Duolingo vs. Babbel: Which One to Learn From?

Duolingo and Babbel are language learning applications that people from across the world use to learn many languages by completing small exercises or courses. 

We have hundreds of languages in this world, each unique and beautiful in its own way. But, is it not enough to learn only the native language?

Not always, I think. 

Suppose you have a business and you want to deal with a client who doesn’t speak your language. Knowing their language will ease the process and help establish trust. Whether you move to a new place for education or a career, learning the native language is beneficial.

But how to learn a specific language?

Nowadays, you will find a lot of applications that teach you languages in a more innovative way. 

Duolingo and Babbel are the popular ones. 

Let’s discuss which one of them is better and for whom.

Duolingo vs. Babbel: What Are They?

What Is Duolingo?

Duolingo is a platform that you can utilize to learn different languages from across the world. It provides a gamified method to teach multiple languages at various skill levels, starting from basic to pro. 

In its interface, you will find questions with different options to choose from.

When you start using it first, it may require some details of what you want, why you want it, and your skill level in the language you want to learn. By knowing your preferences, skill level, and interests, Duolingo offers a personalized learning experience along with different materials. It works on any device so that users can access it quite easily. 

When you want to play the game of learning languages, you can sign up for Duolingo through its official website, application, and browser. You will get the option of creating your own avatars and experience learning in a more immersive and interactive way. You can also download its application on your smartphone or tablet to learn languages on the go. 

Duolingo provides 36 languages to learn, such as Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Polish, Dutch, Korean, Arabic, Portuguese, and more. For beginners, it offers basic lessons to introduce you to the new language. For advanced users, it offers intermediate or high-level lessons and allows you to take a test. 

You can earn badges, experience points, hearts or life to play, and more. There are flag icons that show the languages you are learning right now. In addition, you will get gems to spend on avatars or purchase some upgrades. 

What Is Babbel? 

Babbel is a platform that helps individuals and businesses to upgrade their skills by learning multiple languages in a unique way. It’s among the first to offer language-learning services. Its lessons include real-life conversations so that you become proficient in a particular language that you have chosen to learn. 

Babble provides many languages, including Russian, Japanese, Spanish, Turkish, German, Portuguese, Swedish, and more, so that businesses and individuals can communicate with others easily.

Babble doesn’t use game-based learning like quizzes and tutorials or generic sentences. Instead, it uses direct words and sentences. In addition, it covers words or topics that you face while communicating with native speakers. It is a flexible option for businesses that allow them to learn what they like. 

Duolingo vs. Babbel: How to Get Started?

How to Get Started with Duolingo?

To start using Duolingo, you can open its official website or download the application to learn different languages. You can click over the “Get Started” button. If you have an existing account, you can login by providing an email address and password or sign-in with Google or Facebook.

When you choose to start fresh you need to follow some simple steps:

• Choose the language you want to learn from its options. Let’s say Spanish. 

• Click over continue on the next page.
• Answer some quick questions like how you hear about Duolingo, why you want to learn Spanish language, how much you know, and more. You will get several options so you can choose one of them according to your preferences. 
• Choose your goal of learning and how much time you can spend in a day. You will get options like 5 min/day, 20 min/day, and so on.

• Now, sign up with Google or Facebook. You can also choose the “Not Now” option in the button to skip the signup process and start learning right away. 
• Duolingo enhances your learning process by showing avatars, your remaining life in the game, and many more to motivate you to learn. 

• Once you complete the daily limit, you can see the section page where you can see your progress. 

When you have an existing account, you can continue your learning exercises from where you left. 

How to Get Started With Babbel?

To start your learning journey in a particular language, you can follow the below steps.

• Go to its official website or download its app from the App Store or Google Play. 
• You can sign up or login to your account from the drop-down menu. 
• Choose any language from the list you want to learn. Let’s say German. 

• Babbel asks you some questions to know your interest and purpose of learning. This helps the Babbel team to provide personalized experiences for you. 
• In addition, Babbel checks whether you are a new, intermediate, or pro learner of the language.
• You choose the time you want to give every day, starting from 5 min/day to 60 min/day. If you are not sure about the time, you can choose the last option, “I’m not Sure” to learn in your free time. 

• Fill up some details like your first name, email address, and password to your lessons. 
• You can choose from Babbel self-study and Babble Live to learn in your time or take lessons and practice sessions, respectively. 

• Select the subscription from one month to a lifetime to continue. 
• Buy your preferred subscription and start learning a new language.

Babbel provides you with dialogues, interactive sessions, and exercises to make you proficient in any language.

Duolingo vs. Babbel: Features

Features of Duolingo

Duolingo offers fun learning with its bite-sized and quick lessons. Let’s check out the features:

• Personalized experience: Duolingo provides a personalized experience to everyone through a short question-answering round while signing up. Its goal is to enable you to access any language you want to learn. 
• Accessible: Everyone wants to learn new languages to enhance their skills, communicate with clients and impress them, work as a translator, and more. However, learning a new language is expensive and, hence, not accessible to everyone. But Duolingo provides free learning sessions so that people across the world can learn easily. 
• Fun learning: Not everyone has the patience to learn a new language. Duolingo makes your learning fun by gamifying the process. So, people can learn new languages by playing a game. Also, in schools, students love to play while learning. 
• Teaching: Duolingo offers bite-sized and free learning lessons that feel like a child’s game. However, Duolingo is not a gaming app. It focuses on attracting learners by aligning international standards and fostering longer relationships with the learners. 
• Standout content: As a beginner, when I first started my lessons in Spanish, it showed some basics like “el hombre” (the man), “el niño” (the boy), “la niña” (the girl), and so on. The content you see while learning is based on the answers you gave at the beginning. 
• Communication: Duolingo first understands what you want to learn and what you will do after learning. It gives lessons according to your level of expertise in a particular language by focusing on real-life approaches. From Duolingo, I learned Spanish a little and practiced reading, speaking, and listening. 

