# Gliglish Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/gliglish/ · added 2026-10-27 · updated 2026-10-27 **In short.** Gliglish (AI speaking tutor for language learners, Singapore): €8K a month (about US$8.7K), March 2024. Evidence grade D: reported, not verified. Team: 1 founder, the "solo maker"; no source names an employee. Launched 23 December 2022; still running. AI speaking tutor for language learners · Singapore · AI-native · solo founder · still running · group: Learning and study - Outcome: €8K a month (about US$8.7K), March 2024 (evidence grade of the headline number: D; headline in US dollars: 104352) - Launch: 23 December 2022; months from launch to the outcome: 15 - Team: 1 founder, the "solo maker"; no source names an employee - Outside funding: None reported - Main factor: Distribution - Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 2, capital needed 1 - Tags: AI-native, Solo founder, Bootstrapped, Running, B2C, Education **The product.** A web app, and later an iPhone app, in which a learner speaks into the microphone and holds a spoken conversation with an AI language teacher, or acts out an everyday situation such as buying bread at a bakery. It gives grammar feedback, reply suggestions, translations, adjustable speech speed and, for American English, a pronunciation score. It covers 38 languages and dialects, with a free plan of 10 minutes a day and a paid plan called Gliglish Plus. **Why it worked.** The founder had sold English-learning products to French speakers since 2007, so he had a newsletter of learners to launch to and knew that speaking practice is what classes lack. He shipped two days before Christmas 2022, a few weeks after the start, and kept a free plan with no signup. Growth came from Hacker News, AI directories and users' own videos on TikTok and Instagram, not from paid advertising, the founder said. Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; calc = computed on this page from graded facts. ## Summary Gliglish is a language-learning app built around speech-to-speech conversation: the learner speaks, a speech recognition model (software that turns spoken audio into text) writes down what was said, a large language model (an AI model that writes text, of the kind behind ChatGPT) writes the teacher's answer, and a synthetic voice reads it aloud. The founder said on Hacker News in June 2023 that the speech recognition was OpenAI's Whisper model, called through the OpenAI API. The learner can talk with a teacher or act out a role-play, a scripted everyday situation such as ordering in a café, in 38 languages and dialects. Fabien Snauwaert, a Frenchman who taught English for decades and whose company Click & Speak Pte. Ltd., registered in Singapore, owns the Gliglish trademark, started Gliglish in November 2022 and launched it to his newsletter on 23 December 2022. He said that it made only €615 in its first 30 days. In an interview with SaaS Starter Stack, published by early April 2024, he said that after "exactly 16 months" revenue was "now at €8K", half from consumers and half from a partnership that he could not name. At the March 2024 exchange rate, this page calculates that the €8,000 a month he reported was about US$8,700 a month, or about US$104,000 a year. That figure rests on one founder statement on one date, so this page grades it D, reported but not verified. eBiz Facts repeated it on 5 April 2024, but quoted the same interview, so it is not a second source. No payment processor, buyer or journalist has published a Gliglish revenue figure, and no later figure was found. The page also shows four failed companies that sold language practice with human teachers or free content, and what an AI teacher changes in that business. ## Pricing Gliglish prices: the web plans from the archived home page of 15 June 2026, because the live site answered with a 403 browser check to this page's download on 27 October 2026; the iPhone plans from the US App Store on 27 October 2026 (grade C) | Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit | |---|---|---|---| | Free | 0 | 0 | 10 minutes a day; conversations up to 50 messages; limited at peak hours | | Gliglish Plus, web | 16 | 29 | billed 192 a year; no limit on conversation length; 50 topics | | Gliglish Plus, iPhone app | 16.08 | 29.00 | billed 192.99 a year through Apple | | Gliglish Plus, web, March 2024 | | | in euros: EUR 29 a month, or EUR 23 a month billed yearly (EUR 276); about 20 hours a month | | Schools, universities, business | | | separate offers; prices not published on the home page | The web page shows its prices in the visitor's currency: euros in March 2024, US dollars in June 2026 and Canadian dollars (CAD 39 a month, or CAD 259 a year) in a September 2026 copy. The June 2026 page says the yearly plan saves 45%. In March 2024 the paid plan came with 3,000 credits a month, which the page put at about 20 hours of conversation; by June 2026 the page listed no hour limit, only "Speak as much as you need". Schools, universities and companies buy through separate offers whose prices are not on the home page. ## How much revenue does Gliglish make? The numbers, graded A one-person AI speaking tutor that its founder said made €8,000 a month about 16 months after he started it, with no figure confirmed by a payment processor | Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources | |---|---|---|---|---| | Revenue per month, about March 2024 | €8,000 | D | Founder, SaaS Starter Stack interview (no date on the page): "It's been exactly 16 months and revenue is now at €8K." The page title calls it "$8K MRR". eBiz Facts quoted the same interview on 5 April 2024 as "€8000 monthly revenue". | [1, 2] | | The same figure in US dollars | about US$8,696 a month | calc | Calculated: €8,000 times US$1.0870 per euro, the average of the 21 daily rates of March 2024 in the Federal Reserve's H.10 series. | [1, 11] | | Run rate from the March 2024 figure | about US$104,352 a year | calc | Calculated: US$8,696 times 12. This is the headline value in US dollars on this page. | [1, 11] | | Date of the figure | about March 2024 | calc | Calculated: the founder's site says Gliglish exists "Since November 2022", and the interview answer "exactly 16 months" is to the question how long he had worked on it, so the interview dates from about March 2024. eBiz Facts called it "a recent interview" on 5 April 2024. | [1, 5, 2] | | Where the revenue came from | half from consumers, half from one partnership | D | Founder in the interview: "half of it is from B2C, with the other half coming from a partnernship I can't talk about. I have a few deals in progress." The partner is not named in any source found. | [1] | | Revenue in the first 30 days | €615 | D | Founder in the interview: "It made only €615 in the first 30 days". He said he had 4 sales on the launch day. | [1] | | Launch | 23 December 2022 | C | The founder said he launched "2 days before Christmas", through his newsletter for French people learning English. The oldest version of the Gliglish terms is dated 2022-12-23. | [1, 8] | | Time to build the first version | 2 days to a prototype, 37 days to a working product | D | Founder in the interview: 37 days "to make it work, make it fast enough, tweak, get WebSockets to work, deploy, add payment". | [1] | | Product Hunt launch, 10 March 2023 | 546 visitors and no sales | C | Founder's blog post of June 2023 gives the visitors; the interview says "Got zero sale when I launched on Product Hunt". | [4, 1] | | Show HN post, 7 June 2023 | 2,500 visitors and 143 sign-ups to the free plan, no sales from them | C | Founder's blog post a week later. In the post itself he wrote that he had worked on Gliglish for "6-7 months" and still spent only about half of his time on it. The HN index shows 82 points and 110 comments. | [4, 3] | | People who used Gliglish | 114,637 in March 2024; 295,861 in June to September 2026 | C | Home page, archived 13 March 2024 and 15 June, 27 July and 14 September 2026. The 2026 count was the same in all three copies. The App Store text says "262 985 learners in 195 countries". None of these counts is of paying users. | [6, 7] | | Page views | 2.4 million a month | C | Home page, March 2024: "Gliglish receives 2.4 million page views per month." In 2026 the page says "up to 2.4 million". | [6, 7] | | Team | 1 person | C | Home page, March 2024: "I'm the solo maker behind Gliglish." App Store, October 2026: "Created by solo founder Fabien Snauwaert". No source names an employee. | [6, 9] | | Company | Click & Speak Pte. Ltd., Singapore | C | The terms and privacy policy give a Singapore address for Click & Speak Pte. Ltd.; the App Store names it as the seller, and the home page says Gliglish is its trademark. The company shares its name with the founder's older English course, Click & Speak. | [8, 9] | | Revenue of the founder's earlier English course | over €560,000 in 9 years | D | Founder in the interview, about a different product. His own site says Click & Speak "Broke €540,000 in sales". Not Gliglish revenue. | [1, 5] | | Outside funding | none reported | D | No source mentions an investor. In June 2023 he wrote that the chief executive of a company that had been through Y Combinator suggested that he apply there; no source says that he did. | [4] | | App Store rating, US | 2.0 from 2 ratings; age rating 4+ | C | US App Store, read 27 October 2026. Both shown reviews are the same complaint from a German learner. | [9] | | Time from launch to the March 2024 figure | 15 months | calc | Calculated: December 2022 to March 2024. From the start of work in November 2022 it is 16 months, as the founder said. | [1, 5, 8] | How to read this table: a grade D value is reported but not verified, here one founder interview on one date and an article that quotes it. A grade C value comes from the founder's own posts and site, the company's own pages, or the App Store listing. A grade B value comes from the US Federal Reserve. