Preply Review: See Its Features, Pricing and Alternatives

Languages Available on Preply:

Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese, and more

Related Language apps

italki

Baselang

Lingoda

Verbling

See more related apps

Preply Overview

Preply is a massive online platform that connects language learners to tutors from around the world. It’s an established company and has a pretty solid reputation in the language learning industry. You can actually study quite a few different subjects on Preply too, not just languages.  

After many struggles, I’ve made a lot of progress when it comes to learning languages. After my experiences, I firmly believe practicing with native speakers is the best method to gain any type of fluency.

And if you don’t know any native speakers near you, Preply is one of the best places to find them.

Preply Price

Preply tutors set their own rates and the pricing can vary quite a bit, especially between different languages. For example, the average hourly rate for Preply Spanish tutors is around $15.00 per hour, but the average hourly rate for Finnish tutors is closer to $30.00 per hour.

Remember that a higher price doesn’t necessarily mean higher quality on Preply either. That’s why it’s important to read past student reviews before booking a lesson with any tutor. You also have the option to take a trial lesson with new tutors.

Preply Trial Lessons

You can’t buy any lessons with a Preply tutor until you’ve taken a trial lesson with them. Trial lessons are completely free, too. If you aren’t happy after a trial lesson, Preply will arrange another free trial lesson with a different tutor.

This is all part of Preply’s happiness guarantee. It’s a great way to make sure you enjoy your tutors before buying hours of lessons with them.

Buy Hours On Preply

Even though each tutor sets his or her own rate, Preply makes you buy a certain amount of hours with your tutors. This is because Preply believes learning a language takes continuous practice and buying multiple lessons at a time helps you achieve that.

You can buy Preply hours in the following packages: 6, 12, and 20. It’s possible to buy one hour or another custom package, but you need to email Preply support to do this.

Preply Discounts

Preply offers a couple different discounts: bulk discounts and student discounts. When you buy more hours with Preply at one time, you can get a bigger discount. If you really like your language tutor and you want to study with them a lot, it’s definitely better to buy more hours upfront.

Preply also offers a student discount that never expires. The table below shows how much of a discount Preply offers to students based on how many hours they book.

Preply Review: Getting Started & Features

Preply is a really easy platform to use. The features are somewhat basic, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In a nutshell, you just need to register as a Preply student, enter the language you want to learn, filter the tutors, read through their reviews, and book a class. It’s as simple as that! There are a few features that make Preply stand out from its competitors though, so let’s take a look.

Register As A Preply Student

When you register as a Preply student, you just need to enter some basic information. When you become a Preply student, you can easily see your past and future lessons, receive messages from tutors, and save your favorite tutors.

This is actually really helpful. There are so many tutors available with Preply, so being able to save the ones you like makes life a lot easier.

Find A Tutor With Preply

Because Preply has so many tutors available on its website, you can filter them to narrow down your list. As I write this, there are almost 5,000 Spanish tutors available. There’s no way you can browse through that many profiles!

You can filter tutors by where they’re from and whether or not they’re a native speaker. You can also filter them by other languages they speak, their availability or price, and their specialties. This is a lot more user-friendly than other tutoring platforms like Live Lingua.

Preply allows language tutors to specialize in different areas, like test preparation, language lessons for children, intensive or professional courses, and even language and literature.

Preply Teacher Reviews and Profiles

Once you set your filters, you can start to look through Preply tutor profiles and read their student reviews. It’s really important that you do this before booking a lesson.

While Preply is a reputable company, it doesn’t control what or how tutors teach. That means there are some excellent tutors on Preply as well as some pretty bad ones. Each tutor has an introduction video on their profile though, and you can easily see what they offer, their availability, and what previous students said about them.

Preply Instant Booking

When it comes time to book a lesson on Preply, you can either send a request to the tutor for a certain time slot or use the Instant Booking feature. This feature lets you reserve a lesson immediately without having to confirm it with the tutor.

It’s a really convenient way to make sure you get the time slot you want. The more popular teachers on Preply have a lot of students and sometimes it can be really difficult to book a lesson with them. By using Instant Booking, you’ll always get the time you want.

Preply Classroom

When it’s time for your lesson, you can choose where you want to meet your tutor: the Preply Classroom (called Space) or another video platform like Skype. Personally, I really like the Preply Classroom. In addition to speaking with your tutor, you can also do other things during your lessons, like drawing and writing in the chat box.

The Preply Classroom also works on phones and tablets, so you can easily take lessons from anywhere. Once you book your lesson with an online tutor, Preply will show you a unique link to the Classroom. All you need to do is click that when your lesson is about to begin. Then you’re ready to begin!

