Short answer: it never has been. Here's why — and what to actually use if you want to speak Thai, not just collect a streak.
No. Not a beta, not a "coming soon" — Duolingo has never launched a Thai course. If you've searched for it and come up empty, you didn't miss it.
Two things make Thai expensive to build a mass-market course around. It has its own script, written with no spaces between words, so even reading requires a separate skill from speaking. And it's tonal — มา (maa, mid tone) means "come," ม้า (máa, high tone) means "horse," and หมา (mǎa, rising tone) means "dog." Same spelling in your head, three different words, and get the tone wrong and you've said something else entirely. A course engine built for tap-and-match vocab drills doesn't have anywhere to put that. It's likely why Thai has been skipped by more than one major app, not just Duolingo.
The apps that do cover Thai mostly bolt it onto the same course format they use for every other language — useful for vocabulary, but none of them are built to tell you whether your tone was right. That's the actual hard part of speaking Thai, and it's the one thing scrolling flashcards can't fix.
Ravela was built around that specific gap: you hear a native target, say the word back, and see your pitch scored against it in real time — right in your browser, no signup required to try it. Try the tone coach free and hear the difference for yourself.
If you're travelling rather than settling in, you don't need the whole alphabet — grab the free Traveller's Survival Pack instead: the words you'll actually use at the airport, the market and the street stall, spoken only, no signup.
