The World’s Top EdTech Companies of 2026

To assess the top EdTech companies in the world, TIME partnered with Statista on a data-based research project evaluating the thousands of companies in the space on strong financial performance and industry impact. The end result is a list of the 500 top-performing companies in education technology.

The top ranked company on the list is Duolingo, which was also the top-ranked EdTech company in the U.S. this year. The company, which started as a language learning app, has expanded into math, chess, and music. Duolingo now has over 60 million daily active users and generated more than $1 billion in bookings last year. As UNESCO advocates for more multilingualism, which can offer social, cognitive, and economic benefits, Duolingo’s chief product officer, Cem Kansu, believes that there are still more language learners the app has yet to reach. Roughly 20% of Duolingo’s users are in the U.S., with the majority distributed globally and Asia as one of their fastest growing regions recently. “Asia for English learning especially is a huge market,” Kansu says. Around half of Duolingo’s users are under 21, and use the app as an educational supplement—a lesser known product called Duolingo For Classrooms is designed specifically for teachers to assign Duolingo lessons as homework for students.