I’ve been using Duolingo – the most popular language learning mobile app – for many years. I’m close to hitting a 6-year streak of completing at least one lesson per day, and I made a lot of progress in learning Spanish. Duolingo is free to use, but it also has a paid subscription plan, called Super Duolingo. I have never paid for Duolingo in the many years of using the app, but I was recently granted a 3 day free trial. So, I tested the additional features included in the paid plan and here is what I think. Is it worth paying for Super Duolingo?

What is Super Duolingo

Super Duolingo is the paid subscription plan of the popular language learning app. For years, there was just one level of a paid subscription in Duolingo. Recently, they introduced a second subscription plan – called Max – which incorporates AI- powered features. This post will focus on Super Duolingo.

How much is Super Duolingo

One of the most annoying things about Super Duolingo is that there is no official information about the pricing published on Duolingo’s website. The app is quite pushy with advertising of the paid plan, but they always advertise it with a 7-day free trial, failing to mention the price after the trial has ended.

I did some research and the latest info I managed to find was from March 2025, when – apparently – in the UK, Super Duolingo was £4.99 per month, or £59.99 per year. In the US, it was $12.99 per month or $84 per year. I also read that despite providing monthly prices, Duolingo charges users annually, taking 12 months’ worth of money in one payment.

It’s also worth noting that Duolingo offers a family plan for up to 6 people. In the UK, in March 2024, it was £89.99 per year, which works out cheaper per person even if you only have one extra person to share the cost with.

For full transparency, I’m not sure how accurate that data is due to the lack of official pricing. I didn’t make the purchase myself and never saw the prices for my account. I used Super Duolingo during a free trial.

What features are included in Super Duolingo subscription plan

The benefits of Super Duolingo include unlimited hearts, and mistakes and vocabulary review exercises. There are also speaking and listening exercises you can do, unavailable on the free plan.

With Super Duolingo, you get unlimited attempts at legendary lessons, and free entry to the leaderboard mini games.

Additionally, with Super Duolingo, there are no ads in the app.

Unlimited hearts

This is certainly the best part of Super Duolingo, and I imagine that it’s one of the main reasons why people choose to pay for the subscription. In Duolingo, users have “lives” – represented by hearts – which allow them to use the app and start lessons. If you’re out of hearts, you can’t start a lesson. If you make a mistake during a lesson, it costs you a heart. Lives regenerate over time (one heart per 5 hours), and you can also choose to watch ads to earn extra hearts.

With Super Duolingo, you don’t need to worry about hearts. You get unlimited lives and can start always new lessons. You can also work through the lessons without worrying about mistakes, which might encourage you to use your brain and never cheat to avoid losing a life.

Mistakes review

This feature, to me, felt like travelling back in time. For many years, up to last autumn, in order to earn hearts on the free Duolingo plan, you could review old lessons. The exercises were randomly chosen for you by Duolingo, and they were supposed to be based on your weakest points. I have a feeling they essentially moved that feature to the paid plan.

It seemslike a pretty useful feature. Reviewing old content, especially your weakest points, can help you improve. However, I feel like the  app only gave me a few topics to review, in a loop. I used the feature numerous times and it felt repetitive. I think there were many areas that weren’t covered at all.

It’s also worth noting that reviewing old content and recent mistakes earns you less XP than progressing through new lessons, which might generally discourage people from using that feature.

Vocabulary review

The dictionary, available also on the free plan, isn’t the most useful – you can only sort the words alphabetically, or by most recently learnt ones. There is no search functionality, which would be really helpful.

With Super Duolingo, you can practice your vocabulary through word matching lessons. They can be a nice way to test your memory.

Listening exercises

Super Duolingo includes listening lessons, which essentially consist of matching tiles of words spoken in Spanish, and written in English. This type of exercise pops up in regular lessons on the free plan, but with Super Duolingo, you get to do those exercises alone.

I quite enjoy these exercises, they’re a nice way of getting familiar with Spanish pronunciation. You don’t get much XP from those lessons though, so just keep that in mind.

Speaking exercises

For full transparency: I have never done any speaking exercises on Duolingo, not even one. Maybe it’s the introvert in me, but the idea of talking out loud to an app makes me cringe internally. I fully acknowledge that speaking skills are an important part of learning a foreign language, but the speaking lessons on Duolingo simply aren’t for me.

That being said, I want to mention that along the listening lessons mentioned in the previous paragraph, there are also speaking-only lessons included in Super Duolingo features.

Unlimited attempts at legendary lessons

In the main progress line in Duolingo, you move through the lessons in order. But did you know that you can go back to the lessons you’ve completed, and review them at a “legendary” level? Once you’ve done that, the icon of that stage of the progress journey will turn gold.

Without Super Duolingo, you need to pay a fee to start a legendary lesson – it costs 100 gems, which is the game currency in Duolingo. Gems can be earned from reward chests, and you will accumulate them as you go, without the need to spend real money. However, it will likely take you a few days or a week to earn 100 gems. Having to spend gems in order to enter legendary lessons limits your ability to complete legendary lessons regularly. It will take you a very long time to finish all legendary lessons if you need to spend gems each time.

There’s no real need to complete all lessons at a legendary level, you can progress through the course without it. But, if you want to make the whole course legendary, Super Duolingo will let you do it much quicker than the free plan.

Leaderboard games

If you’re a long time Duolingo user, you should be familiar with the challenges in the leaderboard. Essentially, they’re mini games that can be entered from the leaderboard screen. There are a few types of mini games, with only one available at a time – they typically change on a rota every few days.

Just like legendary lessons mentioned before, leaderboard games have an entry fee charged in Duolingo gems. It costs 100 gems to play, so you’d run out of gems pretty quickly if you played those mini games multiple times a day. With Super Duolingo, you can enter them for free, as many times as you like.

Frankly, I don’t really like those mini games anyway. I don’t feel like I learn a lot from doing them, and I don’t necessarily see them as the most efficient way of reviewing old content. The mini games focus on speed, giving you little time to think. But, if you like those mini games, you may enjoy being able to play them without any limitations with Super Duolingo.

No Ads

This one speaks for itself, I think. With the free plan, you have to watch ads after every completed lesson. They used to be very short, but I feel like the ads I’ve been served in the last few months were longer than before. Still, they’re not too invasive – you can usually close them after 5-10 seconds. Compared to many other mobile apps, it’s not too bad.

With Super Duolingo, you get no ads at all. Can’t complain about that.

Final thoughts

Overall, Super Duolingo gives users a few useful features. Unlimited hearts and no ads can make learning more comfortable, and the mistake and vocabulary review lessons can shake up your learning routine and make it more interesting.

To me, Super Duolingo seems quite expensive for what it offers. Personally, I don’t think it’s worth the price and won’t be paying for the subscription myself. However, I can see that it might be a good choice for some learners – it all depends on our learning patterns, and how much you’re willing to spend for extra features.

If you keep using Duolingo in its free version, you will likely earn temporary access to the paid features eventually, like I did. You can also choose to try out Super Duolingo for free for a week. If you’re considering getting the paid plan, I recommend trying it out for free first, focusing on testing the additional features during the trial.

Happy learning!

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