The best courses are so good because of the contributors and volunteers behind them. It's not fair that we have to pay to avoid having 5 lives when sometimes the lessons are very arbitrary and you haven't even been taught the things you need to know to translate right, especially when the courses themselves weren't made what they are now by Duo. The main issue most people have with Duolingo is that most courses are being maintained/improved or even made by scratch by volunteers.

They have a subscription for more features, but the basic app is just fine for learning vocab And they have native speakers saying the phrases which is an amazingly helpful feature. They dont explain anything, but they're great for building vocab. Including funny phrases like 'do you have condoms?' 'could you have picked a shittier hotel?' lmao. They suck at grammar, but if you have a solid grasp of basic grammar theyre REALLY good for vocab, phrases, and non-literal expressions. But just having ads and having a subscription that offers more features is a pretty fair ask considering the effort and money it takes to create and run them, so you'll find those 2 things (ads and subscriptions for better stuff) on pretty much any language app. I agree some apps take it too far and it's not worth it, like the hearts sytem, it's demotivating and drives people away.

Especially if you want decent content, it costs money for them to make. It's worth being aware any app or website does need to make money somehow.

Better than duolingo reddit