Do we like them?

Do we like Duolingo?

Gamified language-learning app and English test, free for most users; based in Pittsburgh, US

Our score: 6 out of 10. A genuinely useful, mostly free product, but we'd hold back a bit. The AI-first contractor cuts and the 2023 data scrape count against it.

Duolingo started in 2011, when Luis von Ahn and his grad student Severin Hacker set out to make language learning free. Von Ahn had already invented reCAPTCHA and sold it to Google. The company went public in 2021, and von Ahn is still CEO.

The big drama came in April 2025. Von Ahn's memo said Duolingo would be 'AI-first' and would gradually stop using contractors for work AI can handle. Users threatened boycotts, and Duolingo wiped its TikTok and Instagram content in May 2025.

Von Ahn later said he hadn't given enough context, and that he doesn't see AI replacing employees. He told analysts the backlash had dented user growth. It's not clear how many contractors lost work, though one report puts a ~10% contractor cut in January 2024 before the memo.

In 2023, details of 2.6 million users were scraped through an exposed API and put up for sale on hacking forums. Duolingo said it wasn't a hack, just a scrape of public profiles. Reports note that email addresses were also in the data, and Duolingo hadn't mentioned that.

A shareholder law firm now says a securities class action alleges the 'Energy' feature was pitched as a reward but designed to push free users to pay. These are allegations, not findings. Overall we think it's a useful product, with some trust to rebuild, so we give it a 6.