How Duolingo pushes users from freemium to premium

5 monetisation lessons from the world’s most downloaded education app

Duolingo has a huge 15.2 million reviews on the Play Store and 2 million on the App Store, with 4.5 and 4.7 stars respectively. It is by far the biggest learning app in the world.

But the story wasn’t always so dreamy.

Back in 2018, Duolingo was seeing single-digit daily active user growth year-over-year, according to ex-Chief Product Officer, Jorge Mazal. Growth was slow, people were getting pissed at losing their streaks, and it wasn’t looking good…

Fast forward to Duo’s 2021 IPO, and DAU had skyrocketed 4.5X since 2017. Shares closed 36% up on their first day of trading — valuing the company at a huge $5 billion.

Now in 2023, Duo’s growth spurt continues. The Co-Founder and CEO reported a 47% increase in revenue year over year, with $100.3 million in subscription purchases.

**Dollar signs in eyes**

A few weeks after reading Duo’s case study in Lenny’s newsletter, I was sitting next to my sister when she got a push notification from the app itself. She’s been learning French for 3 weeks (having not touched the language since school, desolée).