Duolingo leagues are definitely one of Duolingo’s biggest and most popular features.
These weekly leaderboards add a competitive and motivational edge to your language learning experience, which can push you even harder to complete your daily lessons.
But what exactly is a Duolingo league? How many leagues are there? What’s so special about the Diamond league? Are people cheating? What’s the best strategy for winning? And does your Duolingo league really matter?
All will be revealed — let’s get into it!
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What are Duolingo leagues?
A Duolingo league is basically a weekly leaderboard containing 30 random users from across all platforms, including IOS, Android and desktop.
To join a weekly leaderboard, all you need to do is complete a lesson. Then, head to your league tab and you will see yourself in a leaderboard with a group of other Duolingo users.
League leaderboards are ranked on XP — the user with the most XP at the end of the week will finish top of the leaderboard and get promoted to the next league.
The promotion zone can cover as many as 20 users, and this will depend entirely on which league you’re in. The current breakdown is as follows:
- Bronze – Top 20
- Silver – Top 15
- Gold – Top 10
- Sapphire – Top 7
- Ruby – Top 7
- Emerald – Top 7
- Amethyst – Top 7
- Pearl – Top 7
- Obsidian – Top 5
- Diamond – No promotions
Anyone who finishes 24th or lower — in what is known as the demotion zone — will be relegated to the previous league.
And if you finish outside both the promotion zone and demotion zone then you’ll stay in your current league for another week.
Follow me on Duolingo!
Up for some friendly competition? Then be sure to follow me on Duolingo!
My username is DCiiieee 🙂
(If the link doesn’t work then just type my username into the ‘Search for friends’ bar on the app)
How many leagues are there in Duolingo?
There are currently 10 leagues in Duolingo.
When the league system first launched there were only 5, with another batch of 5 being added in a subsequent update.
The leagues are the same across all language courses. So whether you’re learning Spanish or Hawaiian, you’ll compete in the same 10 leagues as everyone else.
What are the different Duolingo leagues?
From bottom to top — with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest — the 10 Duolingo leagues in order are:
- Bronze
- Silver
- Gold
- Sapphire
- Ruby
- Emerald
- Amethyst
- Pearl
- Obsidian
- Diamond
Bronze is the starter league. From there, the goal is to work your way up through the leagues all the way up to Diamond — Duolingo’s highest league.
Once you’ve done that and you’ve finished every single league, you will progress onto the Diamond Tournament (more on that below!).
Duolingo Diamond League
The Diamond league is the highest league on Duolingo. It differs from the other leagues in a couple of ways.
The first is that only 5 users can be relegated and there are (technically) no promotions.
Diamond is usually the most competitive of the 10 leagues. Although only 5 users can be relegated, you have to be on your A-game to stay in the league for another week.
XP totals are usually really high—often in the thousands—so you may need to do more lessons than usual to avoid getting demoted back to the Obsidian league.
Winning the Diamond league is even harder. I’ve been using Duolingo every day for over 6 years and I’ve only won it once!
And what do you get if you win the Diamond league? A swanky achievement, some gems and a pat on the back from the owl.
After that, the league resets, and you have to do it all over again (if you can muster the energy!).
the diamond tournament
Back in November 2021, Duolingo added an extra incentive to Diamond league participants.
Those who finished in the top 10 of the Diamond league would qualify for the Diamond Tournament.
The guys at Duolingo decided to remove it a short time later… but now it’s BACK!
The Diamond Tournament is basically just another rung on the league ladder. It’s a three-week competition in which you have to finish in the top 10 each week.
For every week you finish in the top 10, you earn a piece of the Diamond. And if you got all three pieces, you win!
When Duolingo first released the Diamond Tournament, it didn’t last very long. Probably only a couple of months tops.
Some of the scores were crazyyyyyy high and I think it put a lot of people off trying.
But now it looks like it’s back for the foreseeable future.
When does your Duolingo league end?
Your Duolingo league will end at some point between 22:00 and 01:00 on Sunday night/Monday morning — regardless of your time zone.
The general consensus used to be that the leagues would reset at 00:00 UTC every Monday. However, it’s clear from Reddit that users across the world tend to see their leagues reset around midnight in their local time.
So if you’re in the UK, for instance, your league will finish several hours before someone in the US. This also means your new leaderboard will begin several hours earlier as well.
Are people cheating in Duolingo leagues?
Because some of the XP totals — especially in the Diamond League and Tournament — are so crazy high, it gets people wondering whether some users are cheating.
All too often (and this isn’t just limited to the Diamond League) there are users that top the leaderboards with seemingly impossible XP totals.
These are often accumulated in short periods of time by profiles that haven’t used Duolingo for that long.
While I don’t think this has been definitively proven, some have questioned whether some users are using dodgy algorithms to hack their way up the leaderboards.
You can see this first-hand in this post and this post on Reddit.
For sure these are some pretty high totals. Certainly wayyyyy higher than I’ve ever managed!
However, it doesn’t necessarily confirm they’re cheating.
In fact, as we’ll see later in the article, there are ways you can hit these numbers — so long as you’re strategic (and you have a lot of time on your hands!).
How to get out of Duolingo leagues
If you find the leagues annoying, or you’re just not that competitive, then you might want to opt-out.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a clear-cut way of doing this yet.
But there is a workaround.
To get out of Duolingo leagues, you will need to make your Duolingo profile private.
To do this, simply head over to the Duolingo website, hover over your profile picture and click Settings.
On the next page, click Privacy Settings, then uncheck the box that says “Make my profile public” and click SAVE CHANGES.
Be aware though that this won’t just get rid of the leagues — it will also make it impossible for other learners to find or follow you!
How to win your Duolingo league
If you’re desperate to finish top of your leaderboard and win your league, then you’ll definitely want to consider some of these tips.
These tips won’t guarantee you victory, but they’ll definitely improve your chances.
Naturally, you’re going to have an easier time winning the Bronze League than the Diamond, but in any case, these tips will give you a fighting chance regardless of which league you’re in.
wait to join your league
If you want to win your league, the first step is to… wait.
You may think that you need to come out the blocks charging.
But actually, you’re much better off holding back and biding your time.
Duolingo places you in a new leaderboard once you’ve completed your first lesson of the week.
If you complete your first lesson first thing on a Monday, then guess what? You’re going to be placed in a leaderboard with other early birds.
