Duolingo vs Speak

Duolingo — Application · Public · $7.3B mkt cap · 4 of 4 figures sourced  |  Speak — Application · Private · $162M raised · 3 of 3 figures sourced

Relationship

Forbes frames Speak's whole business as racing Duolingo, its 'biggest rival', in AI-driven language tutoring, and cites Duolingo's much larger revenue directly against Speak's. Duolingo Max is Duolingo's AI-tutoring product; both it and Speak carry generate-speech-audio.

3 of 4 capabilitiesShared product typeSourced competitorCreate synthetic voice and audio

3 of 4 capabilities — Shares education and tutoring, speech to text and voice agent.

Ludbee capability tags · from the product records

Shared product type — Both ship application.

Ludbee product records

Sourced competitor — “This Startup Is Racing Duolingo To Replace Human Language Tutors With AI”

forbes.com · checked 2026-09-19

Create synthetic voice and audio — Rivals on this job — Turn text into speech, clone or convert a voice, and generate or edit audio and music.

Ludbee needs vocabulary · the scope on the sourced edge

Aligned comparison

FieldDuolingoSpeak
Size$7.3B mkt cap$162M raised different basis
Employees900130 Speak has 6.9× fewer
Founded20112016 5 yrs later
StatusPublicPrivate
CategoryApplicationApplication match
Stack layerApplicationApplication match
HeadquartersPittsburgh, USASan Francisco, USA

Capability overlap

Shared · 3

Education and tutoringSpeech to textVoice agent

Not verified for Speak · 1

Text generation

Recorded for Duolingo. Speak’s product records say nothing either way — a missing record is not a missing capability.

Speak has no capability Duolingo lacks, among the 3 recorded here.

Products, side by side

Hand-checked pairing

Duolingo

Application

Duolingo English TestApplication

An online English proficiency exam scored by machine learning and accepted by institutions worldwide, with results in two days.

Duolingo MaxApplication

The subscription tier where the AI features live: Video Call with an animated tutor, Roleplay conversations and Explain My Answer, sitting on top of everything Super already removes from the free course.

Speak

Application

SpeakApplication

Language-learning app that holds spoken conversations with the learner and corrects their speech.

Speak for BusinessApplication

Workplace English programme with role-play scenarios and an admin portal tracking each learner's progress.

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