPad worldwide.
- In April 2021, downloads of Duolingo through the Google Play Store amounted to almost 3 million worldwide. For the same time period, Duolingo measured approximately 1.14 million downloads worldwide from the Apple App Store.
| Duolingo Downloads (iOS & Android) | |
| 2015 | 120 million |
| 2016 | 150 million |
| 2017 | 200 million |
| 2018 | 300 million |
| 2019 | 385 million |
| 2020 | 500 million |
- In March 2020, Duolingo.com was the second most popular online education website with 55.6 million website visitors. (Statista)
- New sign-ups of Duolingo increased by 108% from March 9 to March 30, 2020. For the United States, the growth of sign ups was 148%. (Business Insider)
- There are more than 100,000 ‘Duolingo for Schools’ teacher accounts. (Duolingo)
- In February 2020, Duolingo was ranked #2 in the most popular education apps used by children in the United Kingdom, was used by 28%. (Statista)
- A person with no knowledge of Spanish would need to spend in Duolingo between 26 and 49 hours (or 34 hours on average) to cover the material for the first college semester of Spanish. (NY City University)
- In May 2020, Duolingo was ranked #3 worldwide in both App Store downloads and Google Play downloads. (Sensor Tower)
- Spanish is the most popular language course among the English speakers (28.3 million learners), followed by French with 16.2 million learners (Duolingo)
Duolingo Revenue Statistics (2021)
- Duolingo filed for an IPO in late June 2021.
- In the first quarter of 2021, Duolingo revenue reached $55.4 million.
| Duolingo Revenue | |
| 2017 | $13 million |
| 2018 | $36 million |
| 2019 | $78 million |
| 2020 | $161 million |
| Q1 2021 | $55.4 million |
- As of September 2020, only 3 percent of Duolingo users pay. (Techcrunch)
- Duolingo had reached a $2.4 billion valuation in after raising $35 million in November 2020.
| Duolingo Valuation | |
| 2015 | $470 million |
| 2018 | $700 million |
| 2019 | $1.5 billion |
| 2020 | $2.4 billion |
