Duolingo in 2025: Breaks Record Numbers, but Users and Wall Street Remain Unimpressed

TL;DR

Duolingo is projecting its first billion-dollar year in 2025, after beating every quarterly revenue projection.
But community backlash was consistent in 2025, whether it was from Reddit moderators or users frustrated with ads or its new Energy feature.
It still crossed 50 million daily active users (DAUs), but despite record earnings, the stock dropped ~50% this year.

Shortcuts

By the Numbers
2025 Major Moves
Top Stories

Duolingo just released its preliminary results (along with its CFO resignation) for Q4 2025. Now, the numbers look great. DAUs have grown 30%, and total bookings are around the higher guidance (~$335 million). Plus, the platform:

Crossed 135 million MAUs and 50 million DAUs
And is set to make its first billion dollars a year in revenue, more than Coursera and Udemy

But while the company is breaking record numbers, the growth is slowing, the stock price is declining, and the community is backlashing.

This review is a context for the company’s 2025 performance. Plus, it highlights the moves that led to Duolingo’s growth (or the decline in growth).

By the Numbers

Revenue

Duolingo earned ~$748 million in 2024, and it is projected to be more than a billion in revenue in 2025. In 2025 Q1, the full-year projection was up to $996 million.

Year	Revenue (millions)
2020	$161.7
2021	$250.7
2022	$369.5
2023	$531.1
2024	$748
2025	$1.03 billion (projected)

The company has been raising its projections and breaking them. The year-over-year growth rate is dynamic, but the quarterly growth rate is declining.

While subscriptions make up most of its revenue, ads come second, followed by DET (Duolingo English Test), in-app purchases, and other revenue streams.

Duolingo’s most interesting revenue source has to be its restaurant. Our founder, Dhawal Shah, looked into Duolingo’s finances and found that Duolingo opened a Mexican restaurant called Duo’s Taquería in Pittsburgh, where Duolingo’s headquarters are located. The business generated $1.3 million in 2024, and it combines language learning with dining. Customers even get a discount for ordering in Spanish.

Profit Margin

In terms of profitability and net income, these are Duolingo’s top highlights:

Duolingo hit record profitability in Q2 2025, and its profit margin before interest, taxes, etc was ~4 points higher than 2024.
In Q3 2025, net income showed ~$292 million, but ~$223 million came from a one-time tax benefit. So, the actual net income was around ~$70 million, higher than ~$45 million made in Q2.
Gross margin decline continued in Q1 2025 due to higher GenAI costs from Duolingo Max adoption, but AI costs (included in cost of revenue) came in lower than expected in the second quarter, so it grew more than expected.

Average revenue per user (ARPU), which is the amount subscribers are paying, grew 6% YoY in Q2. This means more users upgraded to premium plans like Duolingo Max and the family plan. But this meant more gen AI costs, which might explain the uneven margin recovery in 2025.

The Users & the Growth Problem

Users by Geographies

The United States is Duolingo’s largest market, contributing over 40% of its revenue. But based on the Q3 2025 earnings call, Asia is Duolingo’s fastest-growing region, with China leading it.

China and India are two of Duolingo’s top five markets. In fact, China is the largest source of Duolingo English Test (DET) takers worldwide, and it also has the second-largest number of DAUs.

DAUs, MAUS, and the Growth Problem

In 2025, Duolingo crossed 50 million DAUs, 135 MAUs, and 10 million paid subscribers.

The number of users is growing, but the rate is slowing. While MAUs are volatile, DAUs’ quarterly growth is declining.

One of the reasons for this decline could be the community backlash over the company’s AI-first message. During the Q2 earnings call, von Ahn admitted the backlash pushed daily active user growth to the lower end of projections. Other additional reasons could be the ads, or the recent shift toward Energy.

Side nugget: Duolingo paused all the unhinged posts on its social media as they were “listening to the community and trying to build brand love”. But its DAU growth started taking a hit and they started posting them again. In January 2026, it also made the ‘Explain My Answer’ feature free for all users (it was only available to Max subscribers).

Even the rate of paid subscriptions and conversion to subscriptions is growing slowly. Duolingo Max, which makes up 9% (~981,000 subscribers) of the paid subscribers, according to von Ahn, is growing slower than expected. It was 7% in Q1 2025.

Courses & Languages

Duolingo offers 40+ languages through over 280 language courses. In 2025, the company launched 172 new language courses with AI. The first 100 courses took about 12 years.

With gen AI, the seven most popular non-English languages (Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin) are now available across 28 supported user interface languages.

In terms of popular courses, Japanese surpassed German for 4th place, and Korean moved past Italian for 6th. This shift could be attributed to the customization.

English remains the #1 language studied in 154 countries (~80% of all countries), up 14% from 2024.

Beyond languages, Duolingo now offers Math, Music, and Chess courses — with Chess launching in 2025 and becoming the fastest-growing subject.

Expenses

With its AI developments and its viral marketing (Dead Duo, love for Dua Lipa, etc), I was curious about how much Duolingo is spending. Here’s what I found:

Research & development was Duolingo’s largest expense, followed by generative and admin costs, and then marketing costs.
Marketing has always been Duolingo’s strength. And this year began with its biggest campaign yet, the ‘Dead Duo’ campaign. The company claimed they spent practically nothing on it and yet earned around two billion impressions.
Total operating expenses grew double YoY in Q3 2024 (went up 33%). But by Q3 2025, the costs went down after admin costs declined.

