Duolingo Revenue and Usage Statistics (2022)

David Curry

Updated: May 4, 2022

Duolingo was part of a free education wave that hit the internet in the early 2010s, as entrepreneurs saw the tools of the web and mobile to as a way to open up entrenched institutions to the masses.

Luis von Ahn, who already had success selling two businesses to Google in his 20s, saw an opportunity to turn the language learning model on its head. Instead of having to pay-per-hour or subscribe, Duolingo would be free to all, enabling people from all backgrounds to learn a new language.

Speaking to The Guardian in 2014, von Ahn said: “There are 1.2 billion people learning a foreign language and two thirds of those people are learning English so they can get a better job and earn more. The problem is that they don’t have equity and most language courses cost a lot of money.”

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Duolingo was a hit even before its official launch. In November 2011, the team launched a private beta and within a month 300,000 people had signed up on a waitlist. Over 10 million people downloaded the app in the first 12 months.

Instead of building a classroom-style product in an app, Duolingo took cues from the world of gaming to enhance the experience and keep users engaged. Users can compete against friends and random people by completing courses and receive rewards for streaks.

Duolingo also separated itself from other language learning services by using data to its advantage. It regularly runs tests to find an optimal way to design a course, testing users on how quickly they learn part of the language and changing the formula to smooth the learning curve.

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In the past few years, Duolingo has embedded artificial intelligence into the app, to analyze mistakes and slightly alter the course to fit user requirements.

As Duolingo started to grow, users asked for more obscure and fictional languages to be added. Von Ahn used his experience as one of the pioneers of crowdsourcing to launch Incubators, which pull together linguists, native speakers and book readers to design a fully optimized course.

These incubators are responsible for several courses Duolingo now offers, including Welsh, Catalan, Latin and fictional languages from Star Trek and George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.

As part of Ahn’s commitment to Duolingo being more than a game, it offers English language certification for $20, much lower than the $250 it can cost in India, China and other countries. Users are able to take the test on Duolingo and results are sent back in 48 hours.

Duolingo has been criticised for its lack of depth, as people who complete a course will only reach an A2 CEFR level, which is considered basic understanding of a language. In 2020, the company added more B1 and B2 level content, and plans to make courses even more in-depth with podcasts, freeform writing and audio lessons.

We have collected data and statistics on Duolingo users, revenue and course availability. Read on below to find out more.

Duolingo key statistics

Duolingo generated $161 million revenue in 2020, an 106 percent increase year-on-year
Duolingo has over 500 million registered users, 42 million are active once a month
In 2020, Duolingo was valued at $2.4 billion
Duolingo has 95 available courses in 38 languages

Duolingo overview

Launch date	19 June 2012
HQ	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
People	Luis von Ahn (CEO), Severin Hacker (CTO)
Industry	Language learning
Business type	Public (NASDAQ: DUOL)
Available platforms	iOS, Android, web