Duolingo is the default. A real course, and one conversation feature that is gated, short and turn-based.
Prices verified 30 July 2026 · US iOS App Store
Feature rows describe what each app ships today. Prices read from the US iOS App Store
on 30 July 2026.
Saygood
Duolingo
Open-ended live conversation
✓
~Max tier · 2–6 min
Real-time speech-to-speech
✓
✗tap when you’re done
Interrupt mid-sentence
✓
✗tap-to-speak
Slang dial
✓four steps
✗
Speaking-speed dial
✓four steps
✗slow-replay only
Patience dial
✓
✗
Corrections dial
✓
✗
Immersion dial
✓five steps
✗
Change the dials mid-call
✓
✗
Partners you invent
✓
✗Lily and the cast
Scenarios you write
✓
✗a fixed set
Level from a spoken call
✓from a 5-minute call
✗course placement test
Recap carried to the next call
✓
✓Lily recalls past calls
Structured course
✗in build — August 2026*
✓full graded syllabus
Languages
20+
40+ courses · Video Call: 9
Platforms
iPhone · online only
iPhone, Android, web · offline
Price, US iOS
$29.99/mo · $199.99/yr
Super $9.99–12.99/mo · Max not published
Of the 14 things above, Saygood does 13. Duolingo does 2, plus 1 in part.
✓ yes~ partly✗ no
* Roadmap, not a shipped feature — and scored as a loss for us until it ships. If a date slips we will change this line rather than quietly leave it up.
The short answer
Duolingo teaches you words. It does not make you use them against someone who will not wait — Video Call is Max-only, nine languages, two to six minutes, and turn-based. Saygood is the open-ended call.
Where Duolingo is ahead
The course is genuinely good at the thing it is for, and we do not have one.
It will take a beginner from nothing to a working vocabulary, free, in a way we do not attempt. If you have no words yet, start there.
Also true, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Free, on Android and the web, works on a plane, and the streak does keep people coming back.
Which one should you buy?
Pick Duolingo if
you have no words yet and want a free course to get them — for a few weeks, not a few years.
Pick Saygood if
you can write a sentence and freeze the moment someone speaks to you.
A course is a good way to get your first few hundred words. The mistake is staying there for two years. Speaking is a separate skill from recognising, it is the slowest one to build, and the only way to build it is to talk to someone who is not waiting for you — as early as you possibly can.
Two years of Duolingo and I still couldn’t speak Portuguese.
I could read it. I passed the lessons. I knew that Oscar and his husband were talking to the dog, because Duolingo told me so, repeatedly. What I could not do was stand in a bakery in Lisbon and ask for the thing I wanted.
Tapping the right tile and saying the right thing out loud, to someone who is not waiting for you, are different skills. Only one of them was being trained, and it was not the hard one. I stayed there two years because it kept telling me I was doing well.
My Portuguese is getting better fast now. The only thing that changed is that I spend ten minutes a day talking out loud to someone who does not wait for me.
Rob Rast— who built Saygood
Questions people actually ask
Does Duolingo have real conversation practice in 2026?
It has Video Call with Lily, an AI character you can speak to. Three limits matter: it is on the Max subscription rather than the standard Super tier, it covers nine languages, and it is turn-based — you tap to signal you have finished, then she answers. Duolingo added that tap deliberately, because without it she interrupted people. It is a useful drill. It is not the thing that breaks the freeze, because a real conversation has no button and no clean turns.
Is Saygood cheaper than Duolingo?
No. Duolingo Super is cheaper than Saygood at every price point we could verify, and its free tier is far more generous than ours. We charge more because live voice costs real money for every minute you talk, in a way that serving lesson screens does not.
Can I use both?
Yes, and if you are early on that is what we would do — with one rule. Don't wait until you have 'finished' the course to start speaking, because you never will. Once you can form a sentence, start having calls in parallel. The speaking is the part with the longest runway.
Why can't I find Duolingo Max's price here?
Because it is not in Apple's published in-app-purchase list for the app, and Duolingo's own annual report declines to state it. We would rather leave a gap than repeat a number we cannot check. Duolingo also runs several concurrent prices for Super — the range in the table is what we could actually see.
Does Saygood have a curriculum?
Not today, and that is the honest answer — you open the app, pick someone, and talk. One is in build, and it is deliberately not another course: rather than a library of lessons, it works out what you can and cannot say from the calls you have already had, and steers the next conversation toward the gap without ever showing you a lesson screen. The first piece — a spoken level taken from a real five-minute conversation instead of a multiple-choice quiz — is due in August 2026. If that date moves, this page moves with it.
Can I practise slang and casual speech?
Yes, and it is the single most underrated thing in the app. Slang is a dial in Saygood — mostly clean, everyday, street, full slang — and you can move it in the middle of a call, along with speaking speed, how patient they are, and how hard they correct you. Courses teach the careful, neutral, written register almost exclusively, and that is not the register anybody speaks to you in. Learning only that version of a language is how people end up fluent on paper and lost in a bar.
Try it yourself.
Ten minutes of calling, free, no card. That is enough to find out whether talking to an AI partner does anything for you.