We make one of these, so here is where each one wins
We make Kilo Lingo, so weigh this accordingly - here is where each one wins. That we make one of them is the most important fact on the page, and the reason we have not declared a winner. Every "our app vs the famous app" page on the internet concludes that the author's app is better, and most of them are worthless for exactly that reason. So this page does something slightly awkward: it says plainly where Duolingo is better than we are, and then lets you decide which of the two gaps you actually care about.
The short version. Duolingo is the best habit engine ever built, it is free at its core, and it covers far more languages than we do. Kilo Lingo teaches in a different order and for a different reason: the most useful words first, the grammar explained rather than inferred, and reading from early on. If your problem is showing up, Duolingo is the answer. If you show up fine and still cannot explain why the verb moved, that is the gap we built Kilo Lingo to fill.
At a glance
| Kilo Lingo (made by us) | Duolingo | |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Frequency-first course: most useful words first | Gamified, themed units with tiles and streaks |
| Grammar | A plain-English article plus drills for each point | Short tips; you mostly infer the rules |
| Reading | Graded stories using only words already taught | Stories in the larger courses |
| Review | Spaced review of the words you have learned | Spaced practice built into the app |
| Speaking | Thin, and we say so | Speaking exercises; AI conversation on top tier |
| Habit mechanics | Journey map and visible progress | Streaks, leagues and reminders, best in the field |
| Free to use | Word pages, grammar articles and stories | The whole core course, with adverts |
| Price structure | One subscription covers every language | Free core; paid tiers cover every course |
Approach: frequency order against themed units
This is the real difference, and everything else follows from it.
Duolingo organises its courses into themed units, built to be approachable and fun. That is a sensible design for an app whose first job is to keep you coming back. The cost is that the order you meet words in is set by the theme rather than by how often you will need them.
Kilo Lingo orders vocabulary by frequency. The words you learn first are the words that turn up most in real speech and writing, and the first thousand or so carry an outsized share of everything you will hear. We have written up why the first 1,000 words matter if you want the argument in full. The practical effect is that every word you learn early earns its keep straight away.
Grammar: explained or inferred
Duolingo's core method is inference. You see a pattern often enough and your brain extracts the rule. It has added tips and, on its top paid tier, explanations of your mistakes, but the central bet is still that you will work it out from the tiles. For some learners that works well. For a lot of adults it produces the familiar feeling of getting answers right without knowing why.
Kilo Lingo explains. Each grammar point has its own plain-English article with worked examples and drills, and the course puts it in front of you at the point where you need it. You can see the approach without an account on the Spanish grammar articles. If you are the kind of learner who wants to be told the rule and then practise it, this is the single biggest reason to try us. It is the same reason people move from Duolingo to Babbel, and we compare those two in Babbel vs Duolingo.
Reading
Credit where due: Duolingo's Stories, short illustrated dialogues in its larger courses, are one of the best things in the app.
Our version goes further in one specific direction. Kilo Lingo's graded stories are written only with words the course has already taught, so a story at the end of a chapter is something you can read, not something you decode with a dictionary open. That is what graded readers are for. If you have ever finished a stretch of Duolingo and then bounced off your first real paragraph, this is the bit we built for you.
Review and spaced repetition
Both do this, and it would be silly to pretend otherwise. Duolingo runs its own spaced practice behind the scenes and has published research on it. Kilo Lingo schedules review of the words you have learned so they come back just before you would forget them - the principle is covered in our piece on spaced repetition. The difference is less about the algorithm and more about what is being reviewed: with us, it is a frequency-ordered word bank you can see and work through, with a page for every word.
Speaking: Duolingo wins
Duolingo has speaking exercises threaded through its lessons, and on its top paid tier it adds AI conversation practice in some courses. Speaking is the thinnest part of what we make. If talking out loud is your main goal, Duolingo gives you more of it, and an audio course like Pimsleur gives you more still.
The honest caveat for both of us is the same: no app corrects your speaking the way a person does. Once you have the basics, an hour a week with a tutor on italki will do more for your speaking than either app.
Languages: Duolingo wins on breadth
Duolingo covers far more languages than we do, and its big courses are large and polished. Our courses vary a lot in depth. Spanish is our deepest by a distance, French, English, Esperanto and Mandarin are large courses, and German, Italian, Portuguese and Russian are short starter courses for now. If you want one of those starter languages to a high level, Duolingo will take you further today.
Habit and motivation: Duolingo wins
Nothing on the market beats Duolingo at getting you back tomorrow. Streaks, leagues, reminders and a faintly menacing owl add up to the most effective habit machine in consumer software, and consistency is most of what makes language learning work.
Kilo Lingo has a journey map and progress you can see, which suits people who find streak guilt more stressful than motivating. It is a calmer design. It is not a stronger one, and if you know you need the push, that should weigh heavily.
Price structure
Duolingo's core course is free with adverts, and its paid tiers cover every course. We cannot match free. What we can say is what you get: the word pages, grammar articles and graded stories on Kilo Lingo are free to read without an account, and the course itself, with saved progress, spaced review, the journey map and the printable worksheets, is part of Kilo Lingo Plus. One subscription covers every language on the site, so a second language costs nothing extra.
Who should pick which
Pick Duolingo if the thing stopping you is showing up at all, if you want free, if your language is one where our course is only a starter, or if speaking exercises matter more to you than explanation.
Pick Kilo Lingo if you already show up and want to understand what you are learning, if you want vocabulary in the order you will actually need it, if you want to start reading real text early, or if you are learning more than one language and want one subscription to cover them. You can read how we build the courses before deciding.
Run both if you like the streak but feel you are pattern-matching without understanding. Let Duolingo keep the habit and let Kilo Lingo do the explaining and the reading. They overlap less than you would expect, because they teach in different orders for different reasons. And whichever you use, the next step after either is a person who will listen to you speak and tell you what you got wrong.