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it. No revenue value is grade A or B. ## When did Gliglish launch, and how did it grow? Timeline From an English teacher's newsletter to an AI tutor in 38 languages, with a reported €8,000 a month after about 16 months. Each entry carries its grade. - **2007** (grade C [5, 1]): The founder starts BilingueAnglais, a newsletter and blog for French people learning English. He later used this newsletter for every product launch. - **2015** (grade C [5]): He starts Click & Speak, an online course of the 5,000 most common English words. His site says it passed €540,000 in sales. - **November 2022** (grade D [5, 1]): Work on Gliglish begins. A basic prototype takes two days; making it work, with WebSockets and payments, takes 37 days. - **23 December 2022** (grade D [1, 8]): Launch to his newsletter, two days before Christmas, because he was short of money, he said. 4 sales on the first day and €615 in the first 30 days, according to the founder. - **10 March 2023** (grade C [4, 1]): Product Hunt launch after 10 days of preparation: 546 visitors and no sales, the founder wrote. - **4 May 2023** (grade C [4]): A post on Reddit's r/learnfrench brings 1,500 visitors. - **7 June 2023** (grade C [3, 4]): Show HN post: 2,500 visitors in a day, 143 free sign-ups and no sales from them. He asks how to market the product without ads. - **After June 2023** (grade D [4, 1]): The site spreads through Twitter, Telegram and Instagram in Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Ukrainian. Later a video in India gets 2.4 million views in two days and the Heroku server and Postgres database hit their limits, the founder said. - **13 March 2024** (grade C [6]): The home page counts 114,637 people and 2.4 million page views a month, and sells Gliglish Plus at EUR 29 a month or EUR 23 a month billed yearly. - **About March 2024** (grade D [1]): In the SaaS Starter Stack interview the founder says revenue is "now at €8K", half from consumers and half from an unnamed partnership. - **5 April 2024** (grade D [2]): eBiz Facts repeats the interview figure as "€8000 monthly revenue". - **By June 2026** (grade C [7, 9]): The home page links an iPhone app on the App Store, sold by Click & Speak Pte. Ltd. - **15 June 2026** (grade C [7]): The home page counts 295,861 users, sells Gliglish Plus at US$29 a month or US$192 a year, and offers plans for schools, universities and companies. - **July 2026** (grade C [7, 10]): The home page adds Gliglish Music, songs on any topic that teach English. Since June the footer also lists his other products, among them an AI clothes try-on site. - **27 October 2026** (grade C [7, 9]): The live site answers this page's download with a 403 browser check. The US App Store shows 2 ratings and the same prices as the web. ## Why did Gliglish work? ### The founder already had the audience Fifteen years of English-learning sites gave him a newsletter of French learners. He launched to it on day one, and he said it "allowed me to make rent a few times". The first sales came from people who already trusted him, before any launch site sent traffic. ### Free, with no signup Anyone could speak to the teacher at once, for 10 minutes a day, without an account. The founder said the free plan worked as marketing because "you don't want sites to annoy you with a paywall". The cost is that most visitors never pay: he said a viral wave from India brought traffic but almost no buyers. ### Users made the videos Product Hunt brought no sales. Hacker News, AI directories and then people posting about Gliglish on TikTok and Instagram brought the growth, the founder said, and the home page says users post new videos about it every week. He said he did no marketing of his own beyond that. ### One subscription, many languages The same voice pipeline works in any language that the models support, so in his Hacker News replies of June 2023 he promised to add Turkish and Mandarin within 24 hours of the requests. One plan covers all 38 languages and dialects, which a human tutoring business cannot offer without hiring a teacher for each. ## How it was built These details come from the founder's interview, his Hacker News post and replies, his blog, and the archived page source of gliglish.com. The founder's statements are grade C or D; what the page source shows is visible to anyone. - Speech recognition with OpenAI's Whisper model through the OpenAI API, which he named in his Hacker News replies; the home page says the teacher is "powered by the same technology behind ChatGPT". - A Python web app, first hosted on Heroku with a Postgres database; by 2024 he named Azure as the host. The privacy policy says user data is stored on servers in the United Kingdom and Ireland. - The front end loads Vue 3, Socket.IO for the live audio connection, and Tailwind CSS, as the archived page source shows. - He writes code with Cursor, keeps his backlog in Markdown files in Sublime Text, answers support email in Front, and measures traffic with Simple Analytics; the page source also loads Google Analytics and PostHog. - An iPhone app sold through Apple's in-app purchases was added later, at the same prices as the web plans. Sources: [3, 4, 1, 6, 7, 8, 9] ## Who tried this before Gliglish, and why did they fail? Four companies in the Loot Drop database sold language practice through human teachers, a tutor marketplace or free content. