By creating an account or using the Duolingo service, you agree to these terms governing account use, content licenses, payments, and dispute resolution.
Overall Score
Risk by Category
Duolingo's Terms of Service (effective as of latest update) establish the legal agreement between users and Duolingo for using their language-learning platform. Key areas include account creation and responsibilities, user conduct rules, ownership and licensing of user-generated content (granting Duolingo broad perpetual licenses), subscription and payment terms (including auto-renewals), termination rights, indemnity, limitation of liability, mandatory arbitration for disputes (with class action waiver), and governing law (Delaware). The terms emphasize compliance with laws, no warranties on service accuracy, and broad rights for Duolingo to use, modify, and distribute user content worldwide. Privacy aspects are referenced but detailed in separate Privacy Policy.
All disputes resolved via binding individual arbitration; class actions and jury trials waived (Section 17).
Perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free license to use, modify, distribute user content (Section 6).
Paid subscriptions renew automatically unless canceled (Section 8).
Basic language courses available without payment.
Users can stop using service and request data deletion (Section 9).
Parental consent required for under-13 users.
Spotify collects the following categories of personal data. High Risk categories are used for advertising profiling or involve sensitive personal information.
Email, username, password, profile info.
Lessons completed, streaks, proficiency levels.
IP address, browser type for functionality.
Your data serves the following purposes. Mandatory purposes cannot be disabled without canceling the service. Opt-out available purposes allow some user control.
Usage data used to personalize lessons and improve service.
Sentences and content used to train models (cross-ref Privacy Policy).
Spotify shares data with several categories of third parties. Sharing with advertising partners is extensive and represents the primary commercial use of your behavioral data.
Shared with vendors for hosting, payments (Section 11).
Used within Duolingo family of companies.
Shared in mergers/acquisitions.
The following rights may be available to you depending on your region. EU/EEA users have the broadest protections under GDPR. Non-EU users have more limited guarantees.
Users can terminate account; data handled per Privacy Policy.
No explicit right to access or portability mentioned in terms.
Ability to manage notifications via settings.
Data is retained for different periods depending on category, and security disclosures vary in depth. The policy highlights the following retention and transparency points.
Retention Periods
Data retained as necessary for legal/compliance purposes.
Licensed content usable perpetually by Duolingo.
Retained indefinitely for service improvement.
Security & Transparency
References reasonable security but no specifics like encryption.
Relies on applicable law for notifications.
Source Text
'You grant Duolingo... a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute...'
Interpretation
Duolingo gets broad rights over all user inputs like sentences, potentially for commercial use indefinitely.
Source Text
'Any dispute... will be resolved exclusively through final and binding arbitration... no class arbitration.'
Interpretation
Users forfeit court access and class actions, favoring company in disputes.
Source Text
'Subscriptions automatically renew... until canceled.'
Interpretation
Risk of unintended charges if not monitored.
Source Text
'You may stop using the Services at any time.'
Interpretation
Easy exit but data rights persist via license.
Source Text
Lists clear rules against illegal use, spam, etc.
Interpretation
Standard protections against abuse.
Yes, you can terminate your account via settings, but licensed user content rights remain with Duolingo.