Dive Brief:
- Duolingo drove multiple measures of user retention to all-time highs in the second quarter as the company pursued improvements to its free user experience to make it stickier, CEO Luis von Ahn said on a Q2 2026 earnings call last week.
- Daily average users, or DAUs, grew above expectations, up 23% year over year to 58.7 million, according to a letter to shareholders. Paid subscriptions grew 17% year over year to 12.7 million during the quarter.
- “We do expect that higher DAUs will imply higher revenue,” von Ahn said. “But it's going to take some time.”
Dive Insight:
Duolingo is marching forward with its plan to remove friction from its free subscription and improve the overall learning experience in an effort to build sustainable growth.
Revenue grew 18% year over year to $298.5 million, according to the letter to shareholders. Total booking grew 8% year over year to $289.1 million, and the company expects to hit 11% year over year growth in bookings for the full year, von Ahn said.
“We said at the beginning of this year that we were going to operate in this box in terms of revenue, and we are going to continue with this box,” von Ahn said. “Basically, roughly 11% year-over-year bookings growth and then the rest of the efforts are in increasing DAUs and in teaching better.”
A better experience for all tiers will boost stickiness, while free trials will turn more customers on to its premium, paid models.
“Historically, some of the ways that we have monetized have been by adding friction to the free use of product, and that is at odds with user growth,” von Ahn said.
Instead of customers choosing a paid tier to avoid the friction of a free subscription, the language app company has seen success with longer free trials. As such, it has increased its free trial timeline for most products from seven days to one month, according to von Ahn.
“The way that works is basically significantly more people decide to take that trial because it's just a better deal,” von Ahn said. “And because of that, we got a larger number of people actually converting to payers.”
While nearly all metrics of user retention have reached an all-time high, Duolingo watches current user retention rate, or CURR, the most. CURR is the proportion of current daily average users who come back the next day
“We're very happy that it is an all-time high, and that it has increased by about a percentage point in the last year, because tiny changes to CURR end up implying pretty large changes in daily active users over time because it really compounds,” von Ahn.
CURR has grown in every region and among all types of users, von Ahn said. “The reason for this is just that the product is stickier.”