In my experience, these guys are more likely to be the hardened Duolingo users. These are the guys that will show up on Duolingo every day and pour hours and hours of their time into completing lessons and racking up XP.
Make no mistake — if you want to win your league, then you don’t want to be competing with these guys, even if you’re an industrious learner yourself!
Instead, you will want to wait it out and give yourself a better chance of being grouped with the more casual learners (like me!).
These are the guys that only usually complete a few lessons a day, so won’t be earning crazy high XP totals.
This ensures you won’t need to be earning tens of thousands of XP to come out on top.
If you’re a streak freak, you probably won’t want to wait too long to join because you won’t want to lose your streak.
In which case, I’d recommend waiting until the last few hours of Monday (or pop on a Streak Freeze if you’re not bothered about the purity of your streak).
xp boosts
XP Boosts are absolutely essential in the battle for top spot.
These handy little power-ups double the amount of XP you can earn in a lesson for anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.
There are a few ways you can earn them (Early Bird chests and Friends Quests are two of my favorite ways) so you’ll want to make sure you’ve got one active for the majority of your lessons.
timed challenges
Timed Challenges are pretty much essential if you want to win your Duolingo league.
Lightning Round and Match Madness give you the chance to earn up to 40 XP every couple of minutes.
Better still, if you do them with an XP Boost active, that becomes 80 XP every couple of minutes!
You can see how easy this is in the video below.
You’ll want to do at least a couple of these a day depending on how intense your leaderboard is. They’ll help your comprehension speed loads as well!
perfect lesson boost
Currently unavailable.
Perfect Lesson Boosts don’t ordinarily add a lot of XP to your lesson totals.
But, when used with an XP Boost, you stand to earn an extra 20 XP per lesson.
They’re available from the Duolingo shop, cost 100 gems and last for 15 minutes.
As the name suggests, you only get the boost if you complete your lesson perfectly. So you’ll want to use them when you’re super confident with the skills you’re looking to work on.
legendary levels
Legendary Levels are up there with timed challenges when it comes to earning lots of XP quickly.
They’re not as accessible as timed challenges as they’re mainly for Plus/Super members and you’ll need to have completed a level in its entirety before you can go for legendary.
However, if you’re in a position where you can attempt them, they’re probably one the best ways to conquer your Duolingo league.
If you go about them in the right way, you stand to earn as much as 110 XP for every completed challenge. If you know your stuff, you could probably get this done in under a few minutes every time.
harder lesson, double xp
Every now and then as you’re working through your course, you’ll get the option to do a harder lesson for double XP.
It’s not something you can spontaneously activate but you usually get the option every few lessons.
They usually cost 20 gems and give you the chance to earn twice the amount of XP in your lesson.
The base amount is usually 10 XP so this will give you the chance to earn 20.
If you can spare the gems and you don’t mind cranking up the difficulty, you’ll want to accept these challenges every time they pop up.
Recommended strategy
When it comes to Duolingo, I’m really not that competitive. As I’ll explain later, I’m really not that bothered about the leagues — I’m more interested in learning my languages!
However…
I know many of you are. So using the tips above, I’ve devised this simple strategy that will give you a solid chance of coming out on top of your Duolingo league.
monday
Wait as long as you can before completing your first lesson.
Ideally, hold back until 11pm on Monday night.
You won’t get the Early Bird XP Boost, but hopefully, you will get placed in a less competitive league.
This should ensure you won’t need to earn some of the crazy high XP totals we saw earlier!
tuesday to friday
Feel free to jump on Duolingo as early as you want.
In fact, the earlier the better, so you can bag yourself the Early Bird XP Boost.
You won’t get this until 6pm, so you’ll want to pencil in an evening session as well.
Once you’ve done this, focus on completing your current level on your lesson path. This will activate a 15-minute XP Boost.
You’ll then want to dive into a timed challenge (either Lightning Round or Match Madness) or a legendary level and keep bashing them out until your XP Boost has expired.
Continue completing levels and doing timed challenges for as long as you desire.
saturday to sunday
Again, try to jump on Duolingo as early as possible (before 12pm) so you bag yourself the Early Bird boost.
Then go about completing your first level of the day.
Once you’ve done this, instead of jumping into a timed challenge, you’ll instead want to head over to the shop and activate a Perfect Lesson Boost (if available).
Then head over to your learning path and dive in to a legendary level. You’ll want to line these up through the week so you have as many to complete on the weekend as possible.
If you manage to complete a legendary level flawlessly, you’ll earn as much as 110 XP (assuming you’ve got an XP Boost and Perfect Lesson Boost active).
I recommend legendary levels instead of timed challenges on the weekend, as the weekend timed challenge (XP Ramp Up) is nowhere near as effective as the weekday ones.
Duolingo league repair
Demoted from your Duolingo league? Worry not — you now have the option to reverse it.
The League Repair tool gives you the opportunity to keep your place in your league for another week. It’s not cheap though — coming in at a mega 2000 gems!
To do this, simply head over to your league tab at the beginning of a new leaderboard. If you’ve been demoted, Duolingo will ask if you want to keep your place for 2000 gems. Simply hit the repair button and you’ll be entered back into the league you dropped out of.
Is it worth 2000 gems? Probably not. I think you’d be much better off saving them for heart refills and legendary attempts.
But if you’re really attached to your league — perhaps it was a really brutal week and you only missed out by a few XP — and you’ve got gems to spare, then it’s definitely a nice option!
Does your Duolingo league matter?
Look, even though I’m not that competitive on Duolingo, I like the leagues.
I mean, it makes sense. Duolingo’s not just a language learning app. It’s also a game.
So why not have some weekly leaderboards?
Buuuuuuuuut…
I see a lot of people making a massive deal out of their leagues.
They get annoyed because someone they’re never going to meet managed to earn a few more XP than them, denying them victory in a league that — let’s be honest — doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.
The most important thing on Duolingo — the thing that brings us all to Duolingo in the first place — is learning languages. Everything else is secondary.
Remember that — and consider some of the following as well:
xp is flawed
The league system encourages you to focus on earning as much XP as possible. This would be fine if more XP equalled more progress in your target language.
But it doesn’t.
As it is, the easiest and quickest way to earn XP is to take shortcuts.
Notice how the tips above do absolutely nothing to help you in your language.