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified. The failed startups come from Loot Drop (https://www.loot-drop.io/), a free database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Loot Drop describes its entries as AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade. ### VIPKid (2013 to 2021; funding US$1.1B; cause: Legal/Regulatory) - Promise: One-on-one online English lessons for Chinese children with North American teachers over video. - Why it died: China's 2021 rules banned for-profit tutoring of school subjects and foreign teachers, which ended the business model. - Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/2522-vipkid ### Meten EdtechX (2006 to 2024; funding US$600M; cause: Unit Economics) - Promise: Face-to-face English schools for Chinese professionals, at a high premium over apps. - Why it died: The cost of finding each student and running the schools was higher than what students paid; COVID and new rules ended it. - Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/2353-meten-edtechx ### Hujiang (2001 to 2021; funding US$187M; cause: Unit Economics) - Promise: A large online platform for language learning and school courses, free to start. - Why it died: Most of its millions of registered users never paid, and those who paid did not cover the cost of acquiring them. - Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/2556-hujiang ### Teacher Finder (2015 to 2019; funding US$50K; cause: Competition) - Promise: Match language learners directly with tutors, without a language school in between. - Why it died: Larger tutor platforms with more money took the market, and its simple automated setup could not keep up. - Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/1962-teacher-finder ## What changed Three of the four predecessors sold time with a human teacher, either in a school, over video or through a marketplace. Every lesson needed a teacher to be paid, so revenue grew only as fast as the teacher pool, and a change in the rules or in the cost of finding students could end the company. Hujiang avoided the teacher cost with free content and found that free users at very large scale did not turn into enough paying users. An AI teacher removes the paid human from each lesson. Since late 2022 speech recognition, a language model and a synthetic voice can be joined into a conversation that runs at any hour in dozens of languages, and one person can build it in weeks, as the founder said he did. What has not changed is Hujiang's problem: Gliglish counts hundreds of thousands of users and millions of page views, and the founder said that a wave of traffic from India brought almost no buyers. ## Can one person copy Gliglish now? **Verdict: The method, yes. The early timing, no.** In December 2022 few products let people speak with an AI teacher; by October 2026 the App Store suggests several similar AI tutors next to Gliglish. The part that can still be copied is the founder's: years of content for one group of learners, a newsletter to launch to, and a free plan with no signup that lets users show the product in their own videos. 1. Pick one group of learners that you already know and can reach, for example through a newsletter or a community that you run. 2. Join speech recognition, a language model and a synthetic voice into one spoken conversation, and ship it in weeks. 3. Offer a daily free allowance with no signup, so that visitors and video makers can try it at once. 4. Sell one subscription for all languages, then add offers for schools and companies. **What is still open.** Spoken practice for one narrow use: job interviews in a second language, medical or legal vocabulary for professionals, exam speaking tests, and languages that the large apps serve poorly. ## What could go wrong for Gliglish? - **What is not verified.** The headline figure, €8,000 of revenue a month, rests on one source: Fabien Snauwaert's own statement in a SaaS Starter Stack interview that has no date and that this page dates to about March 2024. eBiz Facts repeated it on 5 April 2024 from the same interview, so it is not a second source. No payment processor, buyer or journalist has confirmed it, and no later revenue figure was found. A reader could look for a payment-processor profile such as TrustMRR, a later dated interview with the founder, or a revenue post on his own site or X account. - **Half of it was one unnamed partner.** The founder said half of the revenue came from "a partnernship I can't talk about". A business with half its revenue from one contract can lose that half when the contract ends, and no source says whether the partnership continued after 2024. - **User counts that do not move.** The home page showed exactly 295,861 users in copies of June, July and September 2026, and the App Store text gives 262,985 learners. The counts measure people who tried the product, not paying customers, and the 2026 figure may not be updated live. - **The founder's other products.