I’ve been seeing lots of tiktoks and tweets and posts about people hating duolingo and uninstalling it and whatnot. Why? Why has everyone suddenly turned on duolingo I thought people loved them.
EDIT: Stole this from the replies for alternatives to duolingo (not my comments for each)
- Lingonaut.app – work in progress by duolingo subreddit, back to the tree, sentence discussions and ads/heart free, like duo but less monetization – 100% free
- Deutsche welle – just for German but great (just had a look at this for myself right now and its very good!)
- Busuu – same as below
- Babbel – its like if hello talk and DW combined
- Mango languages – like rosetta stone
- Pimsleur
Comments
Duolingo is firing employees to replace them with AI. That’s pretty awful.
A few days ago the CEO of duolingo posted that the company was going to be ‘AI-First’ and will be using AI to generate its courses from now on, and they’re going to let go of the rest of their course staff (which they partially did about a year ago). It’s textbook enshittification
Then the CEO posted a half-assed response to the backlash that basically was ‘we love ai fuck you’. The same post says that they’re going to use AI for performance reviews and hiring, so you could lose your job if a machine decides it.
That along with it slowly getting covered in ads and hiking the prices ever since they become a publicly traded company (i.e. shareholders first learning never) means that people have been slowly turning against it and now with this ‘AI-First’ bullshit it’s the straw the broke the camel’s back.
EDIT: Even the /r/duolingo subreddit is rebelling and building their own alternative, Lingonaut that’s supposed to be like old duolingo before they went public and made the changes
linked sources, the whole thing is a betrayal:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/duolingo-shifts-to-being-an-ai-first-company/
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2025/04/30/duolingo-ai-first-contract-workers-replaced/83366078007/
https://fortune.com/article/duolingo-ceo-says-getting-rid-of-contract-employees-replacing-them-with-ai/
They changed the whole layout into a single linear path, which took away users’ ability to choose what to study and when. It feels more like a game than actual learning now, and many long-time users feel like it’s less effective or dumbed down. Also, the app pushes ads and subscriptions pretty hard now, which annoys a lot of folks.
For many people, the joke about “the green owl chasing you for missing lessons” stopped being just a joke – the push notifications, emails, and constant reminders became really intrusive. Some say Duolingo feels like it’s shaming you for not learning every day, and that pressure gets overwhelming.
It was always trash and now it’s getting worse.
They’re moving from people first to AI first. So it’s gonna get shittier.
Becoming an AI content platform at the expense of actual humans losing their jobs.
Didn’t know about it going ai or people leaving it n complaining on TikTok and such.
I deleted the app today because I was trying to learn more in Vietnamese and I found quickly in the first few lessons that it pronounce a lot of words incorrectly.
I realized that I simply wasn’t learning any longer. It was more of going through motions. I also realized that I learned more about beating the app than learning Spanish.
It’s completely unusable with ads
Frequent mistakes
Pointless
Doulingo is all about Human to human communication, they recently added music lessons which it’s really nice showing they care about art, their silly memes tweets and TikToks really show they are down to earth and the fully understand their user base.
Well that’s what we all thought untill the CEO so happily and proudly announcing they are going to fire all their contractors and replace them with AI, really taking a big fat dooky doodoo on Human communication, on art and “understanding their user base”
Their CEO said the quite part outloud he doesn’t give a damn about the user base and only cares for quick short term profits.
They moved the kids math app from free to paid for with shitty in app commercials. Not what I want my 6 year old exposed to. I don’t care if you have to pay for it—no commercials for 6 year olds!!!
I’m looking forward to the new trend of “human-made” or “no AI was used in crafting this” software and graphics. Like the “bio” and “ethical” groceries.
Duolingo is just a game wrapped up as a learning tool
They started using more AI and the content’s gotten worse because of it
I left Duolingo when they removed the comments. Those were so useful and often taught me more than the exercises themselves.
5 years ago, Duolingo asked you once if you wanted to subscribe and you maybe watched one ad every 30 minutes
Now?
