Duolingo vs Babbel vs Busuu: which language app do learners fault?
Shared report · refreshed weekly · updated Oct 26, 2026
Duolingo is the fun, free app for learning 40+ languages through quick, bite-sized lessons.
Education · Free · out since 2012 · from the App Store descriptionContent quality complaints for Duolingo come down to missing explanations and structure, shallow lessons and language errors, with long-time users also objecting to recent updates.
OneStar read 3,000 App Store and Google Play reviews of Duolingo posted from Aug 2026 to Oct 2026. Of the 3,000 people who reviewed Duolingo in OneStar's sample, 40% complain and 75% praise it. The top complaints about Duolingo are missing feature (19% of complaints), content quality (16%) and usage limits (12%). In OneStar's sample of Duolingo reviews, 2% of reviewers say they're quitting. OneStar's report on Duolingo was last updated on Oct 26, 2026.
What goes wrong
Lessons are poorly structured, you are confronted with new words without a clue what they mean, sentence structure is not explained and the choice of vocabulary is poor.
I love how the app has so many languages but I am trying to learn Nepali (my mother tongue) and they don’t have any other languages that I am interested in so do pls add more languages and due to...
free tier has an energy system that drains regardless of whether you answer correctly or not, so even if you do well it stops you from progressing with learning. complete bs, uninstalled.
App claims to be "free" but is completely unusable without paying for premium. Finally deleted because the app logo kept changing which was really annoying
I can’t even open the app. It crashes immediately every time.
What goes well
I apsolutly love this app it has helped me learn so many new skils in learning new languages
it's my favourite language app , i am so happy 😊😁,it's really good app for me, 😍❤️,
It’s so fun honestly a game
love the lessons! very easy to follow.
It’s great! There’s so many languages to learn! It also has chess and math.
Reasons for quitting
The main complaint of the 57 reviewers who say they stopped or are quitting
Their categories
Yes or no questions the person who shared it asked of each review
broken app.
I can’t even open the app. It crashes immediately every time.
Lessons are poorly structured, you are confronted with new words without a clue what they mean, sentence structure is not explained and the choice of vocabulary is poor.
So this app told me that I could sign up for a free trial for seven days and it would remind me two days before I get fully charged so I did sign up for the free trial the app then did not remind...
Doesn’t let you sign in
What they use it for
711 of 3,000 reviewers said; shares are of them
This is so fun and I’ve already learned some Russian already! In only 2 days! I’m definitely using duolingo anytime I need to learn another language! I chose Russian for fun! It’s fun to learn aswell!
I really like this app, I started using Duolingo because in school during Spanish class I barely could understand anything nor remember even when the teacher explained it twice and Spanish was the...
I’ve been learning Polish for my girlfriend and her family for some time now, and there is nothing that frustrates me more than being forced to learn to write in Polish when that’s not at all what...
What they ask for
276 reviews ask for something
Who is saying it
The biggest clear differences between audiences; 4 more with a free account
TenureLong-time user: say they're quitting 6.0x as often as everyone (12% vs 2%).
TenureLong-time user: mention bad update or redesign 4.5x as often as everyone (16% vs 4%).
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