Stock Price

The stock was volatile throughout 2025. In December 2024, the stock was around $364. In May, it went up to $540 in May 2025, only to fall to $188 in December — more than a 45% decline.

This was the opposite of its 2024 performance, which started at $205 and went to around $335 in December.

When the Q3 earnings call was out, the stock saw a major decline — nearly 32%. The company had announced its focus on teaching quality instead of short-term subscriptions. Von Ahn mentioned that growth will be slower into 2026, but this move is to ensure more DAUs long-term. Irrespective of the company’s positive revenue performance and profitability, Wall Street wasn’t happy.

In December 2025, its 52-week range was from ~$165 (reached in November) to ~$545 (reached in May). The stock was ~61% off its high, but still within its low.

Duolingo’s revenue, user numbers, and the stock price were the result of its major moves in 2025. Here are some highlights:

2025 Major Moves

Launching the Fastest-Growing Course

Duolingo launched its Chess course in June 2025, which crossed one million DAUs by the end of Q2. These views were only from iOS users (it wasn’t launched on Android until later). I’m a fan of the Chess course too, even stuck with it through the ads.

The company had also rolled out Math and Music courses completely in 2024. They’re available in dozens of other languages now, including Bengali, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, and more. Duolingo also added 60 new math units covering grades 6 through 9, from algebra to geometry to statistics.

$A picture showing a Chess lesson, a math lesson, and a glimpse of the music course syllabus.$
Both Math and Music will undergo more development. In the Q3 earnings call, the company said its focus will be expanding math to cover all K-12 common core content, revamping the music course, and refining chess.

Speaking of their Music course, Class Central’s exclusive scoop found that the company acqui-hired NextBeat, a music gaming startup, for $34.5 million in August 2025. But they didn’t buy the games; they bought the team. This acquisition added 23 “world-class experts in areas such as game design, user retention and monetization, sound design, and music licensing.”

Breaking Hearts, Draining Energy

Duolingo let go of its Hearts system in Q2 and replaced it with Energy. While you have five hearts and eachis depleted with the wrong answer, Energy has 25 points and depletes with every right answer (while offering bonuses with correct answer streaks).

Duolingo claimed it will “power learning”, but users complained that it’s restricting, punishing, and a greedy way for the company to make more money. I, too, noticed how limiting it felt, because I’d end up draining my energy just within 4-5 lessons.

While the community was resisting it, Duolingo claimed that it increased DAUs, time spent learning, and subscriber conversion.

“We have rarely seen a feature move more than one of these metrics, let alone all three. We see a meaningful opportunity to iterate on this mechanic over time, much like we’ve previously done with Hearts and Streaks.”

AI, Community, and Backlash

The year started with the moderators of the subreddit r/Duolingo no longer being the customer support for the $16.2 billion company. They launched a petition demanding Duolingo hire more support staff to serve the eight million visitors. CEO von Ahn’s response focused only on growing courses and automating support, which led them to revolt and stop.

Duolingo had taken major steps toward AI-fication. Here’s a quick timeline:

2023: Duolingo cut 10% of contractors, mostly translators and content creators. A source told Bloomberg: “We just no longer need as many people… Part of that could be attributed to AI.”
April 28, 2025: CEO Luis von Ahn stated that Duolingo will be “AI-first” and contractors would be phased out for work AI can handle. Comment sections filled with backlash; users posted videos ending multi-year streaks and deleting the app.
May 17: Duolingo deleted all TikTok and Instagram content, leaving only cryptic bios like “real eyes realize real lies.” Days later, a bizarre video featured a masked figure “exposing” the company.
May 22: von Ahn posted on LinkedIn, admitting, “When I released my AI memo a few weeks ago, I didn’t do that well”, but reversed none of the original policies.
Internally: Engineers were told to “start with AI for every task.” The company instituted “FrAIdays“—weekly AI training blocks—and claims employees now produce 4–5x more content with the same headcount. No full-time employees have been laid off.

Duolingo and China

Duolingo entered the Chinese market in 2019, but the app went off their app stores in 2021. In 2022, it re-emerged and became the seventh-largest market for Duolingo in 2022.

China is one of the top five countries for Duolingo’s language learning app and among the top two markets for the DET, Duolingo English Test, a computer-adaptive language proficiency exam business with a continually expanding user base.

Asia continues to be a leading market for Duolingo, and China is the fastest-growing market with the second-largest DAUs. Its active users for learning English from Chinese customers have grown by over 100 percent over the past few years. This year, China’s demand also had a lot to do with marketing.

The Luckin Coffee Collaboration

Over 26,000 Luckin stores in Asia sold more than 10 million Duolingo-branded drinks in two weeks. The owl, Duo, even “married” Luckin Coffee’s Lucky the Deer in a wedding ceremony in July. The campaign went viral in China, and people even lined up for the limited edition collectibles.

Duocon 2025

At Duocon 2025, Duolingo’s free global event held on September 16, Duolingo announced four major product updates.

A LinkedIn integration that allows users to display their Duolingo Score on their professional profiles.
The expansion of its Chess course, which was rolling out to Android, with a player-versus-player mode coming soon.
Added AI features to Video Call with Lily, such as real-time feedback and post-call reviews.
A/B testing across millions of users. The event showcased features such as Adventures, DuoRadio, and Stories across courses.

Leadership

This January (2026), CFO Matt Skaruppa resigned after six years and will be transitioning to an advisory role. Gillian Munson, a Duolingo board member and the CFO of Vimeo, Iora Health, and more companies, will replace him.

Duolingo’s leadership team includes: