This was first published August 21st, in our weekly newsletter Apptopia Insight. To receive insights like this weekly, sign up here.
- User growth looks strong, ahead of consensus
- One lingering concern around user churn
- ChatGPT can teach you French, but can it replace Duolingo?
Duolingo has been on a wild ride this year, with 2Q user growth disappointing many. However, things appear to be turning around in 3Q. Our Mobile Performance Index for DUOL is currently pointing towards a beat so far this quarter:
Even better for Duolingo, user growth is picking up in North America, its highest ARPU region:
The slow but steady acceleration in DAU growth in North America has been a positive for DUOL these past couple of months. However, there is still one lingering concern. User churn in the US is inching up, rising from the upper 20% range in early 2025 to 30% in July. Rising user churn makes it very difficult to grow DAUs. Since DUOL is managing to do so despite higher churn, it is possible that the company is spending more money to acquire new users or reactivate old users, which in turn could hurt margins.
Finally, there has been some concern about Duolingo’s ability to survive in an era of Gen AI. Apptopia’s data allows you to examine what happens to users of one app when they download another. In this case, we looked at the time spent per DAU when a Duolingo user downloads ChatGPT. As you can see, there is not much change over the first three weeks or so, but then time spent on Duolingo starts to drop. We consider this an early indication that Gen AI apps do have an impact on Duolingo user engagement. Please reach out if you want to learn more!
