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Copycat Cafe
Learn your next language by copying native speakers
Most language apps teach you to recognize words. Copycat Cafe teaches you to speak them. Watch real conversations with voices cloned from native speakers, copy what they say with AI scoring your pronunciation 0-100%, then chat freely with an AI that corrects you without judgment. 15 minutes a day. French and Spanish, more languages coming. Built by two people who read every email. 1,000+ paying learners, $16k MRR.
Most language apps train you to recognize words. Ours trains you to speak them.
We kept hearing the same story from learners: five years on Duolingo, streak in the hundreds, then they walk into a bakery in Paris (or a café in Madrid) and freeze when someone speaks to them. They understood fine, they just couldn't get a word out in response.
So we rebuilt the app I'd been running solo for a decade around how humans actually learn to talk. Babies don't conjugate, they copy.
The Copycat Method takes about 15 minutes a day:
Watch a real conversation with the text not visible at first. Ears before brain.
Copy each line out loud. AI scores your pronunciation word by word, so you know exactly which sounds need work.
Chat with an AI cat coach to use what you just copied in a real conversation, where the only thing judging you is the score.
What you get out of it: you stop freezing when a native speaker turns to you, your accent stops sounding foreign, and your pronunciation scores climb from around 60% to 90%+ on lines you've copied a few times.
We're at $16k MRR with 1,000+ paying learners. French and Spanish today, with German and Italian on the way and iOS coming too. No VC, no growth team. Just two people who read every email.
Two things I'd genuinely love your take on:
If you've tried language apps before, what made you quit?
What would convince you that an app could actually get you speaking, not just understanding?
Nur and I are here all day. Bring the hard questions.
PS: Code PH30OFF gets you 30% off the annual plan for the next 60 days.
Congrats Benjamin and Nur! Really excited to see Copycat Cafe launch.
What I love most is that you’re focusing on the part of language learning most apps still avoid: actually getting people to speak, not just recognize words on a screen. The “copying native speakers” approach feels very intuitive and powerful. It’s such a real problem that learners can understand a language for years and still freeze the moment they need to speak. As someone who has been trying to learn German for years, I eventually realised that if people can’t actually understand what I’m saying in real life, then what’s the point of all that studying?
P.S. I read that German is on the way next. I can’t wait to try it once it launches.
I was using another online training tool. When I tried to speak French in Canada or in Europe, I would end up switching to English. After using Copycat I am looking forward to trying my French with people who are French. I feel more confident.
16K MRR with two people is the whole story. The insight that recognition ≠ production is obvious in hindsight but nobody was solving it this way. Used voice cloning extensively for a different project — the pronunciation scoring is the hard part. How are you handling accent variation within a single language?
The voice cloning twist is brilliant. How do you ensure the cloned voices capture emotional nuance from the real conversations?
I love Copy Cat and have used the earlier version for several years for French, and now have added Spanish. What I found interesting is that I no longer struggle for a word in English before speaking in Spanish - but my brain goes to French first to find the missing word I want to say in Spanish! Copy Cat practice doesn't judge you: sometimes I show up daily, other times weekly, but you can pick up wherever you want as well as whenever you want The AI conversation tool intimidated me at first, because I still had to talk! But now Benjamin's team has added convesation hints. I feel like I am cheating by reading those, but the AI mimicks a typical native conversation instead of watering it down. You can choose normal and slower speed for listening, too. A fan and follower for years, and will continue to use and recommend.
I'm having a great time on CopyCat Cafe taking my rusty 8 years of academic French and, lesson by lesson, turning myself into a much more fluent and colloquial French speaker. I had already mastered the accent. But I never acquired a complete, colloquial vocabulary or the ability to just automatically use right words and expressions, or the ability to understand what native French speakers say, because they talk so fast. CopyCat is really helping me with all of that!
How do you handle different accents, like does the 0 to 100 score penalize someone for sounding non French?
Great app for improving spoken French. I've been using it for a few months it has really helped my confidence.
I'm very pleased and grateful to you Benjamin. I am an on/off French student of yours and have always appreciated your accessibility when I had questions or issues. Wishing you great success in this newest iteration of your life's work.
Love you app Benjamin - really helps Meg me to express myself more naturally in French.
Good luck with all of this, @bhouy. You’re doing great stuff with the rebrand!
About Copycat Cafe on Product Hunt
“Learn your next language by copying native speakers”
Copycat Cafe was submitted on Product Hunt and earned 52 upvotes and 26 comments, placing #7 on the daily leaderboard. Most language apps teach you to recognize words. Copycat Cafe teaches you to speak them. Watch real conversations with voices cloned from native speakers, copy what they say with AI scoring your pronunciation 0-100%, then chat freely with an AI that corrects you without judgment. 15 minutes a day. French and Spanish, more languages coming. Built by two people who read every email. 1,000+ paying learners, $16k MRR.
Copycat Cafe was featured in Education (78.7k followers), Languages (14.4k followers) and Artificial Intelligence (471k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 133.4k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Copycat Cafe?
Copycat Cafe was hunted by Benjamin Houy. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
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Benjamin Houy
Hey Product Hunt!
Most language apps train you to recognize words. Ours trains you to speak them.
We kept hearing the same story from learners: five years on Duolingo, streak in the hundreds, then they walk into a bakery in Paris (or a café in Madrid) and freeze when someone speaks to them. They understood fine, they just couldn't get a word out in response.
So we rebuilt the app I'd been running solo for a decade around how humans actually learn to talk. Babies don't conjugate, they copy.
The Copycat Method takes about 15 minutes a day:
Watch a real conversation with the text not visible at first. Ears before brain.
Copy each line out loud. AI scores your pronunciation word by word, so you know exactly which sounds need work.
Chat with an AI cat coach to use what you just copied in a real conversation, where the only thing judging you is the score.
What you get out of it: you stop freezing when a native speaker turns to you, your accent stops sounding foreign, and your pronunciation scores climb from around 60% to 90%+ on lines you've copied a few times.
We're at $16k MRR with 1,000+ paying learners. French and Spanish today, with German and Italian on the way and iOS coming too. No VC, no growth team. Just two people who read every email.
Two things I'd genuinely love your take on:
If you've tried language apps before, what made you quit?
What would convince you that an app could actually get you speaking, not just understanding?
Nur and I are here all day. Bring the hard questions.
PS: Code PH30OFF gets you 30% off the annual plan for the next 60 days.