Preply Review: See Its Features, Pricing and Alternatives
Chad Emery
Last updated on May 8, 2023
Easy way to practice with native speakers
Preply is a huge platform for finding online language tutors. The website and app are straightforward and easy to use, but a little basic compared to other platforms like italki. Still, Preply is safe and secure and you can find great tutors. Preply stands out from other online tutor websites with its happiness guarantee. If you’re not happy with your first lesson, Preply will arrange a new one for free!
PROS
- Easily search and filter online tutors
- Offers many different languages (and other subjects)
- Flexible and convenient to use
CONS
- Not as advanced as some competitors
- Can't purchase individual lessons, you have to purchase a package
- Poor customer support
Languages Available on Preply:
Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese, and more
Table of Contents
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 solid reputation in the language learning industry. You can study quite a few different subjects on Preply too, not just languages.
I’ve made a lot of progress when it comes to learning languages, and 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. 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
Most teachers on Preply offer a discounted trial lesson so you can see if you enjoy their class. If you aren’t happy after a trial lesson, Preply will arrange another free trial lesson with a different tutor.
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 tutor. 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 frequently, it’s better to buy more hours upfront.
Preply also offers a 15% student discount, but you must have an active university email address to get it.
Preply Review: Getting Started & Features
Preply is an 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, so let’s take a look at them.
Register As A Preply Student
When you register as a Preply student, you just 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.
Find A Tutor With Preply
Because Preply has so many tutors available for certain languages, you can filter them to narrow down your list. Currently, there are over 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, availability, 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 not so excellent ones. Each tutor has an introduction video on their profile, 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 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 difficult to book a lesson with them. By using Instant Booking, you’ll 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 prefer the Preply Classroom. In addition to speaking with your tutor, there are other features you can use 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.
Preply Review: Overall Learning Experience
Overall, it’s possible to have a great 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.
On Preply, each tutor creates his or her own lesson plans. It’s 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 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 good website for finding online language tutors, but that doesn’t mean Preply is perfect. There are some areas where it can improve.
The main area 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 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, which is quite inconvenient.
The other area of improvement isn’t for students, but instead for teachers. Preply commissions on regular lessons are high. This means that the teachers are earning less and you are paying more as a student. Language teachers work hard to help their students improve, and it 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 English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, and Portuguese.
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. 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. 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 Verbling has over Preply is its booking structure. You can book single lessons with Verbling while Preply requires you to pay 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 offers 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
Preply is a reputable online tutoring platform that is both legit and safe to use. The company screens all tutors before they can teach on the platform and it protects your payment.
When you compare their features, pricing, and overall learning experience, italki is better than Preply. There are also more tutors available on italki, which means you’re more likely to find one you really like. In addition, italki charges lower commission rates than Preply, so it’s better for both tutors and students.
When you book lessons with Preply, you have the option to use the Preply Classroom (“Space”) or another video platform like Skype. If you are the student, you can choose which one to use during your lessons. In general, the Preply Classroom is better than Skype because it offers additional features to enhance your lessons.
Yes, it’s possible to buy one hour of lessons on Preply, but it’s not easy. In general, Preply requires you to buy lessons in packages of 6, 12, or 20 hours. However, you can contact Preply support if you want to buy a custom package. This is the only way to buy one hour on Preply.
Booking a trial lesson on Preply is very easy. You need to sign up for an account, find a tutor you like, and then click the “Book Trial Lesson” button. Trial lessons are completely free on Preply. If you aren’t happy with your trial lesson, you can contact Preply and they will arrange a free lesson for you with a different tutor.
About this Preply review
This is an independent Preply review. The company did not sponsor this review and I am not an employee of Preply. The opinions in this 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 liked and disliked about the platform.
13 Comments
Amy says:
I love this platform and the reason pricing after using for little over a month.
I hate the customer service because there is no number to call and chat is super slow – it shows they will answer within 1 hour. I think there is a system error or glitch to reschedule lessons.
When I had to deal with my next day lesson, the customer service reply was so slow that I could not solve the problem. I manage my children’s lessons, so I have multiple lessons scheduled every week and this is very inconvenient and unkind to the users.
My teacher canceled my lesson, but I still haven’t received the refund and I had to contact them.
