Worbi vs Duolingo for Swedish

Duolingo is a guided Swedish course with short lessons for English speakers, free with an optional Super subscription. Worbi is a Swedish-English vocabulary app: you add the words you meet, cards fill themselves in, and FSRS brings each word back before you forget it. Use Duolingo to follow a course, Worbi to keep your words.

What is the difference between Worbi and Duolingo?

Duolingo is a course. It decides what you learn next, in what order, with bite-size lessons, and its Swedish course is built for English speakers. You open the app and the path tells you what to do.

Worbi is a vocabulary tool. It does not teach grammar or set a path. You bring the words, from a class, a book, work or a street sign, and Worbi turns each one into a complete Swedish-English flashcard and schedules the reviews so the word stays.

Can Worbi replace Duolingo?

Not if you want a course. Worbi has no lessons, no grammar explanations and no set path. If you are starting from zero and want someone to lead the way, a course like Duolingo fits that job better.

Worbi fits a different job: keeping the words you meet. Many learners use both. They follow lessons in Duolingo, then add the words they keep forgetting to Worbi, where each one gets its own card and review schedule.

How do the apps decide what you review?

Duolingo says its personalized practice lessons use spaced repetition, along with your accuracy, to choose which words and grammar you review. You review inside lessons, as part of the course.

Worbi schedules every card on its own with FSRS-4.5. The scheduler estimates when you are about to forget a specific word and brings it back right before that. The Study tab runs these reviews across all your collections. Read more in spaced repetition and FSRS, explained.

What happens to your mistakes?

In Duolingo you review the mistakes from a lesson at the end of it, and the Practice Hub lets every learner practice past mistakes for free.

In Worbi, a word you get wrong goes into a Mistakes list. You can open it from the Study tab and run a short session on just those words, until you have them right again.

What does each app cost?

Duolingo is free, and Super Duolingo is an optional subscription that adds an ad-free experience and no limit on lessons. Worbi is free on iPhone with an optional Premium subscription. An Android version is coming soon.

How do you get words into Worbi?

Type a Swedish word and the card fills in. Type bok and you get en bok, the translation, examples and the forms boken, böcker and böckerna. You can also photograph a page and pick the words, and the text is read on your phone. For a first list, see common Swedish words to learn first, and for noun gender, en or ett.

Choose Duolingo if...

• You are a complete beginner and want a guided course.
• You want a full course, not only vocabulary.
• You like short daily lessons with a clear path.
• You want to learn on Android or the web today.

Choose Worbi if...

• You already learn Swedish somewhere, such as SFI, a class or work, and need the words to stick. See vocabulary for SFI.
• You want to choose your own words, not follow a fixed list.
• You want en or ett, inflections and examples on every card.
• You want every word on its own FSRS schedule, offline.

Sources

Facts about Duolingo come from its own pages, checked on 2 October 2026. Prices, plans and features can change, so check the official pages before you decide.

• Duolingo: Learn Swedish course page, accessed 2 October 2026.
• Duolingo on the App Store (price, platforms, languages), accessed 2 October 2026.
• Duolingo on Google Play, accessed 2 October 2026.
• Duolingo Blog: Why is spaced repetition so important for learning?, accessed 2 October 2026.
• Duolingo Help Center: What is Super Duolingo?, accessed 2 October 2026.
• Duolingo Blog: Super Duolingo launch, accessed 2 October 2026.

Duolingo is named here only to compare the apps. Worbi is not affiliated with or endorsed by its makers.