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Best Duolingo Alternatives in 2026 (If You Want Immersion, Not Streaks)

The best Duolingo alternative depends on what Duolingo is failing to give you. If it is real listening and reading, look at LingQ or Dreaming Spanish. If it is structure and grammar, Babbel or Busuu. If it is speaking, Pimsleur, Speak, or a tutor on italki. And if it is the feeling of actually using the language instead of translating sentences about horses, a game you play in the language, such as Second Language, WonderLang, or Lingo Legend. This post walks through each group, with prices and languages as of September 2026.

Disclosure: we make Second Language, one of the apps in the last group. We have tried to be as fair to the others as we would want them to be to us.

Why people leave Duolingo

Duolingo is very good at one thing: getting you to open it every day. Streaks, leagues, and the owl work. The complaint people have after a few months is that the daily session is a set of short translation drills, and that after a year of streaks they cannot follow a conversation or read a paragraph. That is not a bug in Duolingo. It is what drills produce. Language acquisition research since the 1980s has been consistent that people acquire language from large amounts of input they can understand, not from practicing isolated sentences. The alternatives below are organized by which piece of that Duolingo leaves out.

If you are missing real input

LingQ

Languages: 40+. Platforms: web, iOS, Android. Price: about $10 a month, cheaper yearly.

LingQ turns any text or audio into a lesson: you read and listen, tap words you do not know, and the app tracks what you have learned. Its library is large and you can import your own content. It is the tool for people who want to read and listen a lot at their level. Best for: intermediate learners, or beginners with patience.

Dreaming Spanish

Language: Spanish only. Platforms: web, YouTube, iOS, Android. Price: a large free library, premium around $8 a month.

Hundreds of hours of video where teachers speak only Spanish, graded from superbeginner up, using gestures and drawings so you understand without translation. It is the purest comprehensible-input product there is, and it works. Best for: Spanish learners willing to spend a lot of hours listening.

If you are missing structure

Babbel

Languages: 14, not including Chinese. Platforms: web, iOS, Android. Price: subscription from about $9 a month.

Short, well-designed lessons built by linguists, with grammar explained and reviewed. Closer to a good textbook than to a game. Best for: people who want a course with a beginning, middle, and end.

Busuu

Languages: 14, including Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. Platforms: web, iOS, Android. Price: free tier, premium subscription.

Structured lessons aligned to CEFR levels, plus a community feature where native speakers correct your writing and speaking. The corrections are the reason to pick it over Babbel. Best for: learners who want feedback from real people without paying for a tutor.

If you are missing speaking

Pimsleur

Languages: 50+. Platforms: iOS, Android, web. Price: subscription around $20 a month.

Thirty-minute audio lessons that make you say things out loud, on a spaced schedule. Old method, still one of the best for getting words to come out of your mouth. Best for: commuters and anyone who freezes when it is their turn to talk.

Speak

Languages: a handful, English and Spanish strongest. Platforms: iOS, Android. Price: subscription.

AI conversation practice with feedback on what you said. It will not teach you the language from zero, but it gives you a partner who never gets bored. Best for: A2 and up.

italki

Languages: 150+. Platform: web and apps. Price: per lesson, set by the tutor; often $8 to $25 an hour.

Not an app so much as a marketplace of tutors. One conversation lesson a week with a person does more for speaking than any software. Best for: everyone, eventually.

If you are missing a reason to understand

This is the group Duolingo users tend not to know exists. In these apps you are not translating sentences; you are inside something, and understanding the language is how you get through it.

Second Language RPG

Languages: Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, English. Platforms: iPhone, Android, desktop web. Price: 100% free.

An open-world RPG where every quest, conversation, and puzzle is in the language you are learning, with hints in your own. You explore, talk to characters, and move forward only when you have shown you understood them. Every sentence has native audio, spaced repetition runs inside the game, and challenges cover reading, listening, writing, and speaking. The intro course is roughly the first 250 words over five to ten hours. Best for: beginners who want comprehensible input with a reason to pay attention, on a phone, for free.

WonderLang

Languages: nine, including Mandarin and English. Platforms: PC on Steam, Android, iOS beta. Price: one-time purchase.

A full-length RPG with quests, dialogue, and puzzles in the target language and speech recognition for pronunciation. Best for: people who want a proper video game and are happy on PC.

Lingo Legend

Languages: ten, including Mandarin, Japanese, Korean. Platforms: iOS, Android. Price: free daily allowance, then subscription.

A card-battle game where answering vocabulary flashcards powers your abilities, with spaced repetition underneath. The game is a wrapper around the exercises, but it is a good wrapper, and it solves the daily-habit problem as well as Duolingo does. Best for: people who mostly need to keep showing up.

Duolingo alternatives for Chinese specifically

Duolingo’s Mandarin course is one of its weaker ones, and Babbel does not offer Chinese at all. If Chinese is your language, the combination that comes up again and again is HelloChinese for structured beginner lessons, Pleco as the dictionary, Du Chinese for graded reading, and one of the immersion games above for volume. Second Language’s Chinese course was its first and is its deepest, and it is free, so it is an easy first stop. We wrote a separate guide to the best apps for learning Mandarin.

How to choose

  • Beginner, want to enjoy it, on a phone: Second Language (free) or Lingo Legend.
  • Beginner, want a course: Busuu (has Chinese) or Babbel (does not).
  • Spanish, willing to listen a lot: Dreaming Spanish.
  • Intermediate, want to read and listen widely: LingQ.
  • Any level, cannot speak: Pimsleur first, then italki.

Whatever you pick, the thing that actually replaces Duolingo is not an app. It is hours of understandable language, ideally with a reason to understand it. Choose the app that gets you the most of that.