When your focus becomes XP, you naturally gravitate towards things that will give you as much as possible in as little time as possible.
That means rinsing timed challenges every couple of minutes, and doing nothing to move forward with your language.
XP, as we’ve seen, doesn’t correspond to proficiency. Someone with 10,000 XP in French could be lightyears ahead of someone with 100,000 — IF the person with 100,000 spent all their time gaming the system.
some users have an unfair advantage
Another reason you probably shouldn’t worry about your Duolingo league is that many have an unfair advantage.
What is that you might ask?
We’ve already covered it — XP power-ups.
John could do 10 Spanish lessons without any power-ups active. With perfect combo bonuses he earns a total of 150 XP.
Sophie does the same 10 Spanish lessons with perfect combo bonuses. However, she has an XP Boost and a Perfect Lesson Boost active. That means that while John was earning 15 XP per lesson, Sophie was earning 50.
Same lessons, same amount of time.
John has 150. Sophie has 500.
You can say that’s smart. And, sure, it’s part of the game.
But Sophie hasn’t learnt anything more than John, yet she comes out 350 XP ahead.
And it doesn’t end there.
Duolingo doesn’t award more XP to those who complete the harder lessons in a course.
Sure, you get the ‘harder lesson for double XP’ thing that pops up every so often.
But I’m talking about the levels in the latter units of a course. The hard stuff.
These levels take longer to complete, not just because they’re harder than the stuff in the early units, but because the questions can be so much longer.
There’s no compensation for this XP-wise. Those who only review the early units or spend their time bashing out timed challenges will almost always come out on top of those who are trying to make progress in their course.
And then there’s the premium membership. No ads. No hearts.
This not only speeds up the lessons but also allows premium users to keep ploughing on — even after making 5 or more mistakes.
The bottom line — the leagues simply aren’t an accurate reflection of the thing that matters most on Duolingo: learning a language.
pressure and burn-out
It’s a tiring old business trying to win (or even stay in) your Duolingo league, particularly in the higher ones. The XP totals are often astronomical.
So when your league becomes a priority, this can put enormous pressure on you to rack up huge XP totals in a short amount of time.
This is exhausting and unsustainable in most cases. If you begin to associate Duolingo with fatigue, then, over time, you’ll be less inclined to show up and complete your lessons.
And if you want to learn a language, this ain’t good.
Sadly, I see this happen all the time: users racking up loads of XP for a few weeks, and then disappearing, never to be seen again.
This is what happens when the need to be the best overtakes the desire to learn a language.
what i prefer instead
When it comes to Duolingo success, the most important thing (for me at least) is to not lose sight of why you started using it in the first place.
I can pretty much guarantee you didn’t sign up because of the league system. Most likely you signed up because you wanted to learn a language.
So focus on that, and nothing more. It’s easy to get caught up in the gamification of Duolingo, thinking that there’s a correlation between those who finish top of their leagues and their ability in their target languages.
But as we’ve just seen, it’s rarely this clear-cut.
My advice is to take the league system lightly. Don’t prioritise it. Simply see it as a bit of fun that adds to your motivation.
In my experience, it’s better to focus on other things.
On Duolingo, I believe moving forward along your lesson path and keeping your streak going should be your main focus. Moving through the units is a clear sign of progress, and a solid streak shows you’re developing a strong language-learning habit.
And don’t forget that fluency in your target language will depend as much on what you do away from Duolingo as what you do on it.
Innovative Language, for instance, offer high quality content in over 30 languages — including Spanish, French, German and Italian — that, when used alongside Duolingo, will take your listening and speaking abilities to crazy new levels.
A quality VPN, such as NordVPN, will open the doors to an almost endless supply of movies and TV shows in your target language.
And LingQ will help you turn your favourite content — such as books, blog posts, song lyrics and even Netflix shows — into your most effective lessons.
It’s here that the learning takes place — not at the top of your Duolingo league. Don’t forget that!
Have your say
The league system is definitely a massive part of Duolingo.
But what do you think of it?
Does it motivate you to do your daily lessons?
Has it helped you progress in your target language?
Are there any changes you’d like Duolingo to make?
What are your thoughts on the ‘cheating’ debate?
Let me know in the comments!
I NEED to get the achievement!!! I crave it! I lust for it!
That’s the spirit!
Thank you for the article. I just finished grinding out diamond league and finished number 1 because I wanted the achievement badge but was immediately surprised to see the 3 week diamond tournament which I’m definitely not gonna do, so I came here to see how I could withdraw or exit the tournament but I think I’ll just do a couple lessons everyday and let myself go down through the leagues.
Duolingo at best is only a small part of learning a new language. The drills are good, the explanations and depth poor, especially after Check Point 5. Sometimes wrong and clunky in my first language. Speak it with a good native speaker!!!
I think that learning with Duolingo is fun. It beats learning from a textbook. I like that it is interactive meaning that Duolingo learns what I miss and gives me a chance to try again. Like you, I really enjoy it. I am motivated to learn everyday because of the league aspect. I’m in the sapphire league. Yes, it has helped me progress in my target language (Spanish). I started learning as a kid, took some in high school and college, and now I’m picking it up again just for fun. I teach in a school where the students primarily speak Spanish. Learning their language helps me to connect. Would I make changes in Duolingo? I would make the app and desktop application more the same. It would be fun to play games in Spanish to help with learning new words and phrases. About cheating, I think it isn’t fair that people can cheat and not really learn. Then those of us, who try to play by the rules, are not rewarded. I’ll continue. Maybe I’ll make the diamond league in the future!!!!
Thank you! This really resonated with me. I am studying German, Italian and Russian, in equal amounts. I started all three simultaneously, having previously studied Russian and German in college. I find the Italian course to be horrible. I have to resort to using an online translator half the time to get the correct answer- which is sometimes not even accepted as correct. I’ve read in other forums that Italian for English speakers is really bad, but is better if you are doing Italian as a French speaker. I might drop it and find a better system just for Italian. By contrast, the German course is stellar. They have four or five different speakers, including two children. You hear a variety of voices. There seems to be triple the amount of stories to listen to and it is much better paced than Italian. Russian has no stories, unfortunately, but is much better than Italian for understanding the language. Italian threw out dozens of words and no explanation as to its quirky sentence structure. I’m not learning it well nor very much, and am discouraged.