** The Gliglish footer links the founder's other sites: English-learning sites such as Click & Speak and BilingueAnglais, gifPaper (live wallpapers for Mac), Kromimi (a virtual pet) and TryThisFit, an AI clothes try-on that puts clothes on the user's own photo, sold in credit packs and with a note that try-ons for children are not supported. None of them sells anything that this site treats as a problem. - **Role-play topics and age.** The App Store rates the app 4+ and the terms say the service "can be used by people of all ages", with parents responsible for children. The App Store lists role-plays on "travel, interviews, dating and more", and the home page mentions preparing "for a job interview or a first date". These are conversation exercises, not a dating service, and no source found shows sexual content. - **A crowded market with weak store ratings.** The App Store suggests several other AI language tutors next to Gliglish, such as Langua, Talkpal, Langotalk and Fluently, and the US listing shows 2 ratings that average 2.0. The home page cites university studies of Gliglish; this page did not check them. ## Sources 1. SaaS Starter Stack: Gliglish Founder Interview, How Fabien launched a tool to learn languages with AI in 37 days and grew it to $8K MRR — https://saasstarterstack.com/interviews/gliglish (grade D). Read in full; downloaded 27 October 2026. The page has no date; Wayback first captured it on 19 September 2024 and eBiz Facts linked it on 5 April 2024. Source for the €8,000 figure, the revenue split, the first 30 days, the build time, the growth channels and the tools. 2. eBiz Facts, 5 April 2024: His AI Language Learning App: $9K/Month in 16 Months — https://ebizfacts.com/fabien-snauwaert-gliglish-9k-month-16-months/ (grade D). Read in full in the site's RSS feed (https://ebizfacts.com/feed/?paged=2, downloaded 27 October 2026). It quotes the same interview, so it dates the figure but does not confirm it. 3. Hacker News, 7 June 2023: Show HN: I built an AI language teacher to get you speaking — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36228477 (grade C). Read in full through the HN Algolia API (hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/36228477), with the founder's replies. Source for the 6 to 7 months of work, the share of his time, and Whisper through the OpenAI API. 4. Fabien Snauwaert's blog, June 2023: What I learned from being #2 on Hacker News for a split second, and how I messed up — https://fabiensnauwaert.com/what-i-learned-from-being-2-on-hacker-news-for-a-split-second-and-how-i-messed-up (grade C). Read in full. Founder's own post, written a week after the Show HN. Source for the visitor counts of Product Hunt, Reddit and Hacker News, the free sign-ups and the Heroku hosting. 5. Fabien Snauwaert's personal site — https://fabiensnauwaert.com/ (grade C). Read in full on 27 October 2026. Source for the start month of Gliglish, his earlier English-learning sites and their sales, and his other products. 6. Gliglish home page, archived 13 March 2024 — https://web.archive.org/web/20240313085830/https://gliglish.com/ (grade C). Read the Wayback copy in full, with its page source. Source for the March 2024 prices, the user and page-view counts, the solo-maker line and the company name. 7. Gliglish home page, archived 15 June 2026, with copies of 27 July and 14 September 2026 — https://web.archive.org/web/20260615023606/https://gliglish.com/ (grade C). Read the Wayback copies in full, with their page source. The live site answered with a 403 browser check on 27 October 2026. Source for the 2026 prices, user count, features, footer links and front-end tools. 8. Gliglish terms of service and privacy policy, archived 16 May 2025 and 16 May 2026 — https://web.archive.org/web/20250516170831/https://gliglish.com/terms-and-privacy/terms/ (grade C). Read the Wayback copies of the terms, the privacy policy and the index of versions. Source for the company, the age clause, the data location and the first version date, 2022-12-23. 9. Gliglish: AI Language Tutor on the US App Store — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gliglish-ai-language-tutor/id6745433536 (grade C). Read in full on 27 October 2026. Source for the seller, the in-app prices, the age rating, the ratings, the role-play topics and the solo-founder line. 10. TryThisFit home page — https://trythisfit.com/ (grade C). Read in full on 27 October 2026, to check the founder's other product that the Gliglish footer links. 11. Federal Reserve, H.10 release: historical rates for the euro, in US dollars per euro — https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h10/hist/dat00_eu.htm (grade B). Read the daily rates. The March 2024 average of the 21 daily values, US$1.0870 per euro, was computed with python3. 12. Loot Drop database export, 1,749 failed startups — https://www.loot-drop.io/ (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.