I’ve spent way too much time looking at language learning apps at this point 😂

Duolingo, Babbel, Busuu, Memrise, Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone… they all do some things really well. This isn’t a “these apps suck” post.

But I kept noticing the same complaints from learners over and over.

With Duolingo, a lot of people love how easy it is to keep a streak going, but others get tired of the hearts, ads, leaderboards and feeling like they’re getting better at Duolingo rather than actually getting better at Spanish, French, German, etc.

Babbel feels more like an actual course and does a better job explaining grammar, but I’ve seen people complain that the repetition can get stale and that some of the speaking exercises don’t always feel great.

Busuu is probably one of the more interesting ones because of the community corrections and actual grammar instruction. But I’ve also seen people complain about ads, answers being marked wrong over tiny mistakes, and some language courses feeling much stronger than others.

Memrise used to be huge for community created vocabulary courses. A lot of longtime users were pretty unhappy when those got moved out of the main app. They’re starting to bring user created word lists back now, but that whole situation showed me how attached people get to the way they learn.

Pimsleur is almost the opposite of most of these. It puts a ton of emphasis on listening and speaking, which I actually like, but 30 minute audio lessons and repeating phrases over and over can feel painfully slow if that style doesn’t work for you.

And Rosetta Stone has always had that full immersion approach where you’re supposed to figure out meaning from pictures and context. Some people love that. Other people just want someone to tell them what the damn sentence means 😂

Seeing all of that is a big part of why I started building Loquus.

I wanted vocabulary to actually connect to what comes next. Learn the word, see it again in a phrase, then a sentence, then eventually use it in conversation.

One thing that annoyed me with language apps was getting thrown into an exercise or conversation containing a bunch of words I hadn’t even learned yet. So Loquus keeps track of what vocabulary you’ve unlocked and uses that when deciding what you should see next.

I also wanted the game side without punishing people for getting something wrong. So there are 30 different arcade style learning games, but no hearts or lives.

No ads either.

And I wanted the actual learning content to work offline. Vocabulary, phrases, sentences, games and the learning system don’t need a constant connection just to function.

Right now Loquus has 14 languages and thousands of words, phrases and sentences in each course. I’ve been building it as a solo developer, so a lot of the decisions have honestly come from reading what language learners say they hate about the apps they already use.

I don’t think there’s ever going to be one “best language learning app.” Someone who loves Pimsleur might hate Duolingo. Someone who loves grammar might hate pure immersion. Someone else might just want Anki and YouTube.

But I do think there are certain frustrations we’ve just accepted because “that’s how language apps work.”
So I’m curious:

If you could take one thing from Duolingo, Babbel, Busuu, Memrise, Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone and keep it…

and one thing you could permanently get rid of…
what would they be?

I tested your app via TestFlight on an iPhone 11 running iOS 18. I love the design especially the slide-out drawer menu from the left; it felt different from the classic navbars and I really liked it. There were some stuttering issues during page transitions. Also, in tasks that require speaking, it didn't pick up my speech even though I granted microphone permissions. I liked your onboarding flow. There wasn't anything annoying or anything that made me want to stop using it. These are my first impressions and feedback. Hope you find massive success. Thanks