The app Duolingo itself is completely free. But how much is Duolingo Super (formerly Duolingo Plus)? Duolingo Super / Plus costs $6.99 per month. They offer a 14-day free trial (sometimes 7 days) and then charge you monthly. After years of using Duolingo, in my opinion, it’s not necessary to upgrade to the Plus version.
The cost of upgrading to Duolingo Plus for one year (or an annual subscription to Duolingo Plus) would be $83.88, which in my opinion is not worth it! By just using the Duolingo app, you have access to all the same lessons.
However, something that is super worth the money every single time is italki (I’m taking 3 classes per week right now) try out a class and you’ll thank me later. They’re usually $9 or less!
The price of Duolingo is always free in this case, meaning you don’t need to pay anything to learn using Duolingo.
However, you have ads and you can only make a certain number of mistakes before you have to watch an ad or use some “gems” to be able to complete more lessons.
Update: for now, Duolingo allows all users to make unlimited mistakes without needing to watch ads or use gems. If this isn’t the case for you, this feature is probably still in Beta and only some users have this.
The Duolingo Plus Price is $6.99 per month and the Duolingo price for the Basic learning plan is free.
It’s not currently possible to buy a Duolingo Plus lifetime paid subscription.
Duolingo Plus Cost in the UK
How much is Duolingo Plus UK? Duolingo Plus UK costs about £5.24 per month or £62.88 per year.
Since Duolingo Plus is charged in dollars, this price will fluctuate depending on the current exchange rate between the dollar and the pound.
Duolingo Plus Subscription Cost in Australia
Duolingo Plus Australia costs $9.07 per month or $108.84 per year.
Since Duolingo Plus is charged in dollars, this price will fluctuate depending on the current exchange rate between USD and the Australian Dollar.
How much is Duolingo Plus Canada?
Duolingo Plus Canada costs $8.90 per month or $83.88 per year.
Since Duolingo Plus is charged in dollars, this price will fluctuate depending on the current exchange rate between USD and the Canadian Dollar.
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What are the Benefits of Duolingo Plus? Duolingo Plus Vs. Free
Duolingo Plus is basically a Duolingo subscription which gets you a few added features that aren’t included in the free version.
The Duolingo Plus features are ad-free lessons, offline access to lessons, unlimited mistakes, and the ability to track your progress.
They’ve added some new features to Duolingo Plus which now include the ability to practice the mistakes you make the most often, Mastery quizzes to see how much you’ve learned, and unlimited test-outs of lessons and units.
Although those are all awesome features, I can show you how to get most of those benefits without paying for a Duolingo subscription.
Using Duolingo Offline
The main reason why you might want to upgrade to Duolingo Plus is to have the ability to use Duolingo offline. This means that you wouldn’t need an internet connection to be able to complete lessons in Duolingo.
If you are going on a cruise or camping and want to keep your streak, the only way to do that would be to either pay for a few streak freezes or upgrade to Duolingo Plus so that you can continue to complete lessons without using wifi.
If using Duolingo without wifi is something that you’re interested in, there really is no other way to get this other than paying for Duolingo Plus.
All of the other features of Duolingo Plus (or Duolingo Premium) are available if you follow the tips below, however, using Duolingo Offline is truly the only benefit that is not available for free.
So…Does Duolingo Cost Money?
Is Duolingo free? Yes! Duolingo is free and it does not cost any money unless you want to upgrade to Duolingo Plus. You have full access to all lessons on Duolingo without paying for anything.
In fact, it’s one of the only language resources that promises to be free forever.
Is Duolingo Plus Worth it?
In my opinion, I don’t think that Duolingo Plus is worth it. In fact, I recommend that you only use the free version!
However, if you’d like to try it out, Duolingo is usually offering a free trial (14 days generally) so that you can decide whether you think it’s worth it or not.
If you want to cancel after your free trial, you will have to go into your App Store, click on the subscriptions section and cancel from there.
As for me (the cheapskate that I am) I will continue to try to get around paying for Duolingo Plus!
Below are all the ways you can avoid paying for Duolingo Plus and continue to use the free version.
If you want to learn a language faster than ever, I also highly recommend reading Benny Lewis’s book on how to learn a language in JUST 3 months.
Tips to Avoid Paying for Duolingo Plus
Use the desktop version for unlimited lessons
To completely avoid using Duolingo Plus, you can use the Desktop version of Duolingo which has no restrictions on the number of mistakes you can make.
Update: Duolingo is currently allowing all users (even with the free version) to have unlimited hearts, meaning that you can make as many mistakes as you want now without upgrading to the Plus version!
Use Duome to track your progress
Also, Duolingo Plus says that you can “track your progress” but instead of using Duolingo to do that, I recommend you check out the Duome website to keep track of how you are doing.
This website is SUPER cool and really helps if you are serious about using Duolingo to learn a language.
Basically, this website can see all of your progress on Duolingo, including your Golden Owls, how many XP you need to get to the next level, and how many words you’ve learned.
