I Asked Experts How to Create an App Like Duolingo (Here’s What I Learned)

In June 2024, I got my longest streak on Duolingo app—a 280-day streak.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t recover from my broken streak, so I moved on and tried it once again, hoping to reach an HSK 5 level in Mandarin in the future. (As if!) As a former language student in China, I know how important cultural immersion is in speeding up language learning.

But even if I’m not residing in the Middle Kingdom anymore, fortunately, there are language learning apps like Duolingo, Memrise, Babbel, and Falou. They help language nerds like me stretch the muscle memory of learning, speaking, and reviewing the tones, phrases, and words.

Fun fact: Luis von Anh, Duolingo’s founder, was actually inspired to create the app to make education more accessible. If you want to follow his footsteps and dream of building an app like Duolingo, you’re in for a treat.

This article will walk you through simplified steps with expert guidance on how to create an app like Duolingo. I also interviewed some of our team members and gathered tips to help you avoid the risk of investing countless hours and resources into an app that may not meet user needs.

Will it be product market fit? Early detection is better than ever, so let’s get started.

1. Study the market like how a polyglot would master multiple languages
2. List down the essential features to launch sooner
3. Set the baseline traits of your language learning app
4. Choose the right platform to grow your app user base
5. Design your language app with users first in mind
6. Develop your app with a verified framework that speeds up the process
7. Stay proactively involved with the course content creation process
8. Launch your app to language nerds and improve along the way

1. Study the market like how a polyglot would master multiple languages

First things first, make sure you master your market. Study it like a language nerd would. But of course, on your end, you will wear an entrepreneur and app publisher hat. You can start with the following:

• 🎯 Analyze the language learning application market. The language learning app market is valued at $20.34 billion in 2023. It is projected to soar to $89.53 billion by 2031, with a 17.9% annual growth rate. In 2023, these apps were downloaded 231 million times, with Duolingo leading the pack at 47.6 million downloads.
• 🎯 Identify your target audience. Recognize users’ diverse preferences. For example, Gen Z gravitates toward Asian languages like Japanese and Korean, while those over 40 often choose European languages such as Italian and Spanish. Users seek personalized, convenient learning experiences that apps can deliver.
• 🎯 Study competitors. Duolingo dominates with $531 million in revenue and 60% market usage in 2023. Meanwhile, competitors like Babbel and Mondly offer unique selling points, including exclusive paid services and live tutoring options.
• 🎯 Define your unique value proposition or unique selling proposition (USP). Differentiate your app with features like interactive conversations with native speakers, short lessons for busy schedules, or AI-driven speech recognition. Balance revenue and user satisfaction through app monetization strategies like freemium models, in-app purchases, subscriptions, and ads.

Let me give you an example: Duolingo’s success lies in its gamified AI-enhanced learning paths. Similarly, features like live tutoring or specialized vocabulary packs can set your app apart and build a loyal user base.

If you’re serious about market research and planning, Michael MacRae, our co-founder and CEO, reminds you that:

“Doing a little snooping and investigative research can help you position your app better to boost your chance of success.

For example, your competitors are missing key functionality that your users want or aren’t servicing a particular subset of users. They may even be ineffectively marketing their products.

These are all opportunities to create a strong challenger app and overtake your competitors.”

Market research is building the groundwork that will affect how you develop your app idea, so make sure you get it right. Here’s an example of a market research presentation you could use to get started:

Blue and White Modern Market Research Presentation

My next point will also allow you to dig deeper into what to prioritize at this stage.

2. List down the essential features to launch sooner

Putting all the nice and fancy features you want to implement in your education app is tempting.

However, the best way to move your e-learning app forward quickly is to embrace the minimum viable product (MVP) approach—a simplified version of your app that includes only the core features necessary to meet the primary needs of your target users.

