Preply is an online platform for teachers of a variety of subjects (not just foreign languages) to connect with online students. Specifically, Preply is well-known for offering dirt-cheap lessons, which attracts language learners who want to save a buck or two.
Honestly, I’m of the opinion that spending a few extra bucks to support an experienced tutor is always worth it, but this Preply review is for all the language learners who want a realistic, no-fluff review of a language learning platform that can help them to push their spoken language skills forward.
In this Preply review, we’ll talk about what I love and what I don’t love, from using the platform to an actual lesson with a (very cheap) Preply tutor, including what Preply does differently than the competition.
Preply review: getting started
When you first get started, you get a screen very reminiscent of Verbling and italki: a list of Preply tutors who teach your target language with an intro video, schedule preview, pricing, intros, and more.
You’ll also notice the menu bar at the tippy-top where you can narrow down specific features that are important to you. Again, italki and Verbling also operate similarly, though each has different options. My favorite is to organize by gender, but I didn’t get that here. Oh well! Preply does allow you to search by:
- Language
- Price
- Country
- Availability
- Specialties (including learning disabilities and test preparation)
- Other languages spoken by tutor
- Whether or not they’re a native speaker
….and you can even search by name or keyword, which is great! I’ve definitely run into the problem where I’ve been searching for a specific tutor and just…couldn’t. Such a simple functionality that isn’t nearly as common as it should be!
Anyways, I narrowed my search down to $5/hour (because if you’re on Preply, you’re probably looking for something cheap), and Spain as the country of origin. Only one Preply tutor popped up and she wasn’t available for a few days, so I expanded the country of origin to also include Venezuela. Found my tutor!
On the tutor page, you get a few key details, including their “about” section, reviews, how many lessons they’ve booked in the last 48 hours (implying success/popularity), and a little intro video. While intro videos probably won’t say too too much that the “about” section already says, this is a good opportunity for you to listen to how your potential tutor speaks, and see if you can understand their accent/way of speaking.
This particular tutor didn’t have a resume on their profile, but many of them do. Of course, you likely won’t get a decorated teacher for $5 an hour, nor would you want to if you want a high-quality education from someone who has spent the time and money to earn various certifications and work highly-skilled jobs.
Scrolling down, you’ll also get a peek at the tutor’s availability in your time zone and their past clients’ reviews.
As you can see, Dargy was wide open!
If you look closely, you can see that instead of just blocking out the times when she’s not available, there are greyed-out letters. If you guessed those are the initials of the student scheduled in that time slot, you’d be correct. In my opinion, that’s kind of weird. Why is it important what a student’s initials are, except to the tutor? Why did Preply make that choice instead of simply blocking the time out? I have questions here!
Anyways, I went ahead and booked a trial lesson with Dargy. I’m not really sure what makes it a trial lesson though…it was full price, for an hour! An hour is a long time for a 1:1, especially for a first lesson. 1-hour lessons wear me out, and I wish there was an option to schedule a 30-minute lesson, especially since the schedule is broken up into 30-minute chunks. Weird.
There were a couple of interesting perks, at checkout, too!
Specifically, Preply has some major fail-safes in place. For one, you get free lesson cancellation until 4 hours before your lesson. I’m not sure what happens if something comes up and you have to cancel after that – maybe you pay a fee, or maybe you work it out with your tutor.
More importantly, though, is that Preply’s got your back if your tutor doesn’t show up or you’re not satisfied: either a full refund or free replacement! I wonder if they’ve had problems in the past with tutors bailing? That’s the most aggressively secure guarantee I’ve seen anywhere!
Once you have your lesson scheduled/paid for, Preply directs you to prepare in a few different ways. Some directions are to prepare for the lesson itself, others are to motivate you to consistently set up more lessons.
The first is the option to make sure you can get into the Preply classroom smoothly, and that all your tech works. I love that they have their own classroom as opposed to relying on something like Zoom or Skype (which hasn’t been the go-to for foreign language tutor platforms in a while, fortunately).
Very simple and smooth: I approve!
When you get your email confirming your lesson date and time, it also includes a link to this classroom, which I love! I copied & pasted it directly into my Google calendar so I didn’t have to go searching through the Preply website when the time came. This is what I do with all my Zoom meetings, so I love that I could seamlessly add it to my schedule.
After that, I was given the option to test my level and set goals. You can edit these at any time in the settings of your account.
If you can stick to this…it honestly seems pretty legit! The levels are based on CEFR guidelines, and Preply does a decent job of breaking down how to get from where you are now to your goals…though it is important to keep in mind that this is based on the speaking skill only, so don’t expect the certification to be good for anything besides putting it up on the wall.
Like I said, way to get language learners to stick to it! If you want some light structure, this is not a bad start!
Oh, and one more thing: this guy popped up while I was on my lesson page.
Ideally, if the trial lesson goes well, you can get a monthly subscription to your tutor and save another few bucks! Consistency is absolutely key to improving your speaking, so this is a super interesting move into the Netflix era of the internet. This is the kind of thing that BaseLang has been doing from the start but at a much less intensive/expensive scale.
