Duolingo Reviews 

I am signed up to a family package and apart from the constant annoying almost every day reminders ever since my package started, find it quite good.
BUT if they don't stop pestering me, sometimes more than twice a day, I will not renew my membership.
I am not a child, don't treat me like one.

The concept of Duolingo is great, but I've found it lacking in real conversation skills. While the app offers nice exercises, the speaking practice feels quite unnatural. Plus, the interface can be glitchy at times, which gets annoying. It’s a decent tool, just not as effective as I hoped.

Fun to learn but hard to understand the knowledge

I have been learning Japanese very very seriously with 2 teachers a week and 646 days with Duolingo. I have recently arrived at a chapter with no explanations at all,no theme, landing me with 14 new words per lesson,out of context totally. No answer to my feedback, I feel perturbed and disillusioned with the whole app
Where has the teacher gone???!?
It's becoming a useless experience

It wasn’t terrible for learning new languages, but it put a lot of stress on me as a 14 year old. I had a 478 streak or something and I couldn’t find my phone before midnight and basically had a full on meltdown. I know they have streak freezes and whatnot, but I was out. So I think they either need to provide more streak freezes and better ways to get your streak back. So, if you intend on keeping a high streak, I wouldn’t recommend Duolingo unless you can guarantee you won’t loose your device that you have, very stress inducing.

I love the chess. However, I have fewer features as an Android user than Apple users. Mine is a paid version.
The Indonesian language lessons are terrible. Some example sentences are: "My pumpkin is taken to the bank". "I see a cat flying". "That dolphin sits". "There is no rich bear in this century". And even more ridiculous ones. Better to remove it until it is rewritten.

My young daughter signed up for a free account and duolingo charged my card $219!! I am disputing it and will be getting my money back!!

Duolingo does not teach you anything. It lets you bumble through the language, and it tells you whether you are right or wrong, but it never explains anything. Some people say "well, that's how we learn languages as children", but we aren't children. Grownups learn languages in a completely different way. As an example of what I mean, look at German verbs. In certain circumstances, the verb goes at the end of a sentence, but Duolingo never tells you what those circumstances are. You are just left to get it wrong over and over again until you fumble your way towards getting it right. (If you want to learn the rule in ten minutes, and never forget it. listen to the Michel Thomas basic German course.) Also, the voice recognition technology is completely useless. Here is something I have done hundreds of times: Duolingo will ask me, say, to repeat the words "Ich würde gerne in den Zirkus gehen" - "I would like to go to the circus". If I say confidently "Ich würde gerne in den scrotum gehen" it will mark me as correct. Over and over again.
To be fair to them, I am also doing French. My French was already quite good, so I started at quite an advanced level, just to keep my hand in with reading and writing, in between visits to France. It is fine for that, although once again there are just the same problems as with German.

Thought I’d cancelled my free trial of Super. Notice a day or two later (having not used the app in that time) I’d been charged £70. Emailed to request a cancelation and refund. Got automated response saying no basically. Emailed again. Another automated no. Terrible customer service.

My Spanish teacher recommended me this app back in 2015 I still like it for Spanish but for Asian language I would recommend Rosetta Stone for Japanese but for basic languages, Spanish Italian French it’s fine It was better in the past now it’s the worst language learning option

Hours of animations, to get to where it STILL gives you a picture of a dog and asks you to identify a dog, Nobody has ever learned a language with this app. When logging in with a username and password (no email), the first 2 times it will say 'sorry your password is incorrect' 'forgot my password?' so that you can give them your email. If you try a third, omg my password wasn't incorrect how'd that happen.

I’m an older gentleman and my brain is not as quick as it once was! I decided to improve my basic French and tried Duolingo. At first I found it slow, repetitive and somewhat childish. However having persisted with it, I have grown to love it and my French is coming along quite nicely. The repetitive nature of the learning style really does drill the subject matter into you. Duolingo is not for everyone but I recommend it if you want a slow, relaxed and fun way to learn French.

For the second time Duolingo failed to remind me that my free trial is ending and I have now been charged for a full year. As I am signed up through apple I have to request the refund through them which is a whole process in itself. Fraudulent company.

They never answer customer service emails

I have been using Duolingo for over a decade, learning a variety of languages consistently. The most effective thing about Duolingo as a learning app is that it manages to keep people using it, which in itself is a positive thing. However, the quality of the learning is mediocre at best. While matchups and bite size lessons help make things quick and digestible, there is little to no explanation of any kind, not even an attempt at teaching grammar in most languages. Idioms are often problematically translated, as are some basic phrases, with Americanisms being far too prevalent and unhelpful. The sequencing is often poorly thought out, and lessons are somewhat clumsy, for instance testing you on vocab before even introducing it. However, perhaps the most infuriating thing for those of us who have stuck with the app since the early days is the lack of intention to improve. By far the biggest focus for the company is to increase the social media side drive subscriptions through degrading services and to push their increasingly obnoxious branding. While this is understandable from a publicly traded company, it is a far cry from the early days of Duolingo wishing to improve (especially free) access to language learning. It still has the potential to become a great app, but currently seems to have no plans to do so.

I am and have been waiting for some 2 years in vain for the courses Russian 50 to 110.
So what I do now is English Russian, at least I learn something. There are new courses Math, music, chess but not course Russian 50 to 110. Why?
Are they sanctioned or what is the problem?
And most irritating: there is no way of communicating with this club.

DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY! Duolingo offered me a months free trial for ‘Super’ didn’t bother giving me my 2 days notice of it expiring and now been charged a year and stuck with this pile of garbage. Apple also don’t care and will not offer a refund.

Duolingo is an extremely poor way to attempt to learn Spanish. It’s mediocre if you have studied Spanish and use it for review. As a person who has studied Spanish at the college level, I can attest that it is impossible to learn proper grammar with Duolingo. In addition, they now restrict the time you can use the app without paying for it. Given its vast shortfalls, it is certainly not worth paying for! Duolingo is a money grab and ineffective for learning a language.

Still denies or takes away XP, a cheap way to create "engagement".

My daughter purchased family membership for us as a family but at the end of the free trial it has stopped working properly even though it has taken the money for the paid subscription. We have sent three emails but like others reporting here the customer service is non existent. Such a shame .