All you need to do is type duome.eu/YOURUSERNAME and see what it says! This is what pops up when I do that:
When you scroll down, you can see all of the languages that you are currently learning, which level you are on and how many XP you need to get to the next level. It also shows the Golden Owls that you have earned!
In the end, I don’t think that the cost of Duolingo Plus is worth it!
Language Learning Must-Haves
- iTalki Language Classes: The #1 reason why I’ve been able to learn languages from home. Take conversation classes from a native speaker for only $5-$10 an hour.
- How to Be Fluent Books: Two of my favorite books about language learning have definitely got me super excited about learning a language and I highly recommend reading both!
- Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It
- Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World
- A Language Planner: Keep track of your scheduled language classes, set language goals, and organize your study schedule with my favorite planner ever.
- Harry Potter in Your Target Language: Reading a beginner book that you’re familiar with is an incredible way to learn vocabulary quickly!
- The Perfect Language Notebook
More Posts You Might Like:
- Duolingo Tips that Most Users Don’t Know
- The Fastest Ways to Get XP on Duolingo
- The Perfect Study Plan for Duolingo
- Find Out Your Duolingo Language Level (It’s Not in the App!)
- How to Get 40XP Per Lesson On Duolingo
Tiffany
Thursday 6th of October 2022
What to say... thank you for this insight. I have been using Duo for a few years now - I'm currently on a 958-day streak - and I've noticed changes. There seems to be less teaching - it's more trying things and hoping you don't make mistakes, which is getting increasingly frustrating when you lose hearts every time and run the risk of not being able to continue. The number of gems you receive after a lesson has greatly decreased and you get three times as many for watching an ad. I get it - when you're not paying for the product, you are the product. You have to sometimes watch three ads to be able to do anything and, with my streak, you'd think I would have more gems than I could ever need but today I almost lost my streak when I ran out of hearts because I didn't have enough gems to refill. I am contemplating getting a subscription but, among other reasons, I'm not sure I want to reward bad behaviour. But I do appreciate you mentioning other ways to work with the features and maybe a subscription is ultimately worth reconsidering. Thank you!
Sofia
Wednesday 22nd of June 2022
I agree with Emalda! I will pay monthly because you can see it like a donation (with add free as a perk ;)). They provide **free** education worldwide (keep in mind some people really cant afford it). Not a lot of companies are this genuine.
Sina Asiri
Saturday 19th of February 2022
Hello! Thank you for bringing this up. I’d like to share my experience and maybe this advice will help someone else: I started the trial for Korean because I have this urge to learn it mainly because of curiosity and wonder since I watch a lot of Korean movies/shows and have since become very fascinated by Korean culture and language. So I tried duolingo. I started just the trial trying to see if I can truly learn a different language FOR FREE. Yes it is possible but it’s definitely not as easy. I had to test myself first to see if purchasing wouldn’t be a waste so first I tried to stay on track without kissing days AS WELL AS enjoying it. If I hate it, I will have wasted my money. So, I ended up loving it! That was key. The app is very well made and believe it or not, I think it is even effective! Because of this I decided to pay for a month and after that we’ll see how it goes. I can’t imagine myself actually knowing a second language so if this actually works after time and doing EACH lesson full of effort, I think it’s possible. I’m a Guinea pig here ha! I just really hope God willing I can stick to it to the end and accomplish something using baby steps. I’m a stay at home mom, 32 years old, and feel like I have very few accomplishments in life. After my kids grow up, I would love to travel to South Korea someday and eat and explore! Doesn’t that sound so fun? Lol! Anyways, the bottom line here is, if it works for you, pay for it. If it’s a waste, cancel your subscription. For me? I love it so far and who knows…maybe someday I’ll know Korean! Thank you for reading and good luck!
Daniel Desjardins
Sunday 23rd of January 2022
It is no longer possible to use Duolingo off-line (or nearly impossible) which was the main advantage of paying for Duolingo-Plus. Too bad this was removed.
Emelda
Sunday 11th of July 2021
Hi Dayna great post and great site generally. Although a part of me hopes that not too many people read this post because the usual way that popular free utilities are made possible and remain available is by providing a LIMITED version with the option to upgrade to a premium service to gain full functionality.
As you point out in your excellent post, duoLingo does not in fact limit functionality for its free users in any relevant way: the improvements for premium users are purely cosmetic annoyance fixes for people who can’t stand ads and like collecting virtual ‘gems’. As you point out: the full lessons are all fully available for all users of the free version with NO TIME LIMITS (ie: “free forever” and not just a free trial). For this reason alone the duoLingo team deserve to be rewarded financially by anyone who can afford a subscription and anyone who has actually become fluent in another language by using their service (of which there are many all over the world).
One suggestion that I would make for people who love their duoLingo service and want to reward the devs but don’t have much money is to (at some point in time) pay for the monthly subscription for 1 month (or so) and then cancel it! And continue using the free service again.
All the best Emelda