Duolingo for Schools is shutting down: a Chinese teacher's guide to alternatives

By the HanTrace team · Updated November 1, 2026

Duolingo has announced that Duolingo for Schools — the free teacher dashboard for tracking student progress and managing classrooms — will sunset on July 31, 2027. New teacher accounts and new classrooms can no longer be created. If you teach Chinese and used it to keep an eye on your students' practice, you're probably deciding what to use next.

This guide walks through what is actually changing, what you lose, and how to think about replacements — including where a free, ad-free tool like HanTrace fits for the Chinese-specific parts of your teaching. To be clear up front: HanTrace is not a Duolingo replacement. They solve different problems, and pretending otherwise helps no one. More on that below.

What's happening, according to Duolingo

Everything in this section comes from Duolingo's official announcement — their own words, not anyone's speculation:

• July 31, 2027 — Duolingo for Schools sunsets. Until then, existing educators and students can keep using classrooms they already created.
• Now — new teacher accounts and new classrooms can no longer be created.
• No direct replacement has been announced. The main Duolingo app remains free for students and teachers — what ends is the teacher-facing layer (dashboards, assignments, classroom visibility).

Duolingo's stated reasons are its expansion into new subjects (math, music, chess) and that Schools “did not see satisfactory levels of use.” Whatever the cause, if you relied on it, the practical question is the same: what fills the gap?

What teachers actually lose

Four things, ranked by how often teachers mention them:

1. Progress visibility — seeing who practiced, when, and how much, without walking the room.
2. Assignments — pointing a whole class at specific content for the week.
3. An ad-free classroom environment — the Schools setup let teachers keep the practice experience clean; the free consumer app increasingly isn't.
4. Classroom rosters — one place to organize students instead of spreadsheets.

Notice that none of these require a gamified course. They are supervision and distribution tools. That distinction matters when you evaluate alternatives.

How to think about replacements

Duolingo for Schools did two different jobs, and no single tool does both:

• Job 1: the learning content itself — the game-like lessons students did. If you liked that layer, the main Duolingo app still exists, unchanged by the sunset.
• Job 2: the teacher layer — visibility, assignments, rosters. This is the part that disappears, and the part you need to replace.

A practical setup many language teachers land on: keep whatever content your students enjoy, and pair it with lightweight tools that handle the teacher layer for your subject. For Chinese, that subject-specific layer matters more than for most languages — tones, stroke order, and the HSK 3.0 vocabulary pipeline aren't covered well by generic tools.

Where HanTrace fits for Chinese teachers

HanTrace is a free HSK 3.0 reference and practice toolkit built specifically for Chinese — 3,000 characters and 9,470 words with stroke order, tone practice, pinyin, and audio. It is not a curriculum and not a Duolingo replacement: your students won't find gamified lesson paths here. What it does cover is the Chinese-specific layer:

• Class word lists — teachers create classes and publish vocabulary lists per lesson; students import them into their own vocabulary book in one tap. (Free for teachers.)
• Stroke order practice — proper character writing, the thing gamified apps never really teach.
• Tone practice — minimal pairs, tone pairs, and pitch-curve feedback for the hardest part of Chinese pronunciation.
• Worksheet generator — printable character-tracing and dictation sheets from any word list, free.
• Clean and ad-free — no ads, no interstitials, no upsell pop-ups in front of your students. That was one of the quiet benefits of Duolingo for Schools, and here it's a standing principle, not a promotion.

Teachers who want the teacher tools can join the HanTrace Teacher Program — free Pro access, student discount codes, and a revenue share if your students upgrade. Or browse the teacher hub to see everything at a glance.

If you're rebuilding your toolkit this year, one thing to factor in: the new HSK 3.0 standard took effect on July 1, 2026, so any replacement decision should assume 3.0 vocabulary, not the older 2.0 lists.

Other options worth knowing about

For completeness — we don't review or rank these; they just belong on the map:

• An LMS you may already have (Google Classroom, Canvas, Schoology): handles rosters and assignments well, but has no language-learning data — you'll see “turned in / not turned in,” not practiced tones.
• General language platforms with teacher dashboards (e.g., Busuu for Education): broader language coverage; check whether Chinese-specific features like stroke order and tones are included.
• General quiz and flashcard tools (Quizlet, Blooket): flexible and familiar to students; content quality depends on who builds the decks.

Many teachers end up combining two of the above with a subject-specific tool. That's normal — the sunset just makes it worth an hour of re-planning.

Frequently asked questions

HanTrace is an independent Mandarin tool and is not affiliated with Duolingo, Inc. Facts about Duolingo for Schools are quoted from Duolingo's official help center as of November 1, 2026.