Asking you subscribe every 5 seconds and an ad every 30 seconds, another thing Capitalism has ruined
I’ve personally been getting totally incorrect sentences (probably because of the AI stuff)… I mainly use it to be exposed to vocabulary and sentence structures in a context where I can easily hover and see what things mean, but I think most language learners know you’ll have to move on from Duolingo eventually; this area of concern is not new news.
It just got pretty shit after they fired all those staff in favour of AI. Like I noticed it immediately for Korean at least!
I tried it again recently after a 10-year or so gap. It was noticeably worse and I stopped after a few days. The lessons were poorly designed and it didn’t let me control the difficulty.
It’s been going downhill for years.
AI is just the cherry of a shit ice cream
What do you guys recommend instead of Duolingo? Especially for Russian and Mandarin.
For me it’s the ads. Ads after every single lesson unless you pay for premium. I used it long enough ago where ads didn’t exist. It’s crazy how technology and learning methods improve over time but the service of those providing such services tends to decrease.
Just to pile on I’ve been in Spain for years and Duolingo hasn’t helped me very much. I even paid for premium for a while. Basic beginner words I should know weren’t included.
I learn more just picking up a children’s book.
I stopped using them when they removed my unlimited hearts from the classroom I joined ages ago….having limited hearts, or paying for hearts, makes NO sense from a language learning perspective
I quit duolingo back when they layed off translation staff and replaced them with Ai
I’ve noticed this too—feels like people are moving away from the repetitive lessons and constant nudges of Duolingo. I recently switched to Fully Fluent, and honestly, it’s been refreshing. It’s way more conversational and the AI-driven chats actually help you speak naturally. Babbel and Busuu seem good too, but Fully Fluent hits that sweet spot between casual practice and real fluency. Worth checking out if you’re shopping around!
Something I realised too late… Duolingo makes you really good at Duolingo. But kinda useless in the real world.
I am / have been a regular user of Duolingo for over 10 years and can only speak from my personal experience.
A few years ago, Duolingo was completely free and the courses were created and maintained by volunteers – and Duolingo promised that it was not for profit. Then at some point it did become about profit, people protested, many volunteers left, things changed a bit for users.
Then the free offer was increasingly restricted and the advertising annoyed me personally, but I never wanted to pay for a subscription. At some point, the “gamification” got out of hand for me and productive learning was no longer the focus and A/B tests were constantly taking place, which meant that something could change from one day to the next, and regularly without warning.
Now they want to dig deep into the AI box and lay off more employees, the advertising is increasing more and more and the fact that they use the mascot as an app symbol for emotional manipulation (the mascot becomes bitter and even dies if you don’t open the app) made me turn my back on Duolingo completely a year or two ago.
It’s a shame really, but I no longer feel comfortable on the platform, there seems to be less and less focus on productive learning and I certainly won’t be manipulated so cheaply.
That’s not quite the “current” thing that was asked about, but the general direction seems to be clearly visible.
I also don’t think that things will improve, they are too entrenched for that and there are better alternatives.
Fuck Duolingo and these CEOs that want engineers to become farmers. Plus any engineering oversight has been moved to India. If you think any of these ai companies give a damn about the middle class you are mistaken.
I think a lot of people are realizing that Duolingo’s great for keeping a habit going, but not so much for getting you past that “I know 1,000 random words but can’t hold a conversation” feeling. It’s fun, but when it comes to actually *using* the language, it can hit a wall.
I’ve been building something for myself that kind of fills that gap—it’s called Lunalingo (https://lunalingo.com). It generates short dialogues that reuse words you’ve marked as “unknown,” so you’re actually seeing vocab in context and getting natural repetition. Plus there’s audio for each line and a beginner mode that slows things down with emojis and easier phrasing.
It’s been way more helpful for me than just grinding gamified lessons. Might be useful for others who’ve hit that same “ok now what” point with Duo.
It’s really bad for actually learning a language and kinda always has been. Duolingo’s strength prior to going AI was in making language practice fun.
That said, as a Japanese speaker, some of its translations have always been a little goofy and that’s gotten noticeably worse over the years. With their pivot to AI, they’ve also laid off many of the actual human translators left.
