Where Duolingo’s maths course lives now
Duolingo announced its maths course in a launch post in October 2022, when it reached iOS learners in English and Spanish first, with a beginner track for foundations and an intermediate track for everyday skills. A year later, its Duocon 2023 post said the course was moving into the flagship app, so a maths lesson one day and a French lesson the next now keep the same streak alive. If you are searching for a separate Duolingo Math download, you are following advice from before that move: install Duolingo and add Math as a course. Sources read on 26 October 2026.
What the course teaches, by Duolingo’s own list
The launch post lists the elementary course in full: times tables and the commutative and associative properties; division tables and odd versus even; fractions, including improper and mixed fractions and comparing them; area and perimeter; place value and rounding to the nearest 10 and 100; angles, parallel and perpendicular lines and classifying quadrilaterals; reading clocks, using a ruler and metric conversion; and decimals, including converting between fractions and decimals. The intermediate track covers the same ground with harder exercises, plus applied problems such as working out an hourly wage.
Every item on that list is primary-school arithmetic or everyday numeracy, taught in short game-like lessons. The current App Store listing claims more: standards-aligned lessons for elementary, middle and high school students, sold as a way to fight the summer slide. It does not say which topics the later grades reach, so if you need secondary-school maths, look at the later units in the app rather than taking either source on trust. The launch post describes no placement test and no check on what you already know: you choose a track and start.
Is it any good for an adult relearning maths?
It depends on the job. If you want ten minutes a day of mental arithmetic, or you want to be quicker with tips, discounts and unit conversions, the course is built for that brief and asks nothing of you up front. If you are aiming at the algebra on an access course or the calculus a data job assumes, the published topic list stops well short, and none of the Duolingo pages cited here describes a route from fractions up to algebra.
The second limit is about where you start. An adult returning to maths after years away usually remembers some of it, and may not know which parts. Picking a track yourself, as the launch post describes, leaves that sorting to you: the app has no way to tell what you already know from what you have lost.
Why a streak can carry you straight over a gap
Duolingo’s model was built for languages, where knowledge behaves like a net. Forget the word for a fork and you can still order dinner. Maths behaves more like scaffolding: each idea is bolted to the ones beneath it, so a missing piece low down weakens everything above it, however many days in a row you have opened the app. A streak counts the days you practised; it records nothing about whether the steps underneath are in place.
Here is what that looks like on our own map, the prerequisite graph behind Consiliae, counted from the map as it stands today. Take adding fractions with unlike denominators, one step past the comparing of fractions that Duolingo’s list includes. It rests directly on 3 concepts: adding fractions with like denominators, equivalent fractions and least common multiple. Trace those back and it depends on 24 earlier concepts in all, and 13 later concepts are built on top of it. The shortest route from it into calculus runs:
- Adding fractions with unlike denominators (Foundations of Arithmetic)
- Adding rational expressions (unlike denominators) (Algebra I)
- Partial fractions: distinct linear factors (Single-Variable Calculus)
Further up the same branch sit 4 kinds of partial fractions, as well as solving rational equations and solving rational inequalities. So when partial fractions: distinct linear factors goes wrong in a calculus module, the cause can sit 2 levels down, in a fractions step from primary school, where more calculus practice will not reach it. The quadratic formula shows the depth from another angle: on our map it stands on 75 earlier concepts, drawn from Foundations of Arithmetic, Pre-Algebra and Algebra I.
A test to run on any maths app in its first week
Pretend you cannot reliably add fractions with unlike denominators, then ask three questions of the app in front of you. Would it find that out before it moved you on to algebra, or only after you had failed a run of algebra questions and assumed you were bad at algebra? Once it knew, would it change what it showed you next, by sending you back to that step rather than repeating the lesson you failed? And a month later, would it bring the step back to check it had stuck? Spreading reviews out over time improves how much is still remembered weeks later (Cepeda et al. 2008). An app that answers no to all three can still be a useful daily habit alongside something that does the placing and the reviewing.
Consiliae was built around those three questions. The Knowledge Scan, up to 25 questions, places you on a map of 1,424 maths concepts. Your route then starts at the lowest missing step rather than at the chapter you picked, and finished concepts come back on a spaced review schedule. If you are starting near the bottom, learning maths from scratch covers the first stretch in more detail.
Other maths apps adults weigh against it
If Duolingo’s course is too narrow for what you need, the table below sets out some broader maths platforms. Each row links to the page its facts were taken from, with the date it was read.
| Option | Price | Who it is for | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Khan Academy | Free | Anyone, school-age upward | Early maths to multivariable calculus, plus other subjects |
| Consiliae (ours) | $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year, after a 7-day free trial; the Knowledge Scan needs no account | Self-learners aged 16 and over | Arithmetic to linear algebra and multivariable calculus |
| Math Academy | $49 a month per student | Gifted learners, homeschool families, adults upskilling | Arithmetic to multivariable calculus and differential equations |
| Brilliant | $30 a month; yearly billing is advertised as saving 33% | Students from elementary school to college, and curious adults | Maths, computer science, science and data analysis, as interactive courses |
| ALEKS | No public price; free trial, usually bought through a school | K-12, higher education and independent learners | Maths, chemistry, statistics and accounting |
Consiliae is ours, and it is marked so you can weigh the rest accordingly. Each price links to the page it was read from, and the most recent check was on 2026-10-27; check before you buy, because prices move.
What Consiliae costs, and what you can try before paying
There is no free plan. The Knowledge Scan is up to 25 questions and needs no account and no card. Sign up to keep your route and take your first lesson; after that comes a 7-day free trial, then the Student plan. The Student plan is $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year. You see your scan result before you are asked to pay, so you can judge the route it proposes first.