Preply review: the problem
Before attending my lesson with Dargy, I did some searching to see the inner-works of the platform. Most anyone can be a tutor (unsurprising – that’s usually the case), but I did find one key feature of Preply that was….upsetting, to say the least: the pay that tutors receive.
Yup – Dargy wasn’t even getting paid for my first lesson with her!
Not only that, but she was losing at least a quarter of my payment until we had 201 hours together.
Holy crap!
Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand that the platform needs to be financially supported, and I absolutely believe that Preply should receive some sort of commission for hosting and maintaining all these tutors. I also get the value of promoting long-term tutor/student relationships. But I don’t like these numbers.
Considering I didn’t want a full-hour lesson in the first place and Dargy wasn’t even getting paid for her time with me, the first thing I did when our lesson started was request a 30-minute lesson instead.
By the way, Dargy was very gracious, kind, and intentionally asked me how I felt about our lesson together/if I had any feedback for her. She got 5 stars from me!
After our scheduled time together, I got a BUNCH of notifications pushing me to schedule more time with her. Specifically, I was prompted to schedule another lesson/buy a subscription to her:
- as a notification in the app
- in an email
- in a pop-up after I rated our lesson
This is a good way to keep students accountable, honestly. Especially considering you have to spend over 200 hours with a single Preply tutor for them to keep more than 75% of their income from you…and keep in mind that with subscriptions, they’re earning even less from you. Yeesh!
Nonetheless, when it comes to the success of a language student, I am a fan of any tactic that removes obstacles between the learner and their commitment to studying. It wasn’t spammy – more like you have to make the decision to turn down more lessons three times. I’m sure it works, and if it convinces more learners to improve their foreign language skills, I’m all for it!
What you need to know about Preply
Like I said, I was honestly not expecting this Preply review to be very high quality – I figured it was a matter of “you get what you pay for”. I do have to say, though, that I was pleasantly surprised!
I love the platform. It’s incredibly user-friendly. The app is really nice, too, and gives you notifications for your lessons. I love the option to commit to a long-term relationship with a Preply tutor, and all the other methods that really encourage you to stick with it and stay accountable, like setting reasonable goals and expectations for having conversations a few days per week. I mean they really hook you in!
I don’t love the payment model. It was already kind of strange that a trial lesson was a full hour (a long time for even a normal 1:1 lesson), but Preply tutors aren’t even paid for it? That’s gross. Plus, you have to commit over 200 hours to a particular tutor for them to keep over 75% of their pay? Even after the student discount with a monthly membership? Yikes.
All in all: this Preply review shows that for the student, Preply is great. For the tutor, not so much. Nonetheless, there are tons of highly qualified Preply tutors with great resumes and lots of experience, so one has to assume it’s not all bad!
Want to give Preply a shot? Click here to get 50% off your first lesson with Preply!
Hi,
It’s really interesting reading all this. I am a teacher myself and looking for lessons in Korean, the Preply site stood out to me because they had so many tutors available. However, after reading your review it doesn’t sit well with me. Are there any other sites you would recommend where the teacher doesn’t have to pay such high commissions? Doesn’t feel quite right using a site where they lose so much money. Thanks in advance.
Fortunately I think Preply is unique in these tactics. For most language learners, the go-to platforms are italki and Verbling.
I have been an ESL teacher for 16 years for some context.
I have been on preply for about 3 months (which I know isn’t long enough to get a lot of students). I have a few regular students which is now down one due to a student’s job schedule changing.
I have to say that overall for a teacher, preply just isn’t worth it. If that’s all your want to know, you can stop reading or continue to understand why.
I have had a really nice experience with the two students that I’ve beening teaching. They all book two lessons a week. However, because of the way preply operates making even minimum wage just isn’t easily possible.
Preply actually charges the student for a trial lesson at full price but then keeps 100% of the money. Which is not something I feel is reasonable considering that the trial lesson is also mandatory as part of Preply’s business plan. So you have to work for free for 50mins for any new student that is interested in learning with you. I feel this would be fine if Preply weren’t profiting 100% from this mandatory rule.
Then after the trial lesson Preply takes 33% of any and every lesson fee for the first 20 hours of teaching with any new student. (I will say that Preply is transparent about this. It’s not a surprise) However 33%! For what? Advertisement? Their tools really aren’t anything special and most likely just janky plugins. They have zero useful materials to use. I use all my own materials and presentations that I have backed up after years of teaching and even then, I have to do some prep before the lesson to tailor it for the student.
Considering many students will be looking to study for a test of some kind, for vacation or just for fun, getting over 20 hours, while easily possible with some, won’t be possible with many of your students. Imagine teaching a student for 400 hours and still for some reason still accepting Preply’s lowest commision of 18% of your class fee. Excuse me? What more is Preply providing after 400 hours other than originally bringing the student to the platform?
To get students interested you’re going to want to make your classes cheap, perhaps $10 – $15 dollars. How many hours do you think would you need to make minimum wage averaged over a day? (again Preply take 33% of every single class taught)
You charge $10 dollars for 50 minutes, you keep $6.67 ish. I’ve also yet to see if there are any fees for transferring that money to my account or not.
