When comparing Clozemaster vs Duolingo, the Slant community recommends Duolingo for most people. In the question“What are the best sites for learning foreign languages?” Duolingo is ranked 1st while Clozemaster is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose Duolingo is:
Progress is measured gaming-like by gaining XP, and leveling up. They use other creative gamification techniques to keep you motivated such as making wagers and improving your position on the leaderboard.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Helps you to remember vocabulary by giving you context
Clozemaster helps you learn vocabulary in a natural way by giving you regular sentences and asking you to fill in the missing word, either by typing or using multiple choice.
For example, "Apenas hay __ en esa ciudad". The additional context using natural speech helps get you comfortable with the language.
Pro Gets you used to hearing your target language
After completed a sentence, it is read out loud by a native speaker of your target language (some sentences will allow you to hear it spoken by multiple speakers). They read it out clearly, but at a conversational pace.
It gets you comfortable with hearing the words spoken in a normal, conversational way.
Pro Makes you write the vocabulary
This active approach helps save the words for active use.
Pro Free to play
There's a paid version with extra features, but it's free to sign up and play. The free version is quite generous and will give you plenty of material to learn from.
If you want to upgrade, the cost is $8/month. You can see the additional features here.
Pro Large variety of languages to choose from
Currently offers over 50 languages from around the world.
Pro Lots of repetition helps you remember new words
Words are used in a variety of different sentences to help you remember them.
Pro Lots of options for users who don't speak English
A lot of language learning sites expect your starting language to be English.
Clozemaster teaches target languages in a variety of different starting languages. For example: if you want to learn Spanish, the language used for explanations could be English, French, German, Italian, Russian, and a few others.
Pro Effective support
The developer is very receptive to user feedback and ideas. Bugs are fixed quickly and new features are regularly added.
Pro Motivates through creative gamification
Progress is measured gaming-like by gaining XP, and leveling up. They use other creative gamification techniques to keep you motivated such as making wagers and improving your position on the leaderboard.
Pro Generous free plan
Duolingo is completely free to use, with no features limited to upgraded accounts. If you want to go ad-free, the cost is $12.99/month.
Pro Super easy to use.
Very intuitive app. It has the kind of "intangible" user experience that simple feels better than the others.
Pro Has a mobile app
Pro Friendly, active community
There is a discussion board available on the site, and a really active community on reddit in r/duolingo (30k + members). Everyone is friendly and happy to help or offer support.
Pro Extensive
Duolingo is exceptionally thorough when it comes to teaching the nuances of language. It has plenty of audio material, articles to translate, and a cooperative development made by users.
Pro Engaging learning method
Each lesson uses a variety of different learning methods to keep it interesting and fun.
The lessons are short so you aren't forced to focus for long periods of time.
Pro Frequently adding new languages
You can check out the courses page to see what languages are "hatching" (being developed) and what languages are in beta.
Cons
Con Not a good starting place for beginners
Clozemaster jumps right in with expecting you to fill in word blanks in the language you are learning.
If you have little or no understanding of the language you wish to learn, it doesn't give you enough information to get started.
Con Translations are sometimes inaccurate
This can be a problem when in a given sentence there are multiple words that could go in the text field, and the translation narrows it down to one possible answer, but then it turns out the translation gave the wrong word for that slot. This is particularly an issue with pronouns for some reason.
Con Some sentences are inaccurate
Sentences are from the user-curated database Tatoeba and not all of them are written and checked by native speakers. It is impossible to know the original source of a sentence. Additionally, because they do not control the database they pull the words, reporting individual sentences will not help that much.
Con They do not know the languages they teach
You cannot teach something you do not know. The sentences are taken from [Tateoba], and most of the time, the developers have no clue about what the written sentences say.
Con The alphabets are not taught
There is no problem if you're learning a language that uses the same alphabet as your native language, but if you speak English and you want to learn Russian, Arabic, Yiddish, etc., this app is not a good start for you.
Con This app will ask you fill in the translations of given names in the blanks
The app randomly selects a word from the sentence and ask you translate it, and this word is frequently a given name, like Tom or Stuart. or the names of cities.
Con Mobile app is less beneficial because it's too easy
Some of the games available on the mobile app are different from that on the desktop version, and are oversimplified/make it very easy to guess.
Con Little production of target language
Duolingo focuses heavily on reading comprehension and translation into one's own language rather than encouraging production of text/speech in the target language.
Con The hype in the community creates false ideas about what level Duolingo gets you to
Duolingo is a good tool for a beginner, and a good supplement to other resources. But it cannot get you from zero to understanding natives, tv, and books; and their "do the reverse tree and just speak" is usually not the correct answer to "what should I do after finishing the tree".
Con Tediously repetitive with not much advancement
Not good choice for brushing up on a rusty language. Teaches through constant repetition of same few (very basic) words over and over. Little progression. Range of vocab and grammar very limited. Tedious in extreme!
Con Counting only on Duolingo is a waste of time
Con Repetitive questions on entire lessons
Same questions all over until one section completed.
Con Doesn't take you to an advanced level
Con The health system on the IOS app disrupts learning
5 mistakes and you're out, unless you pay, wait several hours, or use a special review that currently doesn't let you choose what to review. Especially terrible if you're learning multiple or more difficult languages.
Con Available languages are predominately European
Duolingo teaches 23 languages from English at the moment: Latin American Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Irish, Turkish, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Esperanto, Ukrainian, Polish, Welsh, Greek, Romanian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Swahili, Vietnamese and Japanese (the last currently only on the app). Popular non-European languages such as Mandarin and Arabic are not currently available (although Korean and Indonesian are in development).