Duolingo French review: free, now runs to B2, and weakest on your ear

Duolingo French is worth it for a beginner. The core course costs nothing, Duolingo lists 22.7 million learners on it, and since 22 April 2026 its content runs through CEFR B2. The weak spot is your ear. You read almost every French sentence before you hear it said, and French is the language where that costs you most.

I make a paid language app, so weigh my take with that in mind. I'll tell you where Duolingo is the better buy, and it is for a lot of you.

Can you actually learn French with Duolingo?

Yes, up to a point. You'll get a working vocabulary, the core grammar patterns and a daily habit, and you'll pay nothing for any of it.

The course is also big. On 13 October 2026, Duolingo's course list for English speakers showed these counts:

Duolingo's French course, from its own pages

22.7M

learners on the French course, Duolingo's count on 13 October 2026

129

the Duolingo Score the French content now reaches, the top of B2

$0

to start the core course, with ads and an Energy limit

Among the foreign languages on that list, only Spanish is bigger, at 41.9 million. I think size matters here: a course that many people use gets reported, fixed and extended faster than a small one.

The French course now runs to B2, and most reviews still say A2

Duolingo expanded nine courses on 22 April 2026, and French is one of them. Its post says learners "can now learn through B2 on the CEFR scale, or a Duolingo Score of 129."

Before that, Duolingo says, "most of these learners could only complete content up to A2 (Duolingo Score 59)." So a review that tells you Duolingo French stops at A2 was right once. It's out of date now.

The CEFR is the European six-level scale, from A1 to C2. Here's how Duolingo maps its own Score onto it:

One caution on that table. B2 is what the course contains. Duolingo hasn't published how many French learners finish it, or what they can do when they do.

The best outside evidence I know of points the same way. Jiang and colleagues (CALICO Journal, 2024) tested 245 learners who finished the A2 content of Duolingo's English courses. They scored Intermediate High in reading and in listening. It's a real result, it measured recognition only, and three of the four authors work at Duolingo.

French punishes a text-first course harder than Spanish does

French spelling hides a lot of what you hear. Final letters go silent, words run into each other, and the same sound has several spellings. A study of children learning to read across Europe (Seymour, Aro and Erskine, 2003) named French among the exceptions where reading took longer to get accurate.

That study was about children reading their first language, so don't stretch it. The point I take from it is narrow: in French, knowing a word on the page tells you less about its sound than it would in Italian or Spanish.

Now look at how Duolingo trains speaking. Its own blog describes repeat-after-me items, translate-out-loud items and short spoken dialogues. In each one, the sentence is on screen before you speak. So the hard step, pulling the French out of your own head, gets done for you.

And the voice you hear is synthetic. Duolingo cast and recorded voice actors for its characters, then "used machine learning to build state-of-the-art text-to-speech voices." So an actor is the source and a model does the talking. That's the same approach my own app takes, so I'm not scoring it against Duolingo. It's just worth knowing.

How much does Duolingo French cost?

The core French course is free. You get ads, and Energy limits how many lessons you do in a row. Energy replaced hearts as the limit, and Duolingo doesn't publish the numbers behind it.

Super Duolingo is the paid add-on. It removes the ads and the Energy limit and adds a monthly streak repair. The US App Store listing shows a 14-day free trial.

The price is harder to pin down than most reviews admit. Apple lists six Super prices, from $9.99 to $119.99, and labels none of them with a billing term. I've written up all six App Store prices and what each Duolingo tier includes if you want the detail. Duolingo Max is a separate tier on top of Super, and I couldn't source its price, so I won't print one.

Duolingo sells Super on the ads, the Energy and the streak repair. It doesn't sell it on extra French lessons, so a beginner loses little by staying free.

Where Duolingo beats a tutor, and beats my app

For a true beginner, Duolingo is the better buy than anything I sell. Here's where it wins, plainly.

• It costs nothing. A tutor costs money every hour, and my app costs money every month.
• It gives you a path. Unit after unit, with the order already decided. My app has no course and no grammar lessons, so it can't take you from zero.
• It runs everywhere. Web, iPhone and Android. Mine is iPhone and iPad only.
• The streak works on people. Showing up 300 days a year beats a better method you open twice.

What to add once Duolingo French starts to feel easy

Add a voice that talks at full speed, with no text on screen. That's the gap, and it shows up when the lessons start to feel easy and a French podcast still sounds like one long word.

A tutor is the fastest fix. On 21 September 2026, the first 20 one-hour French rates on italki had a median of $22.50. One hour of a person talking at you finds every word you can read and can't hear.

Then keep what the tutor gives you, or it's gone in a week. You can do that free with Anki if you'll build the cards yourself. My French apps roundup sorts the options by whether your problem is vocabulary or hearing.

That's where Verbamor fits, and only there. You record a French lesson or type a phrase into Translate, and it builds the cards. The front of each card plays the sentence with your word swapped for a tone, so you have to hear the gap and fill it. It also ships about 650 common French words as a starter deck.

It's paid: $19.99 a month, or $129.99 a year with a 7-day trial on the yearly plan only. Those are US prices. It's for people who take lessons or talk French with someone. If you're still on Duolingo's early units, you don't need it yet.

Duolingo French questions, answered short

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