Duolingo alternatives, honestly compared
Most people looking for a Duolingo alternative have hit one of three walls: the streak became the point, the sentences stopped feeling real, or they finished a tree and still could not hold a conversation. Different walls need different apps, so this page sorts by the problem rather than by a score.
We make Vocabloot, which is one of the five below. We have said where it is weak as plainly as where it is strong, and there are people on this page we tell to use something else.
The five, and who each one is for
Duolingo
- Best for
- Building a daily habit from nothing
- Price
- Free with ads, around $7 a month without
- What it does well
- Nothing else is as good at getting a complete beginner to show up every day. The course structure removes every decision about what to study next.
- Where it falls short
- The gamification eventually becomes the goal. Many people keep a long streak and still cannot order food, because the sentences are chosen to fit the exercise rather than to be useful.
Babbel
- Best for
- Conversation-shaped lessons with real grammar
- Price
- Around $15 a month, cheaper on longer plans
- What it does well
- Lessons are built around situations you will actually be in, and grammar is explained rather than left to be absorbed. Written by teachers, and it shows.
- Where it falls short
- No free tier worth the name, and the course ends. It is a good beginner-to-intermediate ladder, not something you keep using for years.
Anki
- Best for
- Serious learners who want total control
- Price
- Free, except $25 once on iPhone
- What it does well
- The spaced repetition is the best there is, and you decide exactly what goes in. Nothing else retains vocabulary this efficiently at scale.
- Where it falls short
- It gives you nothing to learn. You build every card or import someone else's, and the interface is from another era. Most people who try it quit inside a fortnight.
Drops
- Best for
- Vocabulary only, in five-minute bursts
- Price
- Free for five minutes a day, around $10 a month for more
- What it does well
- Beautiful, fast, and honest about being vocabulary-only. The illustrations make words stick, and the five-minute limit is a feature rather than a restriction.
- Where it falls short
- No grammar and no sentences, so it will not teach you to speak on its own. The word lists are fixed, so you learn their vocabulary rather than yours.
Vocabloot ours
- Best for
- Learning the words for things in front of you
- Price
- Free during early access
- What it does well
- Point your camera at something and it teaches you that word, with pronunciation and an example sentence. Because the word comes from your own kitchen or street, it attaches to a real memory rather than a flashcard, and the mini-games are built from words you actually captured.
- Where it falls short
- It teaches vocabulary, not grammar. It will not walk you through the past tense or explain word order, and if you want a structured beginner course from lesson one, one of the others above is a better fit. It is also still in early access, so it is less polished than apps with a decade behind them.
If the streak became the point
This is the most common reason people leave. The habit is genuinely valuable and Duolingo built it, but at some point protecting the number replaces learning the language.
Drops or Vocabloot both break that loop, because neither punishes you for missing a day. If you want the structure but not the guilt, Babbel keeps the course shape without the streak mechanics.
If the sentences never felt real
Course apps have to invent example sentences, and inventing thousands of them produces some strange ones.
Vocabloot takes the opposite route: the vocabulary comes from what you photograph, so it is by definition the words in your own life. Anki reaches the same place from the other direction, since you choose every card, but you have to do the work of choosing.
Babbel is the option if you want someone else to have chosen well. Its dialogues are written for situations rather than for exercises.
If you finished and still cannot speak
No app on this page fixes this on its own, and any that claims to is selling something. Speaking comes from speaking.
What these apps can do is remove the vocabulary bottleneck so that conversation practice is not spent hunting for nouns. Pair any of them with italki, Tandem or a local conversation group.
If you only take one thing from this page: the app is the vocabulary, the speaking has to come from a person.
The short version
Want structure and a curriculum: Babbel.
Want maximum retention and will do the setup: Anki.
Want vocabulary in short sessions with no commitment: Drops.
Want the words for the things around you, and already have grammar from somewhere else: Vocabloot.
Want to keep a daily habit and are happy with how it is going: stay on Duolingo. It is not a bad app, it is a specific one.
Try the camera approach
Snap anything and learn the word for it, with pronunciation and an example sentence.
Coming soon to
the App Store
Coming soon to
Google Play
Free during early access. We only use your email to send your invite.