Duolingo just hit the milestone every edtech investor dreams about: 10 million active paying subscribers worldwide, the company announced during its Q3 2025 earnings call on November 6. That’s a jaw-dropping 62% year-over-year increase and the first time the green owl has cracked double-digit millions in its premium tier. Revenue exploded 142% to $178 million in the quarter, marking Duolingo’s first-ever profitable period with $28 million in net income. Shares jumped 18% in after-hours trading as Wall Street finally crowned the gamified language app a legitimate growth machine.
The secret sauce? Going way beyond verbs and vocabulary. In March 2025, Duolingo launched full Math and Music courses—complete with bite-sized lessons, streaks, leaderboards, and that addictive owl guilt-tripping you when you miss a day. The pivot paid off instantly: 42% of new subscribers cited Math or Music as their primary reason for upgrading, according to internal data shared on the call. Math alone now has 8.2 million monthly active learners, while Music crossed 5 million within six months of launch.
“People told us for years that Duolingo should only do languages,” CEO Luis von Ahn said on the earnings call. “We listened to the data instead of the opinions.” The data was loud: internal A/B tests showed users who tried the Math beta were 3.7× more likely to convert to paid than language-only users. Music performed even better at 4.1×. Suddenly, parents were subscribing for their kids’ algebra practice, adults were paying to finally learn guitar chords, and the same gamification loop that made “¿Dónde está la biblioteca?” stick was now drilling fractions and finger placement.
The courses themselves are pure Duolingo chaos in the best way. Math starts with basic arithmetic and scales to pre-calculus, teaching concepts like negative numbers through cartoon owls juggling debt or splitting pizza bills. Music begins with note-reading on a virtual piano and progresses to full songs—users have already mastered “Happy Birthday,” “Twinkle Twinkle,” and, inevitably, the Super Mario theme. Both subjects feature the signature hearts system, daily quests, and those infuriatingly catchy jingles when you get an answer right.
Super Duolingo (the $12.99/month ad-free tier) and the newer Duolingo Max ($29.99/month) with unlimited hearts and AI-powered mistake reviews saw equal uptake. Families are flocking to the Family Plan, which now covers up to six profiles and has grown 218% year-over-year. One viral TikTok showed a mother-daughter duo racing each other on leaderboards—one practicing Spanish, the other mastering chord progressions—racking up 28 million views and reportedly driving 40,000 signups in a single weekend.
Wall Street is eating it up. Morgan Stanley raised its price target to $320, calling Duolingo “the Peloton of lifelong learning” but with actual retention. Average revenue per paying user climbed to $17.80, and churn fell to a record-low 2.1%. The company now projects $910 million in 2026 revenue—nearly triple 2024’s figure—assuming Math and Music keep the same trajectory.
Not everything is perfect. Some language purists complain their Italian lessons now share space with middle-school geometry, and a brief backlash erupted when the owl started roasting users who skipped Music practice (“You haven’t touched piano in 3 days… are you even committed to art?”). But the numbers don’t lie: daily active users topped 113 million globally, with the average learner spending 28 minutes per day in the app.
As von Ahn put it, “We’re no longer just a language app. We’re the place people go when they want to get better at something—anything—and actually stick with it.” With Science and Piano Phase 2 already in beta, that green owl isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
10 million subscribers today. 20 million by the end of next year? At this pace, don’t bet against it.
