Is Flua better than Duolingo? It depends on you. Flua is built for a committed adult who wants every minute to go to new language; Duolingo suits a casual or nervous beginner better. Duolingo is built to make a daily habit fun. Flua is built to get you understanding a language in as few hours as possible.
Pick Duolingo if you need games to keep going, want speaking exercises from day one, or want a language Flua doesn't teach. Pick Flua if you've decided to learn French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese or Korean and your time matters most.
Written by Sora Kalden, who builds Flua, so read it as our side of the story. Every number below links to its source, and our own data's limits are stated next to it. Independent reviews are still few; the best check is the public sample cards and the free first cards.
How is Flua different from Duolingo?
Duolingo teaches through game-style lessons: tapping word tiles, matching pairs, short stories, plus streaks, XP and leagues. Those mechanics are designed to bring you back every day. In our view, that design spends part of each session on the game around the language.
Flua has no game-style lessons and no games. Each language is a beginner course taught as one deck of sentence flashcards. Every card teaches exactly one new word or grammar pattern inside a sentence where you already know every other word, plays the sentence as expressive audio at natural speed, and asks you to rate yourself Again or Good. A scheduler brings each card back quick while it's new, then right before you'd forget. Words arrive in the order people actually say them most, so early cards pay off in everyday speech.
The design is deliberately plain: no points, leagues, gems or hearts, and very little animation. The screen is the sentence, the meaning, and two buttons.
How many hours does each take?
Duolingo: its own 2024 research report found learners in its Spanish and French courses spent about 200 hours on average to finish the beginner content and reach the end of A2.
Flua's estimate: about 20 hours per 1,000 words. Flua sets A1 at 700 words and A2 at about 2,000, so roughly 14 hours to A1 and 40 hours to an A2-sized vocabulary.
Where that estimate comes from: Flua's founder learned more than 1,000 Japanese words and most basic grammar in about 20 tracked hours, using a shared Japanese Anki deck built on the one-new-thing-per-sentence rule Flua is built on. One person, not an official exam.
How it's being tested: every learner sees their own measured pace in the app, and pooled study data is published live, measured against this estimate. The live totals are on the transparency page, updated as they come in.
The two numbers measure different things, so we don't turn them into a ratio: Duolingo's figure covers finishing its whole beginner course, including speaking and writing practice, while Flua's is a vocabulary-and-understanding estimate from one person's run. What they do show is the difference in design goals: Flua is built to spend as few of your hours as possible.
Pros and cons
Flua
PROS
Nearly every second goes to new language: one new thing per card, no game screens.
Every sentence is checked word by word, so no card hits you with two unknown words.
Words come in order of how often people say them.
Expressive, full-speed audio on every card, and a picture of the sentence's scene on nearly every card.
Real numbers: your focused study time, recall, and the share of everyday speech you understand.
Pay once: $89.99 owns a language for life. First 150 cards free with no account, and everything is free while the beta runs.
CONS
Only French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese and Korean.
Beginner material only for now: 1,008 to 1,058 cards per language, teaching 551 to 959 distinct words, 5 of 7 at Flua's A1 target of 700 or more.
No writing practice and no conversation: speaking cards in the phone apps train saying sentences, but holding a conversation still takes people.
Plain by design. If games are what keep you going, it can feel bare.
Few independent reviews exist yet; the best check is the public sample cards and your own first hour.