Here’s a list of essential features you can start with to speed up the app development process:

• ✅ Language learning courses. Following Duolingo’s example of 6 language offerings, you can initially provide only a few languages before you go big to 40+ languages.
• ✅ Gamification. Introduce points, rewards, and streaks. Duolingo’s streak feature significantly boosts user engagement and app retention. According to a study, students who use the app enjoy it because of its gamification features.
• ✅ Progress tracking. Use experience points, levels, and visual indicators. Duolingo users tackle over 13 billion exercises weekly.
• ✅ Daily goals and reminders. Set daily targets with push notifications. A minor tweak like a red dot on the app icon increased daily active users by 1.5%.
• ✅ Bite-sized lessons. Offer short, focused sessions of 5-10 minutes. Users typically spend 30 minutes daily on Duolingo.
• ✅ Speech recognition. Provide pronunciation practice with audio feedback, a key feature in successful apps.
• ✅ Personalized learning paths. Employ adaptive algorithms to tailor content, leading to 300,000 daily course completions on Duolingo.
• ✅ Free core content with premium features. Implement a freemium model. Duolingo’s revenue grew by 41% in Q2 2023, hitting $137.5 million.
• ✅ Social and competitive elements. Incorporate leaderboards and leagues to increase power user representation from 20% to over 30%.
• Offline access. Enable downloadable lessons, an essential feature for many successful language apps.

This is not an exhaustive list. But by starting from the essentials, you’ll have the opportunity to collect user feedback for your app’s improvements over time.

How would you know if a feature should be charged or accessible as a premium or if you should use freemium business model?

One of our product managers, Brian Wong, gives you his two cents:

“If you’re looking at the freemium model, where the app is free but some features are premium, you need to evaluate how critical this feature is to the overall app experience. If it’s crucial for user retention or monthly active user [engagement] you might want to consider making it free.

But if the feature isn’t essential, you might want to consider making it premium. It really depends on your goals and objectives.”

I couldn’t agree more—everything depends on your goals and objectives. Once you decide on your MVP features, you’ll also need to straighten up your baseline traits. This brings me to my next point.

3. Set the baseline traits of your language learning app

In developing an app like Duolingo, baseline traits such as security, stability, and scalability are key to ensuring that the app satisfies users’ learning process demands. Additionally, an educational app like Duolingo can attract users by blending convenience, fun, and effective teaching methods, which are crucial for successful monetization strategies and user engagement.

I’ll explain each one briefly and why you should never put them as an afterthought.

1. Security builds trust and authority

To ensure mobile app security, you must implement measures to protect user data and maintain app integrity. This means you put guard rails to safeguard sensitive information, such as personal details and learning progress, against cyber threats.

There are many ways to achieve this. For instance, you can integrate your learning app like Duolingo on AWS and Google Cloud for hosting, which provides robust security measures.

Remember, trust and authority are earned. If app users see your seriousness in this area, you make them feel you care about their privacy. This is your first step in building that trust.

2. Stability provides a seamless user experience without app crashes

Stability refers to your app’s ability to perform without interruptions, such as crashes or downtime—consistently. The education app development process includes a critical phase of testing to identify and rectify errors, ensuring a smooth launch and enhancing future profitability.

Imagine if your users experience app crashes every time they open the course. You’ll end up having frustrated and annoyed app users who will also share their experience publicly, like through app store reviews.

A stable app provides the opposite. requires robust infrastructure, thorough testing, and efficient error management.

Here’s an interesting fact I learned, though: Despite using third-party cloud providers like AWS, Duolingo also experienced downtime.

On December 7, 2021, an internal AWS network outage caused Duolingo to go offline for over five hours. This incident highlights the importance of having redundancy and failover systems in place.

The takeaway? You need backup plans, whether you have some of your apps hosted in-house, in the cloud, or with other hosting service providers. Curious if Duolingo is still using AWS? Yes. Here’s a video on how they use it for efficient learning.

3. Scalability supports the app’s growth as your business grows

Scalability is your app’s ability to grow and support more users and data without losing performance. It allows the app to expand smoothly while remaining functional and user-friendly as its audience grows.

A language app must be scalable, which involves cloud-based infrastructure, microservices, and auto-scaling. With over 800 million downloads, Duolingo exemplifies using scalable systems in a market projected to grow significantly.

