Duolingo is the app most people try first, and for good reason — it's free, it's gamified, and it covers foundational Tagalog vocabulary and sentence structure in a clear progression. Hari is a Chrome extension, not an app: it doesn't have lessons at all. It quietly swaps bits of English for Tagalog on the sites you're already reading, with a hover dictionary and spaced repetition built in. They're not really competing for the same moment in your day, which is exactly why the comparison is useful.
What Duolingo does well
Duolingo creates a daily habit loop that's hard to match — streaks, points, and short lessons that reward you for showing up. Its Tagalog course is a reasonable way to pick up core vocabulary and basic grammar from zero. For someone who has never studied Tagalog at all and wants structure, it's a sensible place to start.
Where it falls short for a heritage speaker
Duolingo teaches words in isolation, disconnected from the kind of contextual, mixed Tagalog that Filipino families actually speak. You can finish the whole tree and still freeze up the first time your lola says something that wasn't in a lesson. It also asks you to carve out a separate block of time every day — the exact friction that makes most people quit, especially if the goal isn't "learn a language" in the abstract but "finally understand what's happening at family gatherings."
Where Hari wins
Hari doesn't ask for extra time. It runs while you're already on Reddit, reading the news, or scrolling a feed, swapping in words you're learning and bringing them back around with spaced repetition — no flashcards, no streak. It's also built specifically for the Fil-Am reconnection job: understanding more than you can say, and closing that gap through everyday exposure rather than a curriculum designed for a general audience.
The honest answer
If you want zero prior knowledge turned into basic vocabulary fast, Duolingo's structure helps. If your goal is reconnecting with the Tagalog your family already speaks around you, immersion is the faster route — and Hari is built to make that immersion happen without asking you to change your schedule. Plenty of people use both: a short Duolingo session for the basics, Hari running in the background to make it stick.