Machine translation can be a decent tool for shopping or getting basic instructions that aren’t context-heavy. But we’re not at the point where it’s reliable for anything meant to communicate emotion and definitely it’s a long way from being a useful language study tool.
Your question was already answered but since you are compiling a list of Duolingo alternatives: The “Renshuu” app is so much better for learning japanese compared to Duolingo.
Because Duolingo is too needy, 100s of notifications and emails just for missing a day… they have no life of their own lol
They’re becoming an “AI first” company. Basically just firing every employee they can and replacing them by a shitty AI model.
Another alternative: Airlearn. The free version has no ads (for now), it has visuals for better vocab learning, and sections that actually explain language concepts out loud.
It’s also got all the streaks, leaderboards, and game features that Duolingo is famous for.
I’ve got probably incorrect, AI generated horseshit at home.
415 straight days, still can’t converse with someone in the language;)
Please add a note that Mango is available from many libraries for free to cardholders.
I’d actually stopped using Duolingo quite a few months ago when I’d heard they’d replaced a lot of staff with AI. I guess they’re doubling down on it now.
Appreciate the links to alternatives!
Personally I got rid of Duolingo just before the new year. They’d been on a downward spiral for a while. For me it was a combination of things specifically:
Now hearing about the CEO’s decision to go AI first, I’m so glad to be off their system.
Mango languages was only available free through my library. They’ve since switched to Transparent languages iirc!
Less game-ified though.
far worse experience, bad company. The definition of enshitification.
Cause duolingo is quitting everyone.
I won’t support any companies that prioritizes AI over people
Me personally i quit duo after they changed the ui, reworked the progression system and removed lots of useful stuff like in app forums where people could ask questions about the lesson and get replies from actual people and you also could read the basics there before starting the lesson that gave you context, very important stuff without it you basically have to guess what’s going on, they also removed some minor stuff like duo skins etc and recently they announced that theyll use ai so thats what made people so mad which is completely reasonable
Thanks for posting this. I hadn’t realized. I canceled my subscription which was set to renew this month.
Companies replacing humans who need to
Keep roofs over their heads with Ai need to be boycotted
Duolingo has been removing actually helpful features and selling out for years. So I wouldn’t call this new, but recently they announced they’re replacing most of their staff that curate the courses with ai tools.
Since the question has already been answered, I’d like to add that Duolingo is just a very inefficient way to learn a language.
For two reasons:
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great way to get exposed to the basics of a language and build a consistent learning habit, but if you’re serious about learning a language don’t stick with Duolingo for long.
I guess the recent surge is from Ai related things, but Duolingo has already been going down the “let’s ruin our own product” route for a while, removing things like community explanations etc, and if you actually want to learn, Duolingo isn’t great in the first place
Duolingo can be good as a way to get into learning a language and get a very basic understanding of some stuff but honestly I could never recommend going through a full course, it’s so extremely slow and just not worth it when there are many other self study methods which are free, or at least cheap, which are WAY better. For example you might take a couple new vocabulary flashcards each day on anki (you only need to do a few per day to still be way faster than Duolingo, and not be very time consuming, especially since you can do it on the shitter) then get a textbook for grammar study or a YouTube playlist of someone explaining grammar in your language (or even a playlist explaining a textbook) and then just engage in the language on social media or in shows or books whenever you can and you’ll progress so much faster. Is it as straightforward and simple as Duolingo? No. But can it still be done in a very reasonable amount of time each day and will become actually fun much more quickly? Yeah
A lot of users are quitting Duolingo because of aggressive monetization (like hearts/lives, ads, and paywalls), major redesigns that removed popular features (like the old tree), and a general feeling that the app is less effective or fun than it used to be.
Because its language teaching is genuinely dogshit. I was learning Ukrainian and it never taught me very important grammar rules, so I was so confused for so long until I questioned my ukrainian friend on it and he had to basically teach me the entirety of ukrainian grammar.
Duolingo is bad and the way it forces you to do it every day makes you lose the fun and excitement from learning.