Duolingo Alternatives: Learn by Reading and Listening (2026)

Duolingo gives you a foundation. What its research shows, why reading books is the alternative to more lessons, and why listening along can help.

Marco Ivarsson · 9 min read

Everything below about other apps was checked on November 1, 2026. Apps change, so check the date on anything you read about software, this article included.

You do your Duolingo lessons, your score goes up, and then you open a book or start a series in that language and it's still hard to follow. That happened to me with Dutch. I did over a year and a half of Duolingo, a few other apps, evening classes and some meetups, and it all got me to a certain point, and then I stopped making progress.

I think Duolingo can be a good start. It can help you build a habit and show you that learning a language is something you can do, and it gets you from nothing to a foundation, for free. Everything you learn there counts toward every book you read later.

To me, being really fluent means being able to read a book without help, and a book takes a lot of words. Paul Nation estimated that reading a novel comfortably takes about 8,000 to 9,000 word families (a word family is a word with its forms, like read, reads and reader), and learning that many through the lessons in most apps and courses takes a long time. So the alternative is reading books, and listening to the text while you read along can be an even better option.

Here is what Duolingo's research shows, what a book gives you that lessons don't, and why listening along while you read can help even more.

What does Duolingo's research show?

Duolingo publishes research on how well its courses work, and its studies show learners improving.

In one study, 340 learners took reading and listening tests from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, an association of US language teachers. They had all just finished Unit 7 of the French or Spanish course, about halfway through Duolingo's intermediate material, and hadn't used any other apps, classes or study materials. Duolingo reports that they scored about as well as US university students in their fifth semester of language classes, and better than those students in Spanish reading and listening and in French listening.

In a 2021 study, 258 learners took a speaking test after Unit 5, and 66% of the Spanish learners and 53% of the French learners scored A2 or higher. A2 is the second of six levels on the CEFR, the scale from A1 to C2 that Duolingo and many other courses use.

Two things to keep in mind when you read these. They are Duolingo's own studies, and everyone in the reading study had reached Unit 7, so the results tell you what people who get that far can do, not what happens to everyone who starts. Research from outside the company is still small: a 2019 study by Shawn Loewen and colleagues followed nine people learning Turkish on Duolingo for a semester, and they improved, more so the more time they spent on it.

A test score also doesn't tell you whether you can follow a novel, and that is where I got stuck.

What does a book give you that lessons don't?

A long story

Duolingo's App Store listing describes "quick, bite-sized lessons". In April 2026, it extended nine of its courses up to B2, the fourth of the six levels, with more advanced Stories and DuoRadio episodes.

A novel is about 120,000 words, by Paul Nation's count. Following one means keeping track of a plot and its characters across all of those pages.

The less common words, many times over

The 8,000 to 9,000 word families Nation estimated are for a novel where about one word in 50 is new to the reader. In a later paper, he worked out how much reading it takes to meet the words you need at least 12 times each on average: just under 200,000 words of text for the second thousand most common word families, and 3 million for the ninth thousand. That is two to twenty-five novels, which he calls a manageable amount. The less common words of a language show up in long texts, and you get them by reading a lot.

A book you picked

When you read on your own, you pick the book. Richard Day and Julian Bamford's principles for extensive reading, meaning reading a lot of easy text you enjoy, say that learners choose what they want to read, the way they would in their own language, and can stop reading anything too hard or not interesting. A course also has a last unit, and a library of books doesn't.

Why read and listen at the same time?

Reading a lot works, and it has been studied a lot. In 2015, Takayuki Nakanishi put together the results of 34 studies with 3,942 learners in total. Learners who read a lot of easy text improved their reading more than learners who did not, and the difference was moderate. In a study by Stuart Webb, the more times learners met a new word, the more they knew about it. A book gives you those meetings without you planning them.

Listening along adds the sound of the language to all of that. You hear how every word on the page is pronounced, in whole sentences, at the moment you see it. Three studies point the same way:

  • In a 2008 study, 35 Japanese university students met new words by reading, by reading while listening, or by listening alone. Right afterwards, they knew the meaning of about 2% of the new words they had only heard, against about 15 to 16% of the words they had read, with or without the audio. None of the students preferred listening alone.
  • In a 2009 study by Anna Chang, 84 college students understood short stories about 10% better when they read while listening than when they only listened.
  • In a 26-week study, also by Chang, a small group of volunteers read while listening to audiobooks. Their scores on a dictation test, where you write down what you hear, more than doubled, and they did better than a group of students who had only their usual classes.

