Subscription models live off habits: lessons from Duolingo’s retention success

Duolingo retention strategy Duolingo retention strategy
Hi, I'm Lennart Schneider, Founder of Subscribe Now, helping decision-makers in the subscription economy attract subscribers and keep them happy.

In this article, we look at Duolingo - a leading e-learning app that has mastered the art of habit-forming, something that's essential for subscription success.

Duolingo, a rapidly growing language-learning app with a market capitalization of almost $15 billion, owes a large part of its success to its streak feature. A streak is a count of consecutive days a user has completed at least one exercise. If a user misses a day, their streak resets to zero. This simple feature has made Duolingo one of the apps with the best retention, with an impressive 9 million people maintaining a streak of at least one year.