I haven't used it personally, but I've heard enough that I would never try it nor recommend it to anyone for Japanese. I don't even think the grammar is taught well if even correctly
While Renshuu is clearly superior and I do not believe Duolingo can get you any close to mastering Japanese, it kinda helps to learn random vocabulary and get used to the basic sentence structure, with its constant repetition format. Moreover, the competitive gamification of learning (the Leagues and scores system) truly makes me consistent and committed to the thing.
I am currently in section 3, unit 14 (285 day streak )
I have experience using Duolingo for Japanese. IMO I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s useful for if you want to pick up some quick terms or phrases, but not for long term study if u are trying to become fluent. It may be fun and useful at first, but after about a month or two, I’m my experience, it becomes incredibly repetitive and boring. I found myself doing lessons only for the XP. So in conclusion, renshuu was a much better long term option imo. Hope I could help
I found it useful for brushing up on things I learned long ago, but not for learning new material. Also the ads especially, but many aspects of the site as well, are too intrusive, and make immersive thinking impossible.
Duolingo is kind of good for kanji, but other than that it's just not worth the time. It's not terrible if you want to learn music or math but that's about it
I've used it, and completed the Japanese course. After that, I deleted the app. It was effective in making me study every day. I was happy and grateful for that, but I was also relieved and delighted when I completed it.
I liked it because in every unit, there were some sentences that seemed practical and grounded in real life (though I'm learning Japanese for fun). Some of the audio sounded artificial, but not all. I enjoyed hearing and picking up the pitch accents for the vocabulary.
I eventually made a document in which I typed all the sentences from Duolingo, in order to avoid mistakes, but also because, as I mentioned, I liked the groundedness in some of the teaching materials.
I had learned Japanese some time ago and stopped, and tried Duolingo just for fun at first. I know the Chinese language as well, but learning Chinese had been somewhat traumatic, and it was partly the kanji that made me decide not to learn more Japanese back then. I credit Duolingo with giving me the courage to study Japanese again more seriously. Through it, I realized that kanji was easier than I had thought (but because Duolingo didn't teach it deeply and yet I was doing OK).
YMMV. The reasons that Duolingo was good for me may not apply to others.
I started the japanese course on duolingo but I kinda stopped using it because I found other recources like renshuu that worked more efficiently for me. With duolingo I felt like I was just memorizing phrases but not being able to make some if my own. I believe though that in combination with other learning material it can help to consolidate what you already know. You can give it a shot, and if you don't like it, you can still delete it afterwards. The course didn't work out for me but maybe it does for you.
duo's just ineffective for language learning in general, imo. half the time it doesn't really teach you anything and just throws you into quizzes—and these are what they call 'lessons'. These lessons are so linear too, and really don't give you a good idea of how a language works. They just teach common phrases (for the most part), which yes, can be useful to know, but aren't great for long term language acquisition. They don't even bother to actually have native audio samples—which is probably their worst offense. atp, i honestly feel like duolingo's whole objective is to keep people on there, not to teach. And i do appreciate they have a lot of those resources for free, but what's the point if more than half of that stuff is half-baked? that's how i feel, at least.
tl;dr duolingo's a huge L; i recommend that you don't use it if you seriously want to learn because the app itself is so half-assed, at least material-wise
I think it's ok for beginners, but I feel like this app is better overall. Use the one you prefer, or even both! I find that duo is good if you want multiple languages in one app, but apps dedicated to a single language tend to be better overall for that language.
i had a steak of 500+ on duo for Spanish, I found it to be ok, but Japanese (from my English perspective) is a lot harder and duo isn't as good for me.
I have completed the Duolingo Course but in my opinion Renshuu seems so much better. I am a bit sad it took me so long to discover Renshuu... what is realy bad about Duolingo, they have removed grammer explanations completely. what is good about it? you have audio with every sentence...
overall I think apps are a great support to learn a language but it does not replace a real-life language course and speaking to a japanese person.
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cause you don't learn how to speak and literally just some useless phrases 