These studies have limits. The gains above are against listening alone. Against silent reading, the same 2008 study found similar word learning, and a 2016 study of 91 people, not about language learning, found no significant difference in comprehension. And I know of no study that compares Duolingo with reading books while listening. My case comes from separate lines of research, not from a head-to-head test.

Here is why I still think reading, with the audio on when you can, is a good way to spend your time if you want to read and understand a language. You spend that time on the thing you want to be able to do. You meet the same words again across hundreds of pages, you hear them as you read them, and you are following a story you chose.

What got me going again with Dutch was reading. I was building the first version of Simply Fluent, and every evening I read a couple of pages to test it, and after a while the reading became the reason I opened it. I finished my first book in Dutch and wanted to read another one, and then I read a whole bunch of them. Then one day I was somewhere where everyone was speaking Dutch, and I understood almost all of it. The app had no audio yet, so that came from reading alone. That is one person's experience, not a study.

What happens to what you learned on Duolingo?

You keep it. Every word you know is a word you don't have to look up. Marcella Hu and Paul Nation estimated that readers need to know about 98% of the words in a story to understand it without help, so the words from your lessons count from the first page. You also don't have to stop your lessons to start reading.

If your first book is too hard, the book is the problem. Start with a graded reader, short stories, or a book you have already read in your own language. A level test like the Spanish one can give you a starting point, and I wrote more in how to pick your first book in another language.

Which apps let you read and listen?

Simply Fluent

Simply Fluent is built for reading the books you want to read. You add your own books, or you start with the short stories and modernized classics in its library when you don't know where to begin. When you don't know a word or phrase, you translate it and see what it means in that sentence. A translation you save is shown above that word or phrase in every book you read in that language, so you don't look up the same word twice. It can also read the page to you while you follow along, with your phone's own voice, and that works offline.

LingQ

LingQ gives every word you meet a status, from new to known, and keeps it across everything you read. If you want a detailed record of your vocabulary, look there first. I compare the two on LingQ vs Simply Fluent.

Beelinguapp

Beelinguapp shows a story in two languages side by side, and many of its stories are narrated by native speakers. The library is its own, so there is always something ready to read, and its pages don't mention adding your own books. More on Beelinguapp vs Simply Fluent.

What if you want something other than reading?

Other apps do other jobs better, and you can use them next to reading:

  • Speaking with a person: italki is private tutoring in more than 150 languages. Spanish tutors cost between $4 and $60 an hour.
  • Speaking practice with AI: Speak gives real-time feedback on what you say, at $17.99 a month or $83.99 a year on the US App Store.
  • Lessons of a different kind: Babbel builds lessons for speakers of your language and teaches grammar in context. Busuu adds feedback from a community of native speakers.
  • Audio only: Pimsleur is audio lessons in over 50 languages that you can do hands-free.
  • Films and TV: Lingopie has films and series with subtitles in both languages and word translations.
  • Flashcards: Anki is free on computers and Android, and $24.99 on iPhone.

Where should you start?

Pick one book you can follow, about something you want to read. Turn on the audio and read along for ten minutes a day. Look up the words you want to know, skip the rest, and keep going.

Sources

All checked on November 1, 2026.

Common questions

What is the best alternative to Duolingo?

It depends on what you want to be able to do. If you want to read books and follow spoken language, read books, and if you can, listen to the same text while you read. In a 2008 study, students knew the meaning of about 15% of the new words when the text was on the page, against about 2% from listening alone. If you want speaking practice, a tutor on italki or an app like Speak is closer to that goal.

Does Duolingo work?

Duolingo's own studies show learners improving. In one of them, 340 learners who had finished Unit 7 of French or Spanish scored about as well on reading and listening tests as US university students in their fifth semester. These are the company's own studies, and research from outside the company is still small.

Can I keep using Duolingo while I read?

Yes. Every word you learn on Duolingo is a word you do not have to look up in a book. Readers need to know about 98% of the words in a story to understand it without help, so start with something easy, like a graded reader.

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