You’d need at least 40 lessons a month/ 9 lessons a day, 5 days a week to realistically make minimum wage or under. What are the chances that not only you will get this many students but also that you can fill out all the required time slots in a day to be able to do this? Most students want to study around the same times afterall.
Also take in mind that I believe there is a forced 10 or 20 min gap between when a two classes finish and start (which makes sense but it is still there).
Further more, I cannot personally find a setting anywhere where I can disallow 25 minute lessons. My current student only wants to book 25 minute lessons, they also want homework and they are young so they always book the last slot in my schedule at 8 or 9pm.
$10 p/50mins – 33% / 2 = $3.33.
I continue teaching this student because he is very nice but honestly $3.33 is not really worth it, especially with doing prep. I will probably tell him in the next class that I will stop teaching on Preply after his prepaid balance has depleted.
While you could say ‘well then just up your hourly wage’, well that really won’t change all that much. Actually, I did up my hourly fee. Now there’s two problems.
1. Whatever class rate your student starts at, is the rate at which they can rebook classes forever. I confirm this because I changed my rate up from $10 and yet a student was still able to book more lessons at the old rate. I have also confirmed this is true online. Shocking.
2.Now that I have upped my fee I don’t get as much interest from students and currently no one is booking a new trial lesson.
So……you can charge cheap rates but then if your students stay with you, they can continue this cheap rate forever or you can charge more and then not get many new students at your higher rate.
And let me drive it home, if by some miracle you could charge the most allowable at $100 for a 50 min lesson, Preply are going to take $33 of that every single lesson while you teach on their platform.
I feel that maybe 5% comission from Preply would be more ideal, at most 10%. 33% just feels like a money grab and like the company is doing something shady with their profits.
Overall a it’s very bad system for teachers. The only party that wins is Preply honestly. Perhaps if you are a teacher in a country where the exchange rate from dollars is much much more favorable, it might be doable for you but otherwise it isn’t.
Further more although I obviously can’t prove it but I feel like some of the students that take interest in you early on are just Preply bots and some messages have been odd to make me think that as well. The positive reviews of this company online on places like Reddit I feel are by the way they are written are by Preply themselves. Everyone else is pretty negative about them and I can now see why.
I’m sure you could figure out if you are already on Preply how you and the students who like and wish to continue learning with you might be able to move forward together in a more beneficial way.
Thank you for sharing your perspective. It’s both validating and really really sad for anyone trying to make a living on Preply.
I have to agree with most but not all.
First. It’s easy as a teacher to offer 30 minutes trials,they can chose offer 30 or 50( it’s never an hour) Every lesson afterwards is 50 minutes but if the student wants just 30 minutes him and the teacher can just leave the classroom after 30 minutes and mark the lesson as confirmed.
It’s ridiculous they charge the trial lesson to maintain their business model but we teacher get nothing. Then they charge 33 to 10% from following Lessons. You need to teach 400 lessons till you reach the 10% mark to keep 90% of your earnings….
It’s terrible teacher be like teaching 10 ore more hours a week but it’s trial lessons,they earn nothing but invest their time.
But it’s also teachers fault,they could just add the 33% on top like let’s say I wanna earn 15 dollar but I know Preply takes their huge cut so o put 18 to 19 or whatever to reach myself about 12 to 13 for my work. No-one should sell himself cheap, students should also know that they only find cheap pricing because teachers sell themselves cheap..
Personally I think a 50 minutes one and one lesson isn’t much because 5 minutes small talk then 5 minute before end you wrap up and there’s a lot of talking in the lessons so I think a 50 minutes lessons is in real 30 to 35 minutes, doable work. I teach English so it plays off more or less even with a bit cheaper rate because it takes longer to learn than English and they subscribe longer to you. what I like is you get paid immediately after every lesson (after the trial) so you have money every day . If you do full time ( I don’t do ) you can make 1 to 2k a month,I make 350 to 400 but I live in southeast Asia,it’s enough to keep traveling n living
I won’t victim blame language teachers who are in a less-than-ideal situation because the company they’re using for employment isn’t paying them well. Raising their rates should be something they choose to do to benefit their business and their livelihood, not something they have to do because Preply is taking all of their income.
I actually believe Preply’s system is insulting to teachers. It is outright theft. At the very least, teachers should be able to opt out of free trials, and change the cancellation settings. 4 hours is unreasonable and absurd if you plan your day around a student who cancels a few hours in advance, and you get nothing. But, I imagine there are a flood of teachers from lower income countries who Preply exploit and know they can get away with shoddy work practises with these horrific conditions. The free trial thing is a complete scam as the student pays for a lesson, and Preply takes the money. I do not see this is anything other than corporate theft. It should be illegal, and probably is in many western jurisdictions. As someone who worked hard for years to get my BSc, MSc, PGCE, spent thousands on my education, I will not work under such conditions, and hope a body such as the EU clamps down on this systematic theft of teacher labour.
I’d have to agree on all points unfortunately