Features of Babbel

Babbel is helping plenty of learners to learn languages and make their conversations better. 

• Babbel live: Babble delivers an engaging learning space devoid of judgments. They make available plenty of classes every week. You can learn with others and certified teachers and track your progress in the dashboard. Babbel’s expert language teachers provide Interactive live classes. They bring their own ideas and methods to every class to motivate you. 
• Short stories: Babbel offers short stories that help you become stronger in vocabulary. When you want to achieve passive learning in a particular language, you can access short stories. It gives familiar scenarios, such as navigating new markets, entertainment scenarios, and more. 
• Videos: With Babbel, you can learn specific languages by diving deeper into topics. This will enhance your learning experience. In Babbel’s videos, native speakers come up with interesting topics to teach you how to greet, how to pronounce a word, etc. They also include motions, sounds, sights, and more to enhance your learning experience. 
• Culture bites: Babbel helps you impress your friends or blend in with its insider knowledge. You will get fun facts and quick insights based on the culture. The native speakers also teach you certain phrases while you communicate in order to make it more interesting. 
• Games: Serious learning can be boring and might not motivate you at all. Babbel comes with new games that include daily spelling and vocabulary exercises. It adds interactive and fun content into your routines. In addition, it puts spelling, word order, etc., into an interesting test so that you can learn while playing. Some featured games are Word Trax for spelling, Sink or Spell for spelling, and Phrase Maze for arranging sentences. 

Duolingo vs. Babbel: Teaching Methodology

Teaching Methodology of Duolingo

Duolingo follows five methods of teaching:

• Learn by practicing: When you start learning a language, Duolingo offers tailored exercises and the exact content you prefer as a beginner. You can start with simple and easy material and receive more challenging ones gradually in your learning path. 
• Learn by adapting to the needs: Its courses are unique. You will develop your skills according to your speed. Also, you can review your exercises to practice. Duolingo combines science and artificial intelligence to give you more personalized learning. It helps you build skills and accept new challenges. 
• Learn with essential content: Duolingo gives you essential information and the content you need to know. This helps you focus on words or sentences that matter to you to enhance your skills. Therefore, it uses international and national standards to include the necessary exercises in your courses. 
• Motivation: The goal of Duolingo is to enhance your learning experiences by giving motivation. Its bite-size lessons and easy-to-fit study timings take fewer minutes to complete a course. The gamified approach further increases your motivation with its fun learning features.
• Delightful experiences: Duolingo fills your learning sessions with color, warmth, avatars, and voiceovers. Its characters cheer you between learning lessons, become your friends, and celebrate your achievements in your learning journey. 

Teaching Methodology of Babbel

Babbel follows a unique teaching method that enables you to learn real-life conversations quickly. The teaching methodologies are:

• Learn with real-world conversations: Babbel allows you to learn from the ground level to the top with its various exercises and courses. This helps you know the exact pronunciation of a word, use grammar, form a sentence, and do more. 
• Learn with voice teaching: Babbel offers a voice teaching option to enable you to speak as a native speaker, which gives authenticity to a language. 
• Learn with video teaching: Babbel provides video teaching classes to you so that you can learn more effectively.
• Review and retain: Babbel utilizes many cognitive techniques so a learner navigates through different memory stages when learning a new language. It introduces podcasts, stories, games, and more to let you learn languages with more fun.
• Learn with convenience: Babbel gives you many ways to learn, such as writing, speaking, listening, reading, and seeing. Whether you choose app lessons or live online sessions, games, or podcasts, Babbel allows you to learn and speak any language with ease. 

Also Read: English Learning Platforms for Kids to Move from ABCs to Fluency

Duolingo vs. Babbel: Differences

Conclusion: Which Is Better – Duolingo or Babbel?

Duolingo and Babbel are both amazing and easy-to-use language learning applications whether you are a business person, individual, student, or teacher.

When I used both, I really liked both of them. So, in my opinion, it’s not about which option is better as a whole among them but which one is better for what purpose.

Duolingo is basically for students, teachers, individuals, and those who want to learn and increase their skills in other languages. It’s free for all. 

On the other hand, Babbel is better for you if you wish to possess a strong vocabulary to communicate with clients or people from different countries fluently without any grammatical errors. But it’s not free.

Thus, choose Duolingo or Babbel based on your goal of learning a language and your budget for it.

However, if you want to try out other language learning applications with different interfaces and pricing options, you can try some alternatives like Mango Language, FluentU, Hello-Hello, Lingvist, Rosetta Stone, and italki. 

Next, you may also explore some online Spanish classes to master the language at your own pace.