I won the Diamond league, 1st place, multiple times. I got disgusted two weeks ago due to an obvious bot. How can one person study only Spanish and have over 600,000 XPs without completing the entire course? It makes no sense. I dropped out the final day that week and made my profile private. That’s the only way to get out of the leagues completely. I was too motivated to win each week and was learning less. It was too much stress and not helpful.
Excellent write-up! Outlines the pros and cons so clearly. I’m relatively new to Duolingo, started less than 3 months ago, and I’m focusing on just one language for now- Chinese. Having no background whatsoever in the language, it’s a slow slog for me, trying to master the Chinese characters and pinyin in addition to everything else that goes with tackling a totally unfamiliar language. I’ve never been to China or even had a Chinese pen pal! I didn’t pay any attention to the leagues until this week and after reading your informative writeup, I’ll shift my focus back to where it was before, after this week. I’ll go back to focusing on learning my chosen language. Where I fall in the leagues doesn’t really matter! So long as I’m happy with my language progress.
Thanks for this post Matt. I have a 560 day streak and only recently found myself getting super competitive in the leagues. I’m in the Pearl league now. My goal is to win the Diamond league once and try to stay in the upper leagues after that. I also used to just do a random lesson a day for the streak but now I’m focusing on completing the course and improving my French skills. Have you completed all ten units of a course? Its very daunting.
Salut Ben!
Glad you enjoyed the article. Definitely a good approach to prioritise completing the course.
Nope, never completed all 10 units of a course. Although as far as I’m aware the only courses for English speakers with 10 units are French and Spanish. I made it to the end of the original French course a few years ago, but obviously that was before they added all the new content.
Try not to let it put you off though. The higher the mountain, the better the view. The French course is probably Duolingo’s best, so you can rest assured that if you make it through all 10 units then you’re going to be pretty bloody proficient!
One way to massively boost your xp is to do a level up to legendary while under 2x boost. Each legendary level is worth 45 if you do it perfectly which doubles to 90. You have to do like 4 or 5 to get legendary and you can usually do them all in under 15 minutes giving up to 450 xp in a single boost. Just FYI…
Thank you for the great guide.
Actually earning high XP is quite easy. Whether this is cheating or not depends…. Personally I think XP is not a good measure of progress. Crowns are better.
Right now there is a bug on Android. So Android earns twice as much XP as iOS and you get +5 correctness bonus. If you also patch a broken skill that is another +5XP. So for a Legendary skill with a x2 multiplier on Android you can score 100XP per lesson which can be completed in about 80 seconds or so for a practiced user. This is not speculation. This is me sitting down with an Android and iPhone together side by side with my account. This is also much easier than doing a real lesson and faster. It’s possible to do 10 of these inside the 15 minutes double XP boost time window. So that is 1000XP for 15 minutes effort. But you obviously still need to trigger that bonus time from a real lesson. Like I said personally I think this is really broken but that’s how it works.
Leagues also have the 40XP timed lessons for gems from the leaderboard. This is another good way of racking up XP fast if you have lots of gems. Again 40XP/minute. Some people do this hours on end. I kid you not. (Check their duome.eu stats).
Honestly people waste time on duo doing real lessons if all you want is XP to win leagues. It’s broken. Don’t waste your time.
There are other “legal if not moral” ways too. The only way to win is not to play. That is play your own game and learn. Ignore leagues. Downside is Duo is doubling down on this broken system. I only respect users who have collected all gold badges/maxed out level 5 everything and 1000+ crowns. Anything else is gravy.
One thing not mentioned is that this is a world wide course with people learning in every possible time zones. I am never quite sure if when I finish on Sunday night whether people on the otherside of the world still have 8 hours left to rack up XP points? Do their points they earn on their “Sunday” carry over to my Monday as they are hours behind?
Otherwise I completely agree not to take it too seriously.
Ps. I’m doing Welsh and get xp boosts for two lessons when I level up and get xp ramp ups.
To answer your question, I’m a duo plus member and I am doing Greek and Arabic and I get boosts like you do for 15 minutes after I’ve levelled up on a crown. I’ve also discovered lately that if I go in early like before midday and do a few lessons I earn a 15 minute boost that I can release in the evening.
I do think that the leagues pressurise us to work too fast. I’ve taken to screen shooting sentences I want to take my time to study or write out by hand later. And in a way I think I want to stop trying to compete in the leagues because I’d like to practice speaking the sentences and when I’m rushing to complete as many as possible in 15 minutes I don’t do that, so my language study suffers.
I’m interested that one of your commenters reported that by making your profile private you don’t end up being put into a league and I might try that out so that I concentrate on my studies but it is fun as well.
I love Duolingo. I am 58 and have been trying to learn Spanish “off and on” for most of my life. I even took Spanish classes in grade school and in college for 3 semesters. I have learned more on Duolingo in a couple months than I did my whole life of trying. I am currently in the Pearl league and will most likely be in the Diamond league in 6 days. I tried my hardest for hours each day to get #1 in the last league I was in, but I kept being beat by over 200 pts by someone as soon as I passed them each time, and it only was taking them about 5 minutes each time to do it. I’m exhausted from trying that hard again. I’ll go back to using it to learn instead of compete.
As for the cheating topic — Sometimes Duolingo freezes when it says I can earn a heart by watching an ad. I got frustrated when nothing happened as I clicked Watch an Ad, and I started hitting it repeatedly. As I did, I realized the XP counter was going up with every angry hit. I never got to watch an ad nor did I get the heart I was after. I did, however, get a lot of XP by accident! This is a glitch I hope Duolingo can correct at some point. The freezing issue is frustrating, but luckily doesn’t happen often.
I really enjoyed the “cheating” section above. I’m about to leave Duo once and for all, for a variety of reasons, one of which is the company’s refusal to do anything about the blatant cheaters. I got my Legendary badge and have managed to stay in Diamond for about 40 weeks so I don’t really have a dog in the fight when it comes to Diamond placement. But watching people cheat like mad to “win” the league over and over again, is something I think Duo ought to address if only to give a fair shake to users who enjoy actual, fair competition.