One way to achieve all three is to make sure you choose the right tech stack and platform, which I will discuss in the next section.

4. Choose the right platform to grow your app user base

Selecting the right platform is indispensable for expanding your app’s user base. Native and hybrid app developments each offer unique benefits and challenges.

Let me explain further.

Native apps, built specifically for iOS or Android using programming languages like Swift or Kotlin, provide exceptional performance and full device feature access. They deliver a seamless user experience and enhanced security, making them ideal for apps requiring high app performance. However, this comes with steeper app development costs and significant complexity due to separate codebases required for each platform.

Meanwhile, hybrid apps use frameworks like React Native or Flutter, allowing a single codebase to work across platforms. They promise cost efficiency and quicker market entry, but due to limited access to native features, they may sacrifice performance and user experience. Despite this, they simplify updates and app maintenance.

So, which one should you use? Let’s see what our seasoned iOS developer, Adonis Dumadapat, had to say about this:

“For me, I always tell them to go native. A lot of startups want to maximize their funding. Many people take the high-speed approach—developing once and compiling it into both Android and iOS. Yes, you save some money upfront, but in the end, you’ll definitely encounter problems. I can’t say exactly what those problems will be, but they will happen. So, go native.”

Of course, this is his opinion, and you could always look into hybrid apps if you’d rather go for speed.

📣 Here’s a comprehensive read on programming languages you could use to build your apps.

5. Design your language app with users first in mind

Creating a language learning app with a user-first approach is an art that combines clarity of design with persuasive app engagement.

A successful language app prioritizes user-friendly UI/UX and intuitive navigation, ensuring a seamless experience. One of our product designers, Calvin Cica, succinctly explained how UI/UX works:

“UX (User Experience) is all about the journey—how smooth, fun, or frustrating it is to get from A to B. UI (User Interface) is the eye candy—what the buttons, screens, and visuals look like on that journey.”

Studies reveal that  61% of users appreciate companies offering quality mobile experiences, emphasizing the need for a clean, minimalistic design. By embracing a “less is more” philosophy, you can ensure that your app remains uncluttered and focused, perfect for smartphones’ smaller screens.

What’s more, make sure you also gather feedback externally. This could be your friends, family, colleagues, and other people outside the industry for some fresh insights.

Calvin also emphasizes the importance of feedback:

“User feedback is like solid gold for Product Designers. They tell you so much about your app, as they see it from a completely different (untrained eye) perspective. Allowing you to see things that you would have never even thought of sometimes. I gather feedback through user testing, surveys, etc. Then tweak the designs based on feedback, A B test, and then repeat the process.”

📣 For inspiration on UX/UI, we have a helpful read on app interfaces and examples. Be sure to check it out.

6. Develop your app with a verified framework that speeds up the app development process

Appetiser’s Baseplate ™ framework is changing how apps are built by making the process faster and more reliable. Our team built a proprietary framework to accelerate and enhance the app development process.

Here’s how it works:

• 🚀 Boost development speed. With Baseplate ™, you can cut app development time in half. This means projects move quickly without losing quality. Built-in modules for common features let app developers focus on the unique elements that make your app stand out. Consistent project layouts make it easier for new team members to jump in and help.
• 🚀 Improve quality and stability. Baseplate ™ reduces bugs and ensures smooth app performance. It uses tried-and-true methods and the newest engineering practices to keep your project up-to-date. Built-in quality checks make sure your app is reliable and offers a great user experience.
• 🚀 Uses AWS integration. It includes high-scale functionality powered by Amazon Web Services, enabling app projects to handle growth and scalability effortlessly.

I asked one of our app developers, Adonis Dumadapat, how the Appetiser Baseplate ™ has helped him and the team when handling projects.

“When we stick to the baseplate, it’s smooth sailing. We don’t have any issues unless there’s a super specific feature that’s very difficult to implement, which has been rare since I started.”

I learned that when there’s already a framework that’s working, there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel in app development.

📣 You can read more about Appetiser Baseplate ™ to gain more information.

