Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-03-02

How Clarity and Personalization Help Drive Duolingo’s Growth – Anmol Tiwari, Duolingo

Short Sub Club episode (State of Subscription Apps series) with Anmol Tiwari, Director of Product at Duolingo. Covers clarity over persuasion in trials: letting users pick their trial reminder day, loss-of-progress framing, contextual upsells inside onboarding, cutting the trial from 14 to 7 days (doubling experiment velocity), multiple trials per user, 3-day no-card 'free tastes' (incl. single video calls and Max upgrades), ML/bandit personalization of in-app subscription ads, and paid trials in China.

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12 tactics

Duolingo · B2C · language learning app

Let trial users pick which day they get the reminder before being charged

Tested; added friction but built trust and delayed cancel decisions. No numbers given

“And we decided to test, "Well, what if we let you choose which day you get that reminder?" And counterintuitive, normally you would think that friction is probably not a good thing”

Workednotificationspaywall

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-03-02

Duolingo · B2C · language learning app

Show what happens on each trial day and exactly how refunds work

Guest says clarity beats persuasion for trial starts; no numbers

“Our goal is to give them clarity and confidence to purchase.”

Workedpaywall

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-03-02

Duolingo · B2C · language learning app

When users run out of hearts, offer a free trial so they keep their lesson progress

Users much more likely to start a trial; no numbers

“users are just much more likely to start a trial when the decision or when we position it as like, "Well, if you've run out of hearts or energy, if you don't continue, you're going to basically lose your progress."”

Workedpaywallupsell-expansion

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-03-02

Duolingo · B2C · language learning app

Ask new users in onboarding if they want to learn with or without ads

Significantly higher uptake; one of the biggest wins of the year

“we found that it's much better to actually make it contextual to the onboarding. So as an example, we asked like, "How do you want to learn or how do you want to achieve your goals? Is it with ads or without ads?”

Workedonboardingpaywall

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-03-02

Duolingo · B2C · language learning app

Cut the free trial from 14 days to 7

More conversions overall and experiment results twice as fast

“overall net, we saw more conversions over time in combination with playing around with how many trials we can offer to a user.”

Workedpaywallexperimentation

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-03-02

Duolingo · B2C · language learning app

Offer the same user a free trial three or four times over time

Effective in aggregate across attempts, per guest; no numbers

“users are not always in the same lifecycle stage. And so there's advantages in having multiple trials for us.”

Workedpaywall

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-03-02

Duolingo · B2C · language learning app

Give 3 free days of the paid tier, no card needed, even to current subscribers

Effective for free-to-paid and for upgrading subscribers to the top tier, per guest

“So we have this concept of a free taste where we basically can offer you a trial-like experience, which is three days, but with no strings attached.”

Workedupsell-expansionpaywall

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-03-02

Duolingo · B2C · language learning app

Give users one free AI video call from the top tier

Effective lever for getting people to try the feature, per guest

“Just one call is actually not a bad way to try and get people to try a feature and see if they want to convert. And we've seen that also as an effective lever.”

Workedupsell-expansion

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-03-02

Duolingo · B2C · language learning app

Give the free 3 days as a reward right after a finished lesson

Felt more rewarding than on the learning path; no numbers

“The other thing is we actually always position it as a reward and we say, "Hey, you just earned this."”

Unknownupsell-expansionretention

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-03-02

Duolingo · B2C · language learning app

When free days end, say 'Your benefits have ended' and show how to rejoin

“I think one of the things we just emphasize is that, "Your X benefits have ended." And then we usually always give two sets of options.”

Unknownpaywallcancellation-flow

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-03-02

Duolingo · B2C · language learning app

Use each user's signals to pick between your own upgrade ads and paid ads

Good wins, per guest; no numbers

“And one of the first few things that we tried starting to optimize was, "Well, what is the right mix of promoting our own product versus serving other external ads?" And we saw good wins on it.”

Workedupsell-expansionanalytics-attribution

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-03-02

Duolingo · B2C · language learning app

Let a bandit algorithm pick which upgrade ad each user sees after a lesson

Some wins so far, still improving; no numbers

“And we've had some wins in having a Bandit and trying to optimize which creative will work best for who, and we're continuing to see wins from that.”

Workedupsell-expansionexperimentation

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-03-02

Numbers mentioned

Subject	Metric	Value	Quote
Duolingo	count Free trial length before the change (later cut to 7)	14 days	“We used to have a two-week trial, I think, towards 'till the end of 2024.”
Duolingo	count Free trial length after the change	7 days	“we tested a shorter duration, seven days.”
Duolingo	growth rate Experimentation velocity (results in 7 days instead of 14) after shortening the trial	+2 x approximate	“we actually basically doubled our experimentation velocity because now instead of having to wait 14 days, you get your results in seven days.”
Duolingo	count Default trial-expiry reminder is sent about 2 days before the trial ends	2 days approximate	“you'll get a reminder, a notification sent to you about two days before your trial expires.”
Duolingo	count Number of times a user may be offered a free trial (purchase decisions)	3–4 trialsper user approximate	“now you as a user have to decide four times, three or four times, whether you want to make this purchase or not.”
Duolingo	count Length of a 'free taste' (no-card trial-like access to Super or Max)	3 days	“we basically can offer you a trial-like experience, which is three days, but with no strings attached.”
marketSubscription services in China: typical paid-trial entry price	price Nominal amount charged to start a paid trial; free $0 trials are rare in China	USD 0.99–1/one-time illustrative	“They actually prefer a model in which you have to pay a very small nominal amount to get access to a trial, let's just say like a dollar or 99 cents.”