Yesterday I was knocked out of first place in an easy Diamond by a user that clicked through more than 100 stories over 2 days. To “win.” The Diamond I’m in right now started last night and the leader clocked 4000 XP in the first 6 hours by (somehow) doing 40-point ramp-ups at a rate of 1 per minute. It’s hard to believe an actual human was doing that, but it’s what their Duome data shows.
And then you have the “luck of the draw” effect where some people get their Legendary badge with a 1000XP while others are perpetually doomed to end up in leagues with cheaters.
I don’t know the answer, but as a paying customer, my money is going elsewhere when this subscription runs out.
I have 16,752XP in Diamond league this week (I think it ends tonight) and I haven’t cheated. I used duolingo for Indonesian back in 2013 (and haven’t been on it for years), and when I began Spanish last week I was put in Obsidian league. So I am in Diamond league on my second week of learning Spanish. I haven’t purchased the Plus subscription or done the free trial. I have purchased other Spanish learning learning resources but turns out they are immersive language resources & I am struggling to get started with them due to not knowing any Spanish. I have had the time this week to invest on Duolingo to begin to learn enough Spanish to use the other resources I have purchased. I have studied for hours the past two weeks in order to learn the basics & increase the number of Spanish words I know not to win. I go over the practice sessions regularly & have redone practice session even when there is no XP reward. I do the Ramp Up / Lightening Bolt challenges when they are available & when I have enough gems as I do think the time challenges help with fluency – improves faster response/need to work out what what said or read quickly/automatically. I have completed the Ramp up challenges in around a minute multiple times. Duolingo does throw in new words/new phrases when you do the ramp up challenges multiples times. I do often time out when they do that but I do wish they would add new words/phrases more often to help with learning the language (or have the option to opt in to be more challenged). Duolingo also uses only your harder questions/newer completed lessons after doing multiple time based challenges so Duolingo is challenging those that are doing multiple time based challenges. In the lightning bolt challenge you receive XP during the challenge 5xp when you answer 5 or so questions, then another 20XP half way through & the remainder XP at end. So yes you can earn 20xp every 30 seconds. Double XP means I have earned 87XP by completing one legendary practice session. I go on duolingo just to get the free chest of gems when I don’t have time to practice so I have the gems to do legendary levels/time based challenges when I have the time. My goal is to make sure I have the basics down rather than work my way through the tree as I know use other resources more than duolingo. I do need to do the practice sessions repeatedly to get the hang of verb tenses etc. I do compete all the levels & don’t skip levels when duolingo offers that. I did 2 days this week where I focused on stories only, stories currently available to me earn less XP than I would doing new or practice sessions. My weekly XP could be higher if that was my goal. But as learning the basics is my goal I have spend time on both lower XP things & no XP reward things as well as the new & practice sessions which have higher XP. Just because someone has a really high weekly XP score doesn’t mean they have cheated, or are doing it only to win the league. They could be needing to learn a language quickly as they as are traveling soon, need it for work, they are studying the language at school/college/university, they have a heap of time due to injury/illness/another reason or just wanting to get the basics down quickly & have the time to do so. Or they could be doing more than one language on Duolingo (I have only done Spanish the past two weeks, but do plan on practicing Indonesian on Duolingo once I have done at least 2 Duolingo units of Spanish so not to confuse myself). I have only use the Andriod app this week & haven’t experienced any glitches like the comment above.
This week I decided to go for #1 in the diamond league and I didn’t cheat although maybe some people think I did? I bought paid this year during the new year sale. I am at 9371 XP right now.
All I did was use my double XP rewards on the lightning games. The matching one that’s been around the last couple weeks let me do 9 sessions in 15 minutes for a total of 720 XP. I always managed at least 2 double XP rewards per day (the one for an AM lesson you get to use after 6pm and then the one for getting a star in regular lessons).
I’ve seen people with 20k+ and I imagine that is how they’ve done it. They probably just spent gems to extend double XP time when available and spent more time in general on the app.
I don’t remember if lightning rounds were a thing for unpaid but if they aren’t and Duo isn’t already doing it, they should have separate leagues for paid and free folks.
People can do that. Someone in my league did 9,000 XP in 1 day, and that’s actually normal for the leagues I’m in. In the end that person ended up 3rd. And once I had to go up to 51,384XP to win against a cheater. Ugh.
I really enjoyed the “cheating” section above. I’m about to leave Duo once and for all, for a variety of reasons, one of which is the company’s refusal to do anything about the blatant cheaters. I got my Legendary badge and have managed to stay in Diamond for about 40 weeks so I don’t really have a dog in the fight when it comes to Diamond placement. But watching people cheat like mad to “win” the league over and over again, is something I think Duo ought to address if only to give a fair shake to users who enjoy actual, fair competition.
Yesterday I was knocked out of first place in an easy Diamond by a user that clicked through more than 100 stories over 2 days. To “win.” The Diamond I’m in right now started last night and the leader clocked 4000 XP in the first 6 hours by (somehow) doing 40-point ramp-ups at a rate of 1 per minute. It’s hard to believe an actual human was doing that, but it’s what their Duome data shows.
And then you have the “luck of the draw” effect where some people get their Legendary badge with a 1000XP while others are perpetually doomed to end up in leagues with cheaters.
I don’t know the answer, but as a paying customer, my money is going elsewhere when this subscription runs out.
You can rack up 800 points without cheating in about 15 mins. Here’s how:
1. (the hard part): Get good enough to beat the timer on the word matching game in the league page.
2. Start that double bonus timer. There are several was to get one, and one of them is repeatable.
3. Cycle through the word matching game as quickly as possible. If you get fast enough you can get ten games in and each one is worth 80 points. And that 80 points can take 90 seconds(?) so it’s faster than the 40 pts / minute you mention above.
I can do this two, maybe three times a day if I’m pushing for leagues. But it’s exhausting and though it’s great for vocab, it slowed me down on the grammar / syntax part, and without those it’s hard to progress through the course, and I’m here to learn Spanish not beat a league of random people over and over again.
You can’t go that fast without a paid subscription because you keep getting interrupted with ads. Also, without a paid subscription you run out of hearts if you make too many mistakes so I go a bit slower to check my answers are right if I’m short on hearts (I can practice to earn more hearts and get XP doing it but they are not as many points as doing some of the challenges). Also, it’s really hard to get enough gems to do all the high value challenges. Someone suggested separate leagues for paid and unpaid subscribers, that would be great but I would think that Duolingo would really like us all to become paid subscribers.
