Busuu

Is Busuu safe?

Busuu is safe enough for adults who want structured lessons, but it is more social and more data-hungry than it looks. We score it 54/100, below Babbel (63) and Duolingo (61), and above HelloTalk (47), which is built around chatting with strangers.

Two things set Busuu apart from other course apps. The first is its community: you send writing and speaking exercises to other learners, native speakers correct them, and you correct theirs in return. The second is its owner. Since Chegg bought Busuu in 2022, the app has run under Chegg's privacy policy, and that policy sells or shares personal data for targeted advertising.

Who owns Busuu, and what that means for your data

Chegg, Inc. still owned Busuu in mid-2026. Its quarterly report for the three months to June 2026 describes Busuu, without naming it, as "our language learning platform" with self-paced lessons, live classes and "a community of members". The Busuu privacy page, updated on 9 September 2026, makes Chegg the data controller and defers to the main Chegg policy for most of the detail.

That Chegg policy lists the data it may sell or share for targeted advertising: contact details, device information, location, demographic data, internet activity and interests. The partners it names include ad networks, measurement firms, identity-resolution providers, clean rooms and data brokers. Chegg says it does not sell or share data of anyone it knows is under 16, and it honours the Global Privacy Control browser signal.

The store labels tell a smaller story. Apple's label lists identifiers and usage data as used to track you, and location among the data linked to you. Google Play's data safety section says Busuu shares no data with other companies. When the policy discloses this much more, we score the policy.

The free version also carries advertising: Busuu's help centre says free learners watch a short ad before each lesson.

Voice recordings and AI

Several Busuu features record your voice, and the supplement is clear that the recordings are kept:

• Speaking Practice uses Microsoft's Azure AI Speech to rate your pronunciation. Recordings are retained and may be used to train Busuu's models, with help from human reviewers.
• Conversations lets you talk to an AI partner partly powered by OpenAI. These recordings are also kept and may be used for training.
• Community Corrections stores spoken exercises you send to other learners, and outside providers help moderate them.

The privacy page says the audio is not used to identify you. There is no setting described to keep your recordings out of training, so the only way to opt out is not to use the voice features.

Strangers in the community

Community corrections are Busuu's best feature and its main risk. Anyone fluent in your target language can find your exercises on the Discover tab, edit them and leave comments. Your profile, except for your email and password, is shown to other users browsing for connections, and the privacy policy mentions messages between users.

What is missing is a block button. Busuu's help centre says plainly that "it's currently not possible to block other learners". You can report an exercise, a comment or a profile from the three-dot menu, and on the web you have to email a profile link to the support team. For an app rated 13+ by Apple, that is a weak set of tools. Corrections from a stranger are usually harmless, but an unwanted contact cannot be shut out on your own.

Live lessons with teachers are now offered only to companies through Busuu for Business. If your employer pays for Busuu, it receives reports on your progress and time spent learning.

Chegg's record with regulators

Busuu itself has no fine or order against it that we could find. Its parent has two. The FTC's January 2023 data-security order followed four Chegg breaches, and in September 2025 Chegg agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle FTC charges over hard-to-cancel subscriptions. The 2025 complaint lists Busuu among Chegg's subscription products, but its cancellation charges concern Chegg's other websites, and the order defines the defendant as Chegg, Inc. alone. Neither action names Busuu, so we treat both as context. See our Chegg page for the detail.

How to use Busuu more safely

1. Keep your profile sparse: no full name, city or photo you would mind a stranger seeing.
2. Do not put personal details into writing or speaking exercises sent to the community.
3. Report anyone who uses corrections or messages to flirt, harass or move you to another app.
4. Use Global Privacy Control in your browser, and on iPhone choose "Ask App Not to Track".
5. Skip the voice features if you do not want recordings kept for training.

How we scored it

Regulatory record (84) is Busuu's strongest factor, because no regulator has fined or ordered Busuu itself. Privacy (36) is the weakest: Chegg's policy sells or shares data for ads, voice recordings feed AI training and the Play label shows none of this. Scams and harmful content (63) reflects open community corrections with no block button, and security (56) the lack of two-step login or a paid bug bounty.