Preply Review: Overall Learning Experience

Overall, you can have an amazing learning experience when you take language lessons with Preply. The platform is simple and straightforward, there are thousands of tutors to choose from, and it’s easy to filter them to find the best ones.

The one aspect of Preply you need to remember though is that each tutor creates his or her own lesson plans. It’s really important to look at each tutor’s profile so you know exactly what they offer. This will ensure you have productive lessons and study what you actually want to study. If you prefer more structured courses, Coursera and Udemy have quite a few options.

Preply Review: Areas of Improvement

It’s a great website for finding online language tutors, but that doesn’t mean Preply is perfect. There are definitely some areas where it can improve.

The main one is the booking requirements. The process of booking lessons is easy, but Preply makes you purchase 6, 12 or 20 hours of lessons upfront. With other tutoring sites like italki, you can book 1, 100, or however many lessons you want. It’s possible to book less than 6 hours with Preply, but you have to email Preply support to do so. That’s a little inconvenient.

The other area of improvement isn’t for students, but instead for teachers. Teachers don’t get paid for the trial lessons they teach, and Preply commissions on regular lessons are pretty high. Language teachers work hard to help their students improve, and it just seems a little unfair that Preply takes such a big amount of their earnings.

Preply Languages

Preply has thousands of tutors for some of the most popular languages on its platform. The most popular languages available on Preply are Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese. In addition to taking live lessons in these languages, you can check out the guides below to learn about other apps that can help you learn them.

While it has a huge amount of tutors for common languages, Preply doesn’t have many tutors for less common languages. If you’re looking to study languages like Indonesian, Hungarian, or Czech, you’d probably be better off using a site like italki. If you’d rather study a more formal course, Coursera may be another good option.

Preply Alternatives & Competitors

There are a few major websites and apps that are similar to Preply, and you should consider them when you decide to take language lessons online. Some of the best Preply alternatives are italki, Lingoda, Baselang, Verbling, and Wyzant. These alternatives to Preply offer a similar service, but each one has key differences. In general, italki offers more languages and flexibility, Lingoda offers structured courses, and Baselang specializes in Spanish. Verbling and Wyzant are both very similar to Preply in terms of services and features.

Preply vs italki

The two biggest language tutoring platforms are italki and Preply. Both have similar features, but italki is better than Preply in a few important ways. Preply requires you to pay for multiple lessons in advance and italki lets you book however many you want. italki also has more interactive features to help you practice outside of your lessons. In general, tutor rates are similar between the two platforms, but italki takes less of a commission than Preply. It also offers more ways to filter tutors. Overall, I prefer italki over Preply. You can learn more about it in this italki review.

Preply vs Lingoda

Lingoda is a website like Preply, but instead of allowing tutors to create their own lesson plans, Lingoda has a set curriculum. This means that no matter which tutor you have, your lessons will have the same format. Because of this, Lingoda is much better for people who like consistency in their lessons. Lingoda also has set prices while Preply allows tutors to set their own rates. Both services also let you try lessons for free, so it’s worth signing up for both to see which you prefer. You can read this Lingoda review to learn more.

Preply vs Baselang

If you’re learning Spanish, you’ll want to compare Preply vs Baselang for your language lessons. While Preply has almost 5,000 Spanish tutors to choose from, Baselang offers hundreds of tutors and a set curriculum to help you become fluent quickly. You pay for each lesson with Preply, but Baselang lets you take unlimited Spanish lessons for one monthly price. This means you can take as many lessons as you want without paying more. Baselang offers a 7-day trial for $1, so check it out to see if it’s a good fit for you. Read more about it in this Baselang review.

Verbling vs Preply

Verbling and Preply are similar in a lot of ways. There are a few differences you need to know about before choosing which one to use though. In general, prices and rates on Verbling tend to be higher than on Preply. There are also fewer tutors to choose from with Verbling. One advantage it has over Preply is its booking structure though. You can book single lessons with Verbling while Preply requires you to may for multiple lessons in advance. Learn more about how it works in this Verbling review.

Preply vs Wyzant

Preply and Wyzant are both online platforms that connect you to tutors, but the customer experience is a lot better on Wyzant. Instead of searching for a tutor like you do on Preply, Wyzant asks you a few questions and finds tutors for you. You can also choose to learn in-person or online with Wyzant. Preply only focuses on online tutoring. For payments, Preply requires you to pay upfront. You pay after your lessons with Wyzant though. Both services offer a money-back guarantee if you aren’t happy with your first lesson, so it’s worth giving both a try.

Preply Review FAQ

About this Preply review

This is a completely independent Preply review. The company did not sponsor this review and I am not an employee of Preply. The opinions in this Preply review are my own, and I formed them by using the Preply app myself, reading through the Preply website, and testing out its different features. I also read through other Preply reviews to see what other users like and disliked about the platform.