7. Stay proactively involved with the course content creation process

I’m ruminating whether this step is before or after the app design and development steps. However, based on research, I learned that the process is more fluid. You can create course content while designing and developing your app.

Case in point: Duolingo.

The original idea for Duolingo was to create a platform that would teach people languages while simultaneously using their efforts to translate content. This concept came before the actual course content was developed.

Source: Duolingo Blog

Duolingo has a multi-stage course creation process, including curriculum design, raw content creation, exercise creation, and lesson personalization. This process is applied to create new courses and improve existing ones, suggesting that content development is an ongoing process that follows the app’s development.

Here are some fun facts you should know: Duolingo approached the content creation with an MVP mindset:

• ✅ Algorithmic approach. Duolingo used an algorithmic approach to generate lessons, which allowed for scalability.
• ✅ Limited initial offerings. The app started with six languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Italian.
• ✅ Iterative improvement. The team has continuously refined and expanded its offerings based on user feedback and data. They have hired linguists and researchers to improve the quality of their instruction.

Waiting for the perfect lessons and app is impossible. You’ll delay your launch and miss the opportunity to gather feedback from real users who will use the app.

Borrowing from the words of Head of Delivery, Maku Montecer:

“I think the biggest misconception is the idea of launching a perfect app. There’s no such thing as a perfect app. There will always be issues, things that break, and odd things that users encounter. But as long as you protect your core concept and ensure that what you want to test works, that’s what matters. Everything else is secondary—like if a feature to change your birthday isn’t working, that shouldn’t stop users from using your app. Of course, we want to polish our apps, but that shouldn’t be the main focus. You need to ask yourself: What are you offering? What is your core concept? What are you protecting?”

So, my takeaway? Go just do what you need to do and improve along the way. Now on to the most exciting part.

8. Launch your app to language nerds and improve along the way

Your language app is ready to hit the spotlight! But remember, the journey doesn’t end here. App launching, getting the word out, and constantly improving your app are key steps to make it a success.

1. Get your app out there

First things first, make sure your app is available for iPhone and Android users. You’ll need to set up developer accounts on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. For Apple, there’s a yearly fee, while Google has a one-time cost to submit your app. Before you launch, double-check that your app is easy to use and free of glitches.

Each store has its own rules, so make sure you’re following them to avoid any hiccups. Thankfully, our team can help you set this up, too.

2. Spread the word

Now that your app is live, you need people to notice it. Use app store optimization (ASO) to make it more visible when users search for language apps. Think of it like making your app more appealing with a catchy name and description.

Besides ASO, use social media, team up with influencers, or create engaging content to promote your app. You don’t need to spend a fortune. Sometimes, a clever post or a popular influencer can do wonders for your visibility as part of your digital marketing strategy.

3. Keep improving

Once users start downloading your app, listen to their feedback. What do they like? What could be better? Reviews and ratings are gold mines for understanding what users want. Use this info to introduce updates and new features. Continually improving your app keeps users hooked and coming back for more.

By following these steps, your language app can stand out and become a favorite among users looking to learn new languages.

Build a Duolingo-like successful language learning app with the right team

Creating a language-learning app might seem daunting, but with the right guidance and a skilled app development team, you can start crafting your own immediately.

The journey to a successful language app starts with developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Think of it as your app’s first draft—simple yet functional enough to showcase its potential. Starting with an MVP allows you to test your ideas, gather valuable user feedback, and make improvements without breaking the bank.

Choosing the right team is crucial. A team with experience and credibility makes all the difference, making your vision a reality. At Appetiser, we’ve helped language app creators throughout the development process, ensuring each step is smooth and effective.

If you’re considering bringing your language app idea to life, contact us today. Let’s work together to build something amazing that speaks to language learners everywhere.

Special thanks to the following Appetiser Apps team members for contributing valuable insights: Michael MacRae (CEO and co-founder), Calvin Cica (Product Designer), Adonis Dumadapat (iOS Developer), Maku Montecer (Head of Delivery), and Brian Wong (Product Manager)