TonePerfect vs Duolingo
Duolingo is the most successful language app ever built, and most people reading this already have a streak going. The overlap with TonePerfect is one screen: the one where you speak. Duolingo asks whether it recognised you; TonePerfect asks how close each sound was. Here is the honest version of that difference, and why running both is the normal answer.
InglésEspañolFrancésAlemánRusoJaponésCoreanoChino (mandarín)
De un vistazo
| Función | Duolingo | TonePerfect |
|---|---|---|
| Enfoque principal | Full course — vocabulary, grammar, reading, listening | Pronunciation training, in eight languages |
| Idiomas | 40+ | 8 — Mandarin, English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Japanese, Korean |
| Precio | Free · Super $95.99/yr · Max $167.99/yr | Gratis · Premium desde $4.99/mo |
| Plan gratuito | The whole course, with ads | 10 evaluaciones con IA al día, gratis |
| Feedback de voz | Accept or reject the whole utterance | A score for every sound in every word you say |
| Diagnóstico de errores | No — it never names the sound | Ranks your sounds weakest-first and drills the worst ones |
| Ejercicios específicos | Speaking is folded into ordinary lessons | Minimal pairs and spaced repetition, aimed at your weakest sounds |
| Tu propio texto | No — course sentences only | Yes — paste your own text and record it |
Los precios son cifras de EE. UU. comprobadas en agosto de 2026 y cambian con las promociones — consulta las tiendas o la web de cada app para ver los datos actuales.
En qué es mejor Duolingo
- ✓The best habit engineering in the industry — streaks, reminders and a difficulty curve that keeps beginners coming back
- ✓A free tier that is genuinely the whole course, ad-supported rather than crippled
- ✓40+ languages, with grammar, reading, listening and vocabulary all in one path
- ✓Duolingo Max adds open-ended AI conversation practice, which no pronunciation scorer gives you
Dónde TonePerfect llega más lejos
- ✓A number for every individual sound, instead of one accept/reject for the whole sentence
- ✓Duolingo’s recogniser is forgiving by design — it will accept a word said with the wrong vowel or the wrong tone, which is fine for momentum and useless for correction
- ✓Your sounds are ranked weakest-first and the drills are built from that ranking, so practice goes where the errors are
- ✓A free browser test with no signup, and 10 full AI assessments a day on the free tier
Conclusión
Keep Duolingo for the habit, the vocabulary and the grammar — nothing else makes daily practice this hard to skip. Add TonePerfect when you notice that Duolingo has never once told you WHICH sound you got wrong. Its speech check is deliberately forgiving, because a strict one would break the streak that makes the app work; ours is deliberately not, because a score per sound is the whole product.
Preguntas frecuentes
Does Duolingo actually grade your pronunciation?
It checks whether its speech recogniser can match what you said to the expected sentence, then shows a tick or asks you to try again. That is a recognition test, not a pronunciation score: a word said with the wrong vowel or the wrong tone frequently passes, and nothing in the interface tells you which sound was closest to failing.
Is Duolingo Max worth it for speaking?
If what you want is conversation practice — talking to something that answers back — Max’s video call is the reason to buy it, and TonePerfect does not compete with that. If what you want is to find out that your German ü has been wrong for eight months, Max will not tell you, because it is not measuring at that level.
Can I use both?
That is what most of our users do. Duolingo carries the vocabulary and the daily habit; two minutes in TonePerfect after a lesson tells you which sounds in today’s words are actually landing. They do not overlap enough to make either redundant.
Escucha la diferencia tú mismo
Haz la prueba gratuita de 2 minutos: cada sonido que dices recibe su propia puntuación.
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Practica, no solo leas
Practica tu pronunciación en la app
Una guía puede explicar los tonos, pero no puedes corregir tu pronunciación solo leyendo. La app TonePerfect te permite pronunciar las palabras y evalúa cada sílaba —inicial, final y tono— en tiempo real, para que detectes tus errores y los corrijas al momento.
- Corrección instantánea con IA en cada sílaba
- Practica cualquier palabra, frase o lista HSK
- Entrenamiento práctico de tonos que no conseguirás leyendo
Empieza gratis · 4,6★ · más de 30.000 estudiantes