Price: Babbel vs Duolingo
Duolingo charges nothing for its courses. Super Duolingo removes ads and limits on hearts. In the German App Store a year of Super costs €89.99 to €110.99, and the Dutch store lists a €10.49 item without a billing period. Duolingo tests prices, so stores show several Super items at once.
Babbel opens the first lesson of every course for free. Full access costs €107.88 for 12 months, €83.94 for 6 months or €53.97 for 3 months in the EU. Lifetime access costs €299.99 once.
A year of Super and a year of Babbel cost about the same in euros. The difference is the free tier: Duolingo’s free plan covers whole courses, Babbel’s stops after the first lesson.
Method: grammar course or daily game
Babbel lessons last about 15 minutes. They explain grammar, check pronunciation with speech recognition and bring words back with spaced review. One App Store reviewer calls this model traditional: rules first, then exercises.
Duolingo builds lessons as a game. Mistakes cost hearts on the free plan, streaks count days in a row, and leaderboards rank learners each week. Babbel’s European Spanish course goes up to C1.
Speaking practice and teachers
Babbel Live sells online classes with human tutors. Duolingo has no human teachers. Duolingo Max adds Roleplay and Video Call with Lily, an AI character, for English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Portuguese. Max works only in the iOS and Android apps, and Duolingo does not publish its price on the web.
Reviews and support
Both apps hold 4.7 on the US App Store: Duolingo from 5.5 million ratings, Babbel from 755,000. Trustpilot differs: Babbel has 4.4 from 33,124 reviews, Duolingo 1.6 from 8,166.
