Duolingo and Vocabbie both teach a language in short daily lessons, and both are free to start. The difference is the shape of the lesson. Duolingo is a sequence of exercises: tap the right word, match the pairs, type what you hear. Vocabbie is a conversation: the app writes a few lines, asks you a question, and the reply under your answer tells you what the words meant and whether it worked.
Vocabbie and Duolingo at a glance
| Vocabbie | Duolingo | |
|---|---|---|
| Lesson format | A chat: a few lines, then a question | Exercises: tap, match, type, listen |
| Explains your answer | Every answer, free plan included | Shows the right answer; Explain My Answer is in the paid Max tier |
| Written courses | Finnish (96 lessons), Spanish (64), Croatian (64), German, French, Italian, Swedish (20 each) | 40+ languages for English speakers |
| Other languages | 83 more, lessons written as you go | None outside its course list |
| Speaking | Talk to it and it answers back in the language | Speaking exercises; Video Call in the paid Max tier |
| Your own words | Make decks from a topic, a photo or notes | No |
| Free plan | Two lessons a day, no time limit | Free with ads and a daily limit on mistakes or lessons |
| Platforms | iPhone, Android, web | iPhone, Android, web |
Facts checked October 2026. Duolingo changes its plans often, so check its site for current prices.
What is Duolingo good at?
Duolingo is good at making a daily habit stick. Streaks, leagues and short exercises make it easy to open the app every day, and the course list is long. For a first look at a big language like Spanish or French, it is hard to beat for the price.
The trade-off is the exercise format. Tapping the right word from a list trains you to recognise a sentence, and recognising is not the same as being able to say it. Many learners describe the same thing: a long streak, and then a freeze when someone speaks to them.
What does Vocabbie do differently?
Vocabbie teaches in a chat. Each lesson is a short scene, a few lines in the language, and then a question about it. You answer, and the reply explains what the words meant and why your answer worked or did not. Miss one and you see the right one.
New words show up on cards before a lesson asks about them: you guess the meaning, build the word from its pieces, and check. The words you fumble come back sooner than the ones you know. You can also talk to Vocabbie in the language you are learning, and it answers in that language and tells you whether what you said was right.
Which is better for Finnish or Croatian?
Duolingo does not teach Croatian to English speakers at all. Vocabbie has a 64-lesson Croatian course from beginner to upper intermediate, built by a founder who grew up in Croatia.
Both apps teach Finnish. Vocabbie's Finnish course is 96 lessons written by hand, with whole lessons on the fifteen noun cases, consonant gradation and the partitive, the parts that stop most people. See the Finnish course and the Croatian course for every lesson title.
Who should use which?
Pick Duolingo if you want a game you will open every day, you are learning one of the big languages, and you are happy to work out the grammar on your own.
Pick Vocabbie if you want each answer explained, you are learning Finnish or Croatian, or you have stalled on drills and want to practise answering in sentences. It is free for two lessons a day, on iPhone, Android and at learn.vocabbie.app.
Plenty of people use both: Duolingo for the game, Vocabbie for the why.