I joined Duolingo back in 2013 and really struggled to get on with it. I tried French and Spanish (both intended as refreshers as I had studied them at school) but I was frustrated at the pace having already learned the basics beforehand. I picked up Italian a few years later but dropped it after a couple of weeks when life got in the way.
This time I’m learning Norwegian and have stuck with it for a few months (although I did take a couple of weeks off when I wanted to). It helps that I have a Norwegian friend to practice with in real life.
I like the new features such as the power ups and I am quite competitive in the leagues (I’m super pleased with myself for just getting promoted to Amethyst!).
I paid for the plus as I was getting frustrated at getting so far but then being blocked for making mistakes when I just wanted to learn.
The desire to keep up my streak is beneficial as it forces me to practice but I tend to focus on learning and not necessarily progressing. If I don’t think I’m ready to learn a new section, I stop and keep practicing what I’ve already covered. The timed exercises do help with this as I really get to understand what I’m just winging and what I actually understand.
I like the fact you can follow people and see how they are progressing, it motivates me. But I’m only following a few people. A small group to cheer each other on.
I hadn’t realised there were bots but that would explain what happened in a group I was in a few weeks ago. 35000 XPs in a week just seemed too intense!
For the past week I’ve been lazy and not writing down new words and phrases as I’ve gone along and it really shows as it’s a struggle to remember them.
I’m going to go back and write down what I’ve missed. Writing helps me remember.
I’ve no idea what the stories are but perhaps that’s because I’ve not passed the first checkpoint yet (I’m slow I know, but learning a new language from scratch at my old age is a pleasure not a race!).
I’m hoping to finish the full course by the end of the year. Who knows, I might then go back to the French and Spanish and nail them too!
Also, people on the internet also have an unfair advantage because they don’t use the heart system, they get unlimited hearts.
In regards to the cheating topic. I myself can quickly garner between 300 and 500 XP within 15 minutes utilizing the double experience after leveling a lesson.
Something that I believe few people know is that you can gain XP doing practice to gain hearts. (No hearts if Duo Plus) If you are quick enough you can repeatedly practice and gain XP utilizing this method. When the double XP runs out I simply return to leveling up another lesson and repeat the practice process.
This in effect helps maintain high XP and betters your understanding of the language through repetition. I know of very few people utilizing this method which may cause others to think one is cheating.
Hey Matt, how do you change the icon on your profile? I remember being prompted to set it a while back, but now I can’t figure out how to change it. Thanks!
Hey David! I take it you’re referring to the emoji next to your profile pic on the leaderboard? There should be a blue bubble in the top right of your pic, just tap on that and you’ll be able to pick an icon. If you’ve already got one selected, just tap it and you should be able to change it
Trying to understand the idea that there are 10 leagues with 30 people each.
ONLY 300 people are in the system?
It’s probably just run on like different servers. Like let’s say there’s 2,089 people in the Ruby league. There’s 100 different servers hosting 30 people each, with a few missing some people. When someone joins the league, they get randomly put in one of the servers without all 30 people in it.
Those accumulating XP rapidly may be running multiple sessions at once–on a phone, laptop, and PC. If going for Legendary status for a skill, they could be running it on all three devices simultaneously. That’s potentially 120 XP in a very short period of time.
This is really useful – I’ve been trying to figure out how the scoring system works. Right now (a Tuesday p.m.), I am #9 in a diamond league … but if I click on the person who is #8, I have more XP than her each of Sunday, Monday and today – so how is it possible she’s ahead of me overall? To be clear, I know I shouldn’t care about it, and I appreciate the comments above about how the league system incentivizes you to go too quickly and not actually learn. But I also want the league system to be fair and transparent…!
I was very into Duolingo a few years ago. I used it to learn Polish and Italian and also as practise for my other learned languages French, Spanish and Portuguese. Then I started following the polyglot crowd on social media and as there’s such a snobbery over Duolingo among them I started to think negatively towards to it too. Added to that new job pressures meant I kept missing days and losing my streak. I dropped using it though left the app on my device. Now I’ve come back and noticed all the new and different challenges there are I’m completely hooked. I’d never paid much notice of the league before; I was more interested in amassing gems. I’d done quite well in doing that so I had all these gems I could spend on lightning round, timer boosts, refill hearts, legendary. It was great! Of course my gems fell away and now I’m struggling to get them back. Stories are great! They weren’t available for Italian when I was last on. I powered through them earning loads of xp in the process. That’s when i took note of the league. I was in pearl and there were only two leagues left to unlock. Any spare minute I got I was on Duolingo. Made it through to Obsidian. I read up on what gives the most XP and discovered the most points come from placement tests. Now here’s my unfair advantage – I already have knowledge of a few different languages so I joined on new courses : English for Italian Speakers, French speakers, Spanish speakers, Portuguese speakers, Polish speakers, Italian for French speakers, Spanish speakers etc. I ramped up my points and got to a high level in Obsidian. Still I hadn’t quite reached top 5 and it was a real battle til the end but just managed to scrape in. Now I have no intention of topping the Diamond league. I’ve used up all my advantages and don’t have time to get to those high scores people are accruing at the top. I am trying to stop from falling through demotion zone though. It’s been a fun couple of weeks. But now I’m going back to concentrating on the lessons themselves instead of the winning.
How do I get out of these leagues? I need to focus on the lessons and reading forums to get the reason behind the answers. Duolingo is lacking in the area of teaching certain grammar. They just put it out there and you miss it because there is no lesson on it. Then, you must go to the forum snd see if there are answers to help understand why your answer was incorrect.
I want out if the leagues!!!! I would not have joined had I known that this is what duolingo had become. I may quit and request a refund.
Hi. Can anybody please confirm for me the following? Am I correct in thinking that you can remain in the “Demotion Zone” all week, and if you want to advance to the next league, or remain in your current league, then on Sunday evening you should spend the most amount of time earning points to remove yourself from the Demotion Zone, because Monday at midnight is when the system resets your League standing…correct? So I do not have to be concerned remaining in the Demotion Zone all week as long as I make sure to advance out of that zone before Monday at midnight?
