(We know this would take us a long way towards breaking even.),” he wrote a year ago. “I don’t like ads any more than you do, but we need to test if a small non-intrusive ad at the end of a lesson makes people use Duolingo less. “Subscribers will help keep language education free for millions of people around the world,” von Ahn writes in this week’s announcement.Īds in an educational app are always a difficult tradeoff between monetization and user experience because they are, by default, designed to take the user out of the app. At the time, von Ahn said that Duolingo was spending about $42,000 per day on its servers, employees and other operating expenses, a number that has surely increased over the last year or so.

Update: a Duolingo spokesperson tells me that the company expects to break even (or come close to it) by the end of the year and that the company has a “fully fleshed out monetization plan.” We have updated the headline to reflect this.Ībout a year ago, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn announced that the company would start experimenting with ads and optional in-app purchases to figure out how each would impact app usage and the financial health of the company. It’s worth stressing that this subscription is completely optional and a company spokesperson told me that “Duolingo’s learning content will always be free.” It’s live now on Android and will come to iOS in the future. The new subscription service, which you can buy through an in-app purchase, currently costs $9.99 per month. In addition, there is also a feel-good aspect to this, as Duolingo highlights that subscribers to Duolingo Plus, as the subscription is called, will help “millions around the world learn for free.” Subscribers get two benefits: they won’t see ads in the app and they will be able to download lessons for offline use. Earlier this week, the popular language learning service Duolingo quietly introduced paid monthly subscriptions in its Android apps.

Free duolingo plus