Toucan, now part of Babbel, is a browsing-immersion extension built to reach a broad, general audience across many languages — its own marketing leads with scale ("trusted by 750,000+ geniuses" and over a thousand reviews). Hari uses the same core idea — words appear inside the pages you're already reading — but it's built around one specific goal: helping Filipino Americans reconnect with the Tagalog their family already speaks.
What Toucan does well
Toucan has scale and polish behind it — a large existing user base, the backing of an established language-learning company, and a simple "install and go" pitch. For someone who wants general exposure to a new language with no particular cultural or family context driving the goal, that broad-audience approach is a reasonable fit.
Where it falls short for a heritage speaker
A tool built for a mass market isn't built around any one community's specific vocabulary, pace, or reason for learning. If you're trying to understand a lola's phone call or hold a real conversation at a family gathering, generic word-swapping doesn't prioritize the words and phrases that actually come up in Fil-Am households — the Taglish code-switching, the family terms, the culturally specific vocabulary.
Where Hari wins
Hari is built by one person, specifically for this audience, and it shows in the details: the hover dictionary, the spaced repetition, and the word selection are all oriented toward reconnection rather than generic vocabulary breadth. It's also transparent about pricing — a real free tier, a flat Pro rate, and Pay As You Go, all stated plainly on one page, without needing to dig for it.