Thank You for 1,000 Users on penguen.io
A thousand people decided to trust a small vocabulary app with their language-learning time. That number is small in the grand scheme of the internet, and it is enormous to us.
penguen.io started as a side project. A tool I wanted for myself. Most of the vocabulary apps I tried felt like they were optimizing for engagement metrics over actual learning. Streak shame, gamification noise, freemium walls in front of features that should be obvious. I wanted something that worked the way the science said it should: spaced repetition, in your native language, no paywall on the actual learning.
A thousand of you decided that idea was worth your time. Some of you study for the IELTS, some for the TOEFL, some for the PTE. Some of you are just trying to read books in another language without reaching for a dictionary every other sentence. Whatever brought you here, thank you.
" "1,000 users isn't a finish line. It's the first checkpoint that says someone besides me thinks this is worth using."
What 1,000 Users Means in Practice
Behind the round number are study sessions in Tokyo, Istanbul, Madrid, Paris, São Paulo, Mexico City, and a hundred other places. People learning English vocabulary in their native language: Japanese, Spanish, French, Turkish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Chinese. Flashcards reviewed at 2 AM before an exam. Phrasal verbs drilled on a morning commute.
It also means we have signal. Real users do real things, and they tell us what's broken, what's confusing, what they wish existed. Almost every feature shipped this year started as a message from one of you.
The Growth Curve, Made Visible
We launched on March 1, 2026. As of today (May 15) we're at 1,200 users. We crossed the 1,000 mark earlier this month. Here's what those 76 days actually looked like:
| Week | Users |
|---|---|
| Mar 1 | 0 |
| Mar 8 | 60 |
| Mar 15 | 130 |
| Mar 22 | 220 |
| Mar 29 | 330 |
| Apr 5 | 450 |
| Apr 12 | 580 |
| Apr 19 | 700 |
| Apr 26 | 820 |
| May 3 | 940 |
| May 10 | 1080 |
| May 15 | 1200 |
The curve steepened in mid-April when our first SEO-targeted blog posts started ranking. Word of mouth carried the rest.
Total users is one number. The number that matters more is whether people actually use the thing they signed up for. Once we crossed 300 users in late March, daily study sessions (one session = one practice round) started ranging from 500 to 1,700 per day. That's a much better signal of real engagement than registrations alone.
Each bar is the average daily sessions for that week. The dips around Apr 15 and May 6 line up with weekends and a brief downtime; the trend is up and to the right.
Where Our Users Live
The geography surprised us. We expected most usage to come from the same English-learning markets we'd seen in our SEO research, but the actual distribution leans heavily toward Asia, with European and North American users picking up after that. Here are the top 10 countries by active users:
Japan, South Korea, China, India, and Vietnam together account for more than half of our active users. The IELTS and TOEIC market in Asia is real.
Surprise of the Quarter
In the United States, the most common thing users are trying to learn isn't a more advanced English vocabulary. It's Spanish. American users are the largest single group studying our Spanish translation collections, well ahead of the next language. We didn't see that coming, and it's already shaped what we're prioritizing for the next quarter.
One more thing worth mentioning: since the start of May, we've seen a noticeable jump in Chinese users. We're not entirely sure why yet (no specific marketing push, no big mention we can trace), but we're happy to see it and we're paying attention. If you're one of them and you have a moment, we'd love to know how you found us.
What's Coming Next
Almost everything below is here because someone asked for it. Here's what we're building, in priority order:
1. Google Play Store (end of May)
This is our most-requested feature by a wide margin. Right now 70% of our users are on iOS and 30% are on Web. Android users have been politely (and sometimes not so politely) waiting. We tried to publish a couple of weeks ago and didn't make it through review because of some bugs we hadn't caught. We're fixing those now and aiming to ship by the end of May. Once we land, the platform mix will rebalance fast.
2. Word Pronunciation Animation (about 2 months out)
A few of you asked: "How are these words actually pronounced by a native speaker, with the mouth shape and everything?" Reasonable question. We're building an animated pronunciation feature for it, working with a professional animator to get the mouth shapes and sounds right. Doing it well takes time. Realistic ETA is about 2 months.
3. Dynamic Example Sentences (next of July)
Right now each word ships with one or two static example sentences. A user pointed out that words behave differently in different contexts, and the same word in a news headline reads nothing like the same word in a casual conversation. We're planning a feature that surfaces multiple, varied examples for each word dynamically. Targeting late July.
