Financials
As of 2018 Duolingo remains a private company and is not required to publish financials for open review. Be this as it may, much can be pieced together from interviews, blog postings, press releases and financial insights platforms like Owler.
Duolingo is valued at $700 million and operates on about $108 million in venture capital money from companies like Union Square Ventures, Google Ventures and New Enterprise Associates.
Duolingo is valued at $700 million and operates on about $108 million in venture capital money from companies like Union Square Ventures, Google Ventures and New Enterprise Associates.
Duolingo spends less than $10M teaching people in US - the US school system spends billions.
Wait - isn't Duolingo free? How do they make money?
1. Translation, Advertising, and Paid Subscriptions
Back in 2014 Duolingo was a premium, ad-free experience. The app provided text for users to translate and, when enough users gave the same translation for a sentence it became “the translation”. Duolingo then sold these crowdsourced translations to companies like CNN and Buzzfeed. The company's revenue was about $1M. They decided this wasn’t enough. They moved to a freemium model, generating revenue through a mix of ads, in-app purchases and subscription features called Duolingo Plus. Their revenue soared 1300% to around $15M in 2017, and are on track for $40M in 2018. They are now one of the Top 3 Grossing Apps in Education as of October 4, 2018, despite all their content being free. How It Works:
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2. The Duolingo English Test (DET)
Duolingo offers the DET for $49 which gives successful participants a certificate proving proficiency.
Why choose the DET?
Why choose the DET?
- $49 vs. $250 for TOEFL and IELTS testing - which can be a month’s salary for people taking these tests in developing countries.
- Can be taken anywhere through an app, monitored by camera.
- Accepted by over 60 universities, including Yale University, a number which continues to increase.