Looking for a Duolingo Max alternative?
Duolingo Max is Duolingo’s top subscription tier, and its headline features are AI conversations: Video Call and Roleplay. If you are weighing it up because you want more speaking practice, it helps to compare it with a product that does only that.
Everything said about Duolingo Max below comes from Duolingo’s own announcement on its blog, checked on 30 September 2026 and linked in the sources. That post was first published in March 2023, and Duolingo updates its features often, so check the current details in the app.
What Duolingo Max offers
Duolingo describes Max as a subscription tier above Super Duolingo. It includes Super’s benefits — no ads and personalised review in the Practice Hub, among others — plus two AI features. In Video Call you talk with Lily, a Duolingo character who starts the conversation, usually about something you have just studied, remembers what you discussed next time, and gives you a transcript afterwards. In Roleplay you hold scenario conversations with Duolingo’s characters — ordering coffee in Paris, planning a trip — and get AI feedback on the accuracy and complexity of your answers.
According to the post, English speakers learning Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese get both features, and those learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese get Video Call. Max is on iOS and Android. The post doesn’t list a price.
Where Duolingo Max is the better choice
Duolingo is a whole course. Max’s conversations sit on top of lessons, reviews and a path that takes you from nothing to the basics, with the streaks and reminders that keep people coming back. If you are a beginner, or you want your speaking practice tied to what you learned in today’s lesson, that integration is hard to beat, and Video Call’s memory of past chats makes it feel continuous.
Where banter is different
banter has no course: it is only conversation practice, so everything about it is built around the call. Each scene has a goal and a character with a manner of their own — a brisk passer-by, a probing interviewer, a stallholder who enjoys haggling — and you choose how hard you are pushed, from gentle to brisk, where the character talks at full native speed and doesn’t rescue you.
A coach sits beside the call and speaks up only when something didn’t get your meaning across; at the end your own sentences come back with corrections and a Banter Score. It runs in a web browser on a computer or a phone, and it is for adults (18+). It pairs well with a course like Duolingo rather than replacing one: the course teaches the language, banter is where you rehearse using it.