English-learning apps for kids (and free resources): an honest comparison

How to choose an app: 6 criteria

1. Age. An app for a 5-year-old and one for a 13-year-old are completely different products. A preschooler needs pictures and audio without reading, while a teenager needs proper content and a faster pace. Half the disappointment comes down to simply choosing something that’s “not for their age.”
2. Method. Check whether the app includes review of learned material. Words without spaced repetition are forgotten within a week — we covered how this works in detail in our article on how children can remember English words.
3. Motivation without reminders. The key question is: what will make a child open the app on day 15, once the novelty has worn off? Points and cartoons work for the first two weeks. After that, you need either a habit or an external structure. In Mova, that structure comes from the phone itself: games only unlock for minutes earned through a lesson — every day, and without your reminders.
4. Progress tracking for parents. If you can’t see what your child has actually completed and how many words they know, you’ll only find out they “quit a month ago” by accident. In Mova, completed days and words marked as “knows / learning” are visible in the parent web dashboard.
5. Price. Don’t compare subscription prices — compare the cost per lesson actually completed. A free app abandoned after two weeks is more expensive than a paid one a child uses every day.
6. Ukrainian localization. For school-age children, explanations in their native language noticeably lower the barrier to entry. For preschoolers, this matters less — everything is based on pictures and sound anyway.

By these criteria, parents most often compare two approaches: Duolingo, where everything depends on the child’s willpower, and Mova, where the lesson is built into access to the phone itself. For a child with a smartphone, Mova is the best Duolingo alternative: daily practice and the reward happen automatically, and parents don’t have to keep track or remind anyone. Here’s an honest look at both.

Duolingo: a strong app, but for a child it runs on willpower

Age: the main Duolingo app is roughly for ages 10+; the separate Duolingo ABC is for ages 3–8.

Duolingo is the best-known English learning app in the world, and for good reason: short lessons, smart gamification (streaks, leagues, chests), and an English course with a Ukrainian interface. The basic version is free with ads; Super Duolingo costs about UAH 350–500/month (as of 2026).

Strengths: the free tier is genuinely enough for many users; the streak works well for teens who like “not breaking the chain”; and review is built into the course.

Weaknesses for children: under ages 9–10, the main course is difficult — there’s a lot of reading and translation-based exercises. Duolingo ABC is free and ad-free, but it teaches reading to English-speaking children: the interface is in English, and without a basic vocabulary it’s hard for a child to use. Most importantly, Duolingo competes for attention with games and TikTok on the same phone. Whether to open it or not is entirely up to the child. Once the streak breaks, motivation often collapses with it — and you’re back to reminding them again.

Mova: a Duolingo alternative for kids that doesn’t need reminders

Platform: iPhone only.

Mova solves a different problem than Duolingo: not “make the lesson more fun so the child wants to do it,” but remove the need for reminders altogether. Games, social media, and videos on the child’s iPhone are blocked by category through Apple’s system mechanism, and the child earns minutes for them by completing a daily English lesson: a “Super” test earns 30 minutes, a “Good” test earns 20, and getting “Super” on all tests that day adds another +10. Minutes are credited automatically: there’s no need to keep a points chart on the fridge that no one follows after a week, and no need to remember who earned what. A new game from the App Store is automatically included in the block, and only a parent with the PIN can change the list.

Why Mova works better for children:

• Motivation is built into the system, not left to willpower. Screen time becomes a reward for learning, and the question “Did you study today?” disappears. Duolingo asks the child to want it; Mova turns the lesson into a ticket to their favorite games.
• Words don’t get forgotten. Every word is reviewed using the Leitner method — after 1, 3, 7, 14, and 30 days — and is only considered learned after several correct answers with increasing intervals.
• Level adapts without a placement test. Difficulty adjusts automatically based on the results of daily lessons.
• Progress tracking for parents. The web dashboard shows which days are completed, how many words the child knows, and how many they’re still learning.
• You set the rules. Rewards can be changed or turned off, and unused minutes can either roll over to the next day or expire overnight. There’s one shared balance across all of the child’s devices.
• No child email or phone number needed. The child signs in using a code from the parent.

Limitations — honestly: it only works on iPhone; it requires one-time setup on the child’s phone; and for a preschooler who doesn’t yet have their own phone, this format is too early. Current pricing is available at mova.family.

Mova vs Duolingo: comparison table

Free online English for kids: what to add alongside an app

If there’s no budget for subscriptions, free online English for kids is absolutely possible. But with one caveat: no free resource guides a child through a full program, so you become the one providing the “schedule and motivation” — and those arrangements usually last about a week. That’s why free resources work best as a supplement: Mova handles daily practice, while songs, cartoons, and games make weekends more fun.

LearnEnglish Kids by the British Council

The highest-quality free site for children ages 5–12: songs, narrated stories, grammar games, and printable materials. Everything is designed by education specialists and has no ads. The downside is that the site is in English and doesn’t offer much adventure: a child won’t go there on their own, so shared activities are needed. If you want to organize them even if you don’t know the language yourself, see our article on doing English at home with your child.

Songs and cartoons in English

Nursery songs, cartoons about letters and sounds, Peppa Pig in the original. This is passive listening: it helps with pronunciation and builds familiarity with the language, but it doesn’t replace active study. It works well as a “background layer” alongside a main tool.

Word games

Online vocabulary and grammar games you can choose to match the week’s topic, as well as offline board games without gadgets. For more ideas on what to play in English with your child, see our collection of games for learning English.

Why children abandon apps after 2 weeks — and what to do about it

This is the most predictable scenario: excitement in the first few days, “later” in the second week, and by the third week the icon is forgotten on the screen. The reasons are pretty simple:

• The novelty wore off. Cartoons and points are fun while they’re new. After that, the app has to compete with games and TikTok — and it loses: those offer more dopamine for less effort.
• There’s no external structure. A school lesson happens because there’s a schedule and a teacher. A regular app has no schedule — only a push notification that’s easy to swipe away.
• The level is wrong. Too easy is boring; too hard feels discouraging. Both lead to the same result.

What actually works:

1. Tie the lesson to an existing habit: every day after breakfast or right after school, at the same time. A habit forms after 3–4 weeks of short daily sessions.
2. Short sessions matter more than long ones. 10–15 minutes every day gives more than an hour on Sunday — and causes less resistance.
3. Look at progress together once a week. Not as a “check,” but as five minutes of genuine interest: what they learned, how many days in a row they’ve done it. A child needs to see that it matters to someone. In Mova, all you have to do is open the dashboard — there’s nothing you need to track yourself.
4. The most reliable approach is to flip the logic: instead of you reminding them about the lesson, let the phone do it. In Mova, games only unlock for minutes earned through studying, the minutes are counted automatically — and “enforcement” stops being your role. This is exactly where ordinary apps fall short: their motivation lasts only while the child is interested, while Mova keeps working every day without parents.

An app is only one tool. To build a complete learning system by age — how much, when, and in what format — read our guide to English for children.