What to Actually Use After Duolingo (2026)

The short answer

1. 1 of 6

   Comprehensible-input video (Dreaming Spanish and language-specific equivalents)

   Hundreds of hours of level-appropriate spoken input, no exercises at all.

   Dreaming Spanish, and the comprehensible-input channels that exist for most major languages, work on a simple premise backed by decades of second-language-acquisition research: understanding messages in the target language, at a level just above what you already know, is what builds fluency, not drilling grammar rules or translating sentences.

   For Spanish specifically, Dreaming Spanish has built the deepest library of any single comprehensible-input resource: thousands of hours ranging from 'superbeginner' videos using gesture and repetition to build first understanding, up through native-speed conversation and storytelling. It is free to watch on YouTube, with a paid tier that adds tracking, offline downloads, and organization.

   It's listening-only by design, so it does nothing for reading, writing, or speaking on its own, and progress is slow to feel at first with no score, streak, or lesson to mark it. It also only exists at this depth for a handful of languages; less commonly taught ones tend to have a thinner library.

   Best forLearners who plateaued on Duolingo's curated sentences and want hundreds of hours of real spoken language at a level they can actually follow.

   Visit Dreaming Spanish

2. 2 of 6

   LingQ, for reading native content with the unknown words tracked

   Import real articles and books, and LingQ marks every word you haven't met yet.

   LingQ solves a different part of the plateau than comprehensible-input video: reading. You import native content, an article, a book, a podcast transcript, and LingQ highlights every word by how well you know it, from completely new to fully learned. Look a word up once, and it stays tracked across everything else you import.

   This lines up with research on how much of a text needs to be already known for reading to feel like reading rather than decoding: Dr. Paul Nation's oft-cited figure is that a learner needs to know roughly 98% of the words in a text for comfortable, enjoyable reading. LingQ's tracking is built to help you find or adapt content that clears that bar, and its library is large enough in major languages that finding it is realistic.

   The interface is dense, and the workflow, importing content, then clicking through unknown words one at a time, is real work up front. It also has no story or audio generation of its own: everything you read has to already exist somewhere and be brought in.

   Best forLearners who want to read real, unedited native content and have their known vocabulary tracked as they go.

   Visit LingQ

3. 3 of 6

   A tutor (iTalki or similar), for the half Duolingo never touches

   Duolingo has no real conversation. A tutor is still the fastest way to get one.

   Nothing about Duolingo's exercise format produces spontaneous, back-and-forth speech, and that gap tends to show up exactly at the plateau: a learner who can read and half-understand a podcast still freezes in a live conversation. iTalki and similar marketplaces connect you with professional teachers and informal community tutors, by the hour, in almost any language and at any budget.

   Quality varies by teacher, scheduling is a real commitment compared to opening an app, and cost adds up over months in a way a subscription app doesn't. It's also not a content or vocabulary system: a tutor gives you speaking practice, not a way to retain the specific words you meet in your own life.

   Best forLearners who plateaued because they've never had a real conversation, only exercises.

   Visit iTalki

4. 4 of 6

   Langua, for AI conversation practice on demand

   An AI speaking partner and correction tool, available at 2am with no scheduling.

   Langua is an AI-powered speaking tutor: roleplays, corrections, and conversation practice, plus a feature that generates short mini-stories from your recently saved words. It has roughly 30,000 active learners and a strong rating (4.6 stars on iOS across 2,300+ ratings), and its dialect and voice range for Spanish in particular is ahead of most competitors in the category.

   Word capture happens inside the app itself, though, so a word you meet in a news article, a text message, or a show has no path in unless you retype it. Its story feature generates one-off mini-stories from your last 12 to 24 saved words rather than a continuing, serialized arc, and speech recognition accuracy is the most-cited complaint in its own reviews.

   Best forLearners who specifically miss having someone (or something) to talk to, on their schedule, with no human tutor required.

   Visit Langua

5. 5 of 6

   Anki, for learners willing to build their own deck by hand

   Still the gold standard for spaced repetition, if you're willing to do the admin.

   Sentence mining, finding words in native content and turning them into flashcards, then reviewing them on a spaced schedule, is one of the most effective known methods for retaining vocabulary long-term. Anki is the tool most people use to do it, running on FSRS-6, an open-source scheduling algorithm that targets a constant 90% recall probability.

   Every card still has to be made by hand: translated, formatted, given an example sentence, which sentence-mining guides put at roughly an hour of admin for every 20 words mined. That workload, not the reviewing itself, is the most-cited reason people abandon the method within the first week. Tolerate or even enjoy that admin, and Anki is extremely hard to beat on raw control and community deck availability. If you don't, see our companion guide on Anki alternatives for the card-making step specifically.

   Best forLearners who want full manual control over their vocabulary deck and don't mind the setup work.

   Visit Anki

6. 6 of 6

   TraceSpark, for turning what you already read and hear into review material automatically

   One option among several: personalization and spaced repetition, without the manual card-making.

   TraceSpark is built for the specific gap this guide is about: you're past Duolingo's curated sentences, you're already reading or listening to things on your own, and you want the words you meet there to actually come back until they stick, without hand-building a deck for each one. Capture a word from any app on your phone, via the share menu or text selection, and it's written into your next 5-to-15-minute audiobook chapter or podcast-style episode automatically, at your level, scheduled by the same FSRS-6 algorithm Anki runs.

   This is one option among the six here, not the answer. TraceSpark does no speaking practice at all (pair it with a tutor or Langua for that), its content library is narrower than LingQ's or Dreaming Spanish's because everything is generated rather than sourced, and it assumes you can already follow a story at a strong B1 level; below that, stay with Duolingo, there's no penalty for waiting.

   Best forLearners past B1 who are already capturing words from real content and want them to come back automatically, in a story worth reading.

   Visit TraceSpark

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