Am I cheating? I don’t use a program to rack up xp, I do it myself, but what I do to grind xp is I reset my English (from Dutch) course, then take the placement test, then repeat. I don’t get as much xp as the bots, but I do get around 100 xp per cycle, and unless there’s a cap to how much you can earn from the test, I should keep getting more as I learn more Dutch. I just want to know if this would be considered cheating or just outsmarting the system.
How can you reset a course?
I want to do it for some courses to start over again and to write down all lessons.
And I would also like to get rid of some courses, which I only started out of curiosity.
Hey, Matt.
Loved reading your post!
I came here bec I am currently struggling in the obsidian league and was wondering how many leagues there are.
Since you asked:
(I’m learning DANISH using DL on iOS)
Completing one crown gets me 15 mins of XP boost right away, too.
I’m also getting 15 mins of XP Boost when finishing one lesson as ‘early bird’ in the morning. I may then come back after 6pm to claim it. Can’t say if it is the same wiht portuguese, yet, which I only started to learn recently.
I wouldn’t consider this ‘cheating’ since I sensed that android users earn a differend amount of XP in their lessons. Maybe that compensates in some way.
It’s definitely possible to get from 400+ to 700+ in 5 minutes. I’m playing in the diamond tournament right now and I want to see how far I can go. So I get the double xp boost and play Match Madness, which is normally 40xp per game, but with the xp boost you get 80xp. I usually average a little over a minute a game, which means I can get at least 320xp in 5 minutes and up to 400xp if I play well and fast.
Hi Matt!
I appreciate your post, especially regarding how to accrue XP points, and leagues. I’ve been learning Turkish and brushing up with French since this past March, and am already in the Diamond league. The impetus to compete and rise in the ranks can really take over, and is to the detriment of actually learning the language. Learning a language also requires off-line study.
I have a few questions about how Duolingo awards XP points or gems. Firstly, are gems and XP the same? I am doing the free version primarily on an Iphone using the App. When I initially began, you could open a chest, and watch an ad every 20 minutes for varied Gems. Now it is once per hour. In completing each ordinary lesson, the XP awarded is added to the total in the leagues, and until very recently was added to the gem count as well. Over the past few days, completing lessons has not increased the gems. So, in the free version it becomes harder to complete the sections, given the final 4 crowns requires 100 gems each! Is this Duolingo’s way of cornering you into paying for extra gems, or subscribing to Super Duolingo? I wish there were more consistency between the App, desktop, and Duolingo on a phone without the App. Navigating between them is confusing…gems, XP, and lingots! Tips on the desktop and not the App?? Yeesh! I really am enjoying using the site, but am not going to subscribe. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
I’m an Android user and I’m able to get these same boosts and ramp ups you mentioned, so I think it has nothing to do with the system we run, which is a fair, obvious and natural thing as the program is the same. The big deal and is being a premium (plus) user, that’s when ou really get the advantages, like unlimited hearts, 4x boost and expanded tips.
Leagues turned learning a language into a sport. And that’s bad. It gets more serious when you realize Duo is not a real learning language system. It’s more of a try-and-guess game. Duo fails miserably in teaching the basics and the foundations of an idiom. The method is based on “baby learning” system but it lacks basic explanations. I’m currently learning German, and luckily I’ve already had a background, otherwise I’d be completely lost in the (hard) German structure of articles, genres and verb conjugation. Duo gives you not a clue about that, except in that limited and poor Tips tab. Yes, you can reach an upper-basic or even an intermediate level, but it’ll take years.
Like many, I am hoping to earn a Legendary badge by winning a diamond league-seems like I am facing bots half the time with 25k+ winners. Last week I got put in a diamond league tournament. I won it and thought the badge was finally done and I could stop chasing it. Unfortunately winning a round of the tournament does nothing for the Legendary Badge. That is, winning a Diamond League Tournament is not the same as winning a Diamond League – very disappointing because I put in a huge effort to win and it was meaningless. At least I got a top 3 finish, just no legendary badge.
ok I was in the diamond tournament last week. I scoped out my opponents and none of them had done the 15k the previous week that I always run into so I thought i had a chance. I went like crazy and there was one other person that was near me so I put in a ton of time and broke his spirit.. so I had the high score for the week. But I got neither the legendary nor the winner achievement. Is this because the diamond tournament doesn’t count as a league? or does it take a couple of days to record this. i won the week by like 5k.
My thoughts on the cheating is that when u hit a 7 day streak u get 3 days of plus and if u get everything to level five then when u get the plus u get free ability to do legendarys which can add up at 40 xp per legendary part which using free plus is free with all the level fives u can abuse the legendary like this week I went from level one to six on three and now I’m at 1.5k and I only did 5 minutes each on two days and 40 minutes on the rest except today where I did 20 there are people who will abuse this VERY hard and be able to get tons of xp so my thought is not cheaters, abusers
I am learning Spanish and am really enjoying Duolingo. I don’t really care about the leagues, however I’m finally going to be in the top 10 of the Diamond league so I wanted to find out what the ‘tournament’ deal was.
FYI – I did rack up some nice points by listening to the podcasts. I just wish they would add the latest podcasts to the app.
Thanks for the article. Gracias!
The leagues really don’t matter but are an encouragement if you keep it in proportion. However where there’s a scheme there are schemers but, personally, I can’t be bothered with all that.
We are here to learn languages, not look good in front of a bunch of people we will never meet!
What do you mean by only the top three positions in diamond league are “relegated”? My understanding is relegated means demoted to a lower position.
I don’t think he said anywhere that the *top* three get relegated. He said that in the Diamond league only three get relegated, meaning the bottom three (instead of the bottom five as in other leagues).
What puzzles me about that is that on my Android, in the Diamond League, it shows the bottom five, not just three, in the Demotion Zone. Perhaps it’s different for paid vs free accounts. Mine is free.
Something about the Diamond League baffles me. I try to stay in the Diamond League every week. I have learnt that I need about 3000 XP a week in order to avoid getting sucked into the relegation zone. But I know of someone who has been in the DL for over a year with less than 1000 XP week in week out. Can any anybody explain that?
If you do legendary lessons with the double XP bonus and the perfect bonus, you can earn 130 XP per lesson. 40 XP for the lesson + 5 XP combo bonus + 20 XP for the perfect lesson X 2. I usually save my legendary lessons for when I have the XP boost.
Stories are definitely a great way to quickly rack up some XP quickly if you turn on the perfect lesson bonus. You earn about 40 XP for relatively short lessons.