Plus the ongoing work
- More curated collections. TOEFL and TOEIC vocabulary alongside the existing IELTS and PTE sets, plus topic-based collections (business English, travel, academic).
- Better progress tracking. Clearer insights into which words you're mastering, which need more work, and how much vocabulary you've built over time.
- Smarter spaced repetition. Refinements to the algorithm so reviews land at the moment you're most likely to forget, not earlier.
- More languages. Adding native-language interfaces and translations beyond the current 11.
- No paywall, ever, on the learning experience. That part isn't changing.
Accessibility, Honestly
A vocabulary app should work for everyone trying to learn a language, including people who use screen readers, voice control, switch devices, or magnification. We've put real effort into making penguen.io accessible, and we want to be honest about where we are.
What works today
- Apple VoiceOver on iOS and macOS Safari is fully supported. Practice modes announce cards, results, and progress correctly.
- Semantic HTML and ARIA labels across the web app, so screen readers like NVDA and JAWS can navigate the interface meaningfully.
- Full keyboard navigation in every practice mode. You can complete a flashcard session without ever touching the mouse.
- Visible focus states on every interactive element, so keyboard and switch-device users can always see where they are.
- Respect for system preferences: prefers-reduced-motion is honored, color contrast meets WCAG AA across both light and dark themes.
How we test it
We currently rely on axe-core as our primary automated accessibility scanner, alongside manual checks with VoiceOver and keyboard-only navigation on every release. Automated tools catch about 30 to 40 percent of real-world accessibility issues. The rest only show up when actual users with assistive technology try to do real things in the app.
We Need Your Help
If you have a disability and use assistive technology to study, we would love to have you test penguen.io and tell us what doesn't work. Screen reader users, switch device users, voice control users, low vision users, motor impairment users: all of you would catch things our tools and our team can't see.
Reach out through the contact page or any of our social channels. We'll prioritize fixing whatever you find.
How You Can Help
If you've found penguen.io useful, the most valuable thing you can do is tell one other person. Word of mouth is how a small project grows into something that can keep getting better. A friend studying for an exam, a classmate trying to read a foreign novel, a colleague preparing to move abroad. Anyone who's stuck with a vocabulary list and needs a better way through it.
And keep the feedback coming. The bug reports, the feature requests, the "this confused me" notes. Every one of them shapes what gets built next.
What Users Say
A specific thank you to the users who took the time to email us, fill out feedback forms, send bug reports, or just tell us what was working. Almost every priority on the roadmap above came from one of these messages. Here's a small selection of what people sent in over the last two months:
"Studying for IELTS while working full time. The spaced repetition catches words I would have forgotten in a week. Hit band 7.5 last month."
Yuki, Tokyo
"Used your TOEIC collection on the train every morning. Score went from 720 to 845. Thank you."
Aarav, Bangalore
"The Spanish interface made it click for me. I tried Anki for months and just got frustrated. Already at 1,200 words this month."
Lucía, Madrid
"I love that there's no streak shame. I missed three days, came back, and the reviews picked up where I left off without making me feel bad."
Min-jun, Seoul
"The phrasal verbs guide is gold. My English suddenly sounds less robotic at work."
Pierre, Lyon
"The Chinese translations are more natural than the machine ones I've seen elsewhere. Whoever did them clearly speaks Chinese."
Ling Wei, Shanghai
"Trying to immigrate to Canada and IELTS was the wall. Your collection saved me weeks of prep. Booking the test next week."
Fatma, Istanbul
"Studying English for university applications. The B2 collection is exactly the words I keep seeing in academic readings. Wish I had this two years ago."
Hannah, Berlin
"Honest feedback: the Android app would change my life. I switch between phone and laptop and miss study time on the bus."
Diego, São Paulo
"Started using it for casual French practice and ended up trying the Spanish collections too. Found you through a Reddit post about phrasal verbs."
Sophie, Toronto
If your message isn't quoted here, please don't read into it. We tried to pick a small sample that reflected the range of what people sent in, and we're equally grateful for every single one. Keep them coming.
Follow Along
We're trying to be more active on social media: sharing study tips, behind-the-scenes posts about what we're building, and short content about the science of vocabulary learning. If you want to keep tabs on what's coming next or just see more of what we share, follow along on the platform of your choice:
A Real Thank You
Thank you for trusting your study time to something built by a very small team. Thank you for the corrections when a translation was off. Thank you for staying up late finishing one more flashcard deck before bed. Thank you for telling friends.
The next 1,000 users will arrive faster than the first. We'll be ready for them. Browse a collection and see what we've been building.
From the penguen.io team