Duolingo vs Rayaad
Duolingo vs Rayaad
A course decides what you learn. Rayaad makes sure the words you actually meet are still there in a year. Most serious learners end up needing the second thing.
Why Rayaad
- Your words, not a syllabus. Everything in Rayaad is there because you typed, pasted or installed it.
- FSRS schedules each word from your own answers, with intervals that reach months and years — visible, and yours to inspect.
- Any pair of languages, including the ones no course exists for. A pair is two BCP-47 tags you choose.
- No streaks, leagues or notification pressure. A session ends when the due cards are done.
- Export everything, any time, on any plan. Your vocabulary stays portable.
Where they differ
- Duolingo sequences a course and teaches grammar, listening and production. Rayaad does one job — retention of the vocabulary you choose — and does not pretend to be a curriculum.
- Duolingo's motivation design is central to it. Rayaad has none by default, which is the point for people who found streaks counterproductive.
- Duolingo covers a fixed set of official courses. Rayaad has no supported-languages list at all.
- Duolingo decides the order you meet words in. Rayaad has no opinion about what you should learn, only about when to show it to you again.
Side by side
Prose rather than ticks in both columns. "Supports spaced repetition: yes / yes" is true of nearly every tool here and tells you nothing about which one to use.
| Dimension | Rayaad | Duolingo |
|---|---|---|
| Who it is for | People who already have vocabulary they want to retain, at any level, in any language pair. | Learners who want a guided course, most valuably from beginner to lower intermediate. |
| Who chooses the words | You do. Every card got there because you put it there. | The course does, in the order it is arranged. |
| Scheduling | FSRS-6 per card, from your own answers, with intervals you can see and reason about. | Review is built into the course rather than exposed as a per-item schedule. |
| Adding your own vocabulary | The entire premise — quick add, CSV, paste, AI drafts, all editable. | Not part of the course; what you learn is what it contains. |
| Grammar and production | Out of scope. Rayaad retains vocabulary and says so. | A core part of the product, alongside listening and speaking. |
| Motivation design | None by default. No streak, no league, no daily goal, no engagement notifications. | Central and deliberate — streaks, leagues, goals and reminders. |
| Language coverage | Any pair of BCP-47 tags. No list of supported languages exists. | A fixed set of official courses, extensive for major languages. |
| Price | Free plan with no review limit and no ads. | Free with advertising, plus a paid subscription. |
The words a course cannot reach
Once you are past the first few months of a language, most new vocabulary arrives from outside any app: a novel, a subtitle, a colleague’s phrasing, a sign. None of it is in anybody’s curriculum, and a course cannot schedule it because it does not know it exists.
That vocabulary usually ends up in a notebook or a note on a phone, which means it is never reviewed — which means it is never learned. That list is what Rayaad is for.
You add it, and the scheduler brings each word back at the point it is about to slip, for as long as that takes. Nothing about it requires you to decide what to study or when.
Scheduling you can see
Rayaad’s intervals are per card and derived from your own answers. A word you keep getting right is tomorrow, then three days, then eight, then weeks, then months — and Rayaad shows you what is due before you start, so a session has a size and an end.
That visibility matters more than it sounds. It is the difference between trusting an app to have your back and hoping it does.
No streak, on purpose
Rayaad has no streak, no league, no daily goal and no engagement notifications. Progress is measured in what you can recall, not in consecutive days opened.
For some people that removes the thing that got them to show up, and that is a real trade rather than a hidden one. For the many people who have abandoned a tool after breaking a 200-day streak, it is the reason to be here.
Any pair, including yours
Rayaad has no supported-languages list. A pair is two BCP-47 tags you choose, so the product works for combinations no course has ever been built for — and the pronunciation follows the tag rather than guessing from the characters.
Plenty of people run a course for structure and Rayaad for everything the course does not cover. They are different jobs, and Rayaad is unambiguously the better tool for the second one.
Try Rayaad alongside Duolingo
Nothing to uninstall and nothing to migrate. Add a handful of words you keep losing and see whether they stop being lost.