I have an absurd amount of gems from when they used to give them willy nilly (pre-league), so it’s pretty easy for me to always have a perfect lesson bonus on.
As you point out, when I’m in XP earning modes, I’m not really learning new information in whichever language I’m in; however, I like to think it is engraining some of the topics I covered earlier.
hello! I was just wondering if the dimaond tournament still exist? I finished top three in the diamond league but never got the option for the diamond tournament?? It just put me back into the leagues. hoping you could help answer my query, thank you! thank you so much for your support through this article too, appreciate it a ton <3
Thank you for this article matt.
It cheered me up right after fucking losing the Diamond tournament in the finale.
I’m not lying when I say I smashed my phone into the wall several times because I was so frustrated to see the last three weeks of effort following exactly the strategy you’ve posted here basically go poof. At least for the league part. And yeah, you are right, after a long time being in Diamond I kinda got used to being in the top leagues, which sort of makes you forget the original goal of starting that course… So again thanks, this was good to read after today’s defeat.
Just one thing I’d like to add about the new learning path: I think it really really sucks now that it is impossible to choose what kind of lessons you want to do, at least on the mobile app. Also with super duolingo making all the challenges and the legendary levels much more available in comparison to a standard user (due to being for free for super learners) – let’s be honest, that’s pretty much pay2win regarding the league thing.
Currently I am seeing this app/game going into a wrong direction…
I agree 100%
Definitely one of Duolingo’s worst and most discouraging features.
I can’t see the leagues anymore 🥹
My profile is public, but the leagues disappeared. Whyyy???
Leagues always motivate me. I am at the Emerald league currently, and I enjoy it! Talking about racking up XP, the leader in my league is crazy and is just taking shortcuts (I saw him earning 80XP every 2 minutes!) at Ramp Up challenges. But this does not make be burn out and give up Duolingo.
I always try my best to be the leader while making progress on my course (I am learning French). Leagues are a fun motivational game for me to keep learning. The leader in my league have 6300 XP and I have 5000 – placing at the 2nd place – and I’m not going to rack up XP to chase up.
To be honest, timed challenges are usually boring if you rinse on them.
Thanks for your post! It was wonderfully written!
My username on Duolingo is “Justthespudlol” 🥔
But please don’t judge me for getting the level 5 Challenger achievement – I just got it today and it’s 1/6 of my total XP!
I JUST joined (late October, 2022) and wasn’t at ALL concerned with my league status UNTIL I noticed I ranked #1 (in the Bronze League of course, as I joined a week ago). I’ve ALWAYS been competitive – in the classroom, playing sports, etc.,…even in TRAINING COURSES with work colleagues 🤣 but NEVER “virtually”. That is – “Never virtually” UNTIL it appeared that a woman (a woman who HAD previously ranked SO LOW on the Bronze board that she’d BARELY qualify for advancement) APPARENTLY spent SEVERAL HOURS of our last day in the Bronze League working her butt off to become #3. She changed her status to “shady” and I IMMEDIATELY thought, “Oh HELLLLL no, HEIFER!! THAT title is MINE!” and SUDDENLY, INSTEAD of focusing SOLELY on learning Japanese & Latin, I was determined to earn so many XP that it’d be IMPOSSIBLE for ANYONE to catch me before we were advanced to the next league. This did NOOOOT help strengthen or increase my language learning. It did the OPPOSITE, because my focus was shifted to something that, as you noted in your article, DOESN’T effing MATTER in the LEAST. It’s merely an ego trip; a pride issue; whatever… for those of us who are genetically wired to be competitive & serves ZERO purpose educationally.
I’ll wrap up with my thoughts on XP. Firstly, I wholeheartedly believe that the of XP awarded should directly correlate with the difficulty of the lesson/the language, etc. Second, with regard to cheating: As soon as I became aware of the point system, I perused profiles of users with, what I considered to be, RIDICULOUS numbers of points racked-up, and saw that MANY of those people had attained their status by “studying” their NATIVE LANGUAGES. I’d undoubtedly ANNIHILATE the competition if I added ENGLISH to my language list, but WhyTF would ANYone CHOOSE to WASTE valuable time doing that??? Yes, I’m most definitely COMPETITIVE, but I’m NOT an idiotic arsehole.
HAPPY LEARNING to all the HONEST, GOOD-HEARTED people out there! 💜
So when I’ve been number one in the Diamond League a couple times, that didn’t mean I was number one in the whole Duolingo world–just whatever grouping I was put in for the week?
I was wondering, because my friends will post when they’re number one in the Diamond League and I never saw them on the leaderboard.
That may also explain why my week ends early, so Sunday evening I’m actually starting the next week. I just figured maybe Duolingo was a British thing and the time was set for their zone.
There are loads of new leagues now, right Matt? One of them was Moonstone and Crystal. There is also a group event where everybody in your league has to get 25,000XP altogether to get 2,000 gems or so.
Think I read something about that on the Fandom page, but haven’t seen it on my app yet. I’ll keep an eye out!
Hi when I went on it late in the morning the leader boards were like this
809,452,437,397,395,360 and then me, does this mean that some people are cheating because this is only 1 day, I think this is to much
Hi on day 2 I managed to get second place but struggled because the winner has gone over 7000XP and don’t seem to stop, I am on 6700, believe it or no5 I am not cheating but it’s just breath taking and I wan5 to win the award, can you give me some tips on how to win. Also I went on it late at night but I think everyone has got the same ideas so I’m with a load of early birds. Help me please I really want to win the award and not have to waste another week, and I want to get extra gems for coming first.
Also I had to use 3 XP boosts on day 1 and day 2 to keep up with this guy Beverly frustrating trying to get them, one o& them is the early bird award though. Please help me though I’m begging you.
Also I used 3 Xperia boosts in order to keep up
To gain points you need to finish fast on some exercises? But some lessons require you to type in the answers. In Spanish it would be helpful to have the punctuation. You go faster without punctuation or capitals which is daft, especially in German when nouns have capital letters.
I would like to have the reverse upside down question mark.
In some system you have to type the answers in another typeface such as Cyrillic or Hebrew, with no indication how to install it, and in the early days I gave up.
Another way of cheating is to have duolingo translate open and instead of guessing the anwers you have the common words for that lesson so you don’t get wrong answers