All the lessons can be linked to my google calendar, so I love that part! As soon as I schedule a lesson, it shows up in my google calendar. This makes my life so much easier.
I hope the customer service will improve so that I can use their service for a long time.
Max says:
Please be aware that your preply account can be deactivated and all funds on your account’s balance will be gone!
I just lost around 200 USD in such way. I had to take a break and didn’t use preply service for a while. As a result they deactivated my account without any kind of notice. I never received any refund and all my money were lost. I has around 200 USD on account balance and these money were never returned.
I’m extremely disappointed and currently I’m trying to reach their support team to resolve this issue.
Frankly saying, it seems like some kind of fraud scheme as for me. I think they have provide refund or at least inform before deactivating account.
Lina says:
If you are lucky you might find a great tutor that works for you.
Otherwise, Preply just works as a platform. There is zero quality control, and a horrific customer service. So anybody can sign up as a tutor on Preply – without any qualification or teaching skills. Some tutors are unreliable – while others make an effort. You really do not know what you get and Preply could not care less about the quality of the tutoring services or the experience.
Stay away from booking packages, as you will not get your money back. I strongly agree with other reviews. The platform feels like a scam.
Overall, if you are looking for real tutoring I would strongly advice against Preply.
Chad Emery says:
Hi Lina, thanks for your comment! I completely agree (and wrote it in this review) – Preply doesn’t control what or how tutors teach, so it’s super important to read other students’ reviews and watch the tutors’ introduction videos. Hope you have better luck finding a great tutor on a different platform! italki and Verbling are other platforms I’ve used and had success with.
Yuki says:
I just joined this platform last month, and so far I am satisfied with their support and suggestions given on certain timing. Their support team helped me so much when I was struggling with some errors on the profile update. They are so supportive and gave me a quick response.
Elena says:
Great resource, great customer care
There are a wealth of teachers to choose from, and they offer lots of information about their abilities, teaching styles, etc. It’s easy to reach out to customer service and quickly get very clear directions on how to do what I wanted to do.
Emily Kennard says:
Horrible, horrible! Run away from Preply as fast as you can! We had signed up to take lessons with a tutor that kept canceling lessons. We took the necessary steps in letting them know it was not our fault. After a few months of this I realized those missed hours were gone. When I tried to get them back with customer service, all through email by the way, they said it wasn’t possible due to the policy I agreed too. Please avoid!
Justin says:
They make you pay in chunks, not just as you use it. I didn’t use the system for 90 days and they refused to give my money back. It shows a bit about the character of a company when this occurs. The system was fine, but this is dishonest and mean. I won’t be using again.
Maher says:
One of the best educational platforms for teachers and students and an excellent support team. But there is a small problem that we I hope that the chest of the administration will expand with welcoming it , which is putting even a small percentage of the experimental lesson. Because the teacher is the nerve of the site must be supported and motivated even a little
Daniel Léo Simpson says:
“When you compare their features, pricing, and overall learning experience, italki is better than Preply.”
Not necessarily. Key word “overall”. But YOUR experience may change this statement to: “When you compare features, pricing, FOR YOUR experience, Preply may be better than iTalki.
Moral of the story: Don’t take anyone’s word for anything. Find out for yourself.
S. Patricia V. de Roo Romero L. says:
Unfortunately, I do NOT recommend Preply because it has caused me a lot of headaches. I canceled my classes, yet they continue to deduct money from my account. Please be honest with students. We come to a platform to study, not to have certain grievances. In the end, I hope to get my money back.
Sukhi says:
The company is a Fraud. I signed up for a Trial Lesson. After the trial lesson, it forces you to subscribe for a minimum once a week lesson. I had an urgent need to learn the language to prepare for an international trip coming up. So I followed the only choice available and subscribed to once a week lesson. Turns out that the tutor wasn’t even available for the next 7 days at all! When I asked for a refund, they said they will refund, but still charge me a transaction fee! This is absolutely wrong! The company couldn’t provide the service they were selling, but still charge me a fee!
Bob says:
I strongly recommend NOT to use Preply. It is not because of the teachers but because of the practices of the company. The teachers I was with were good and professional. Preply has a model in which when you subscribe for automatic class renewals with a teacher they charge you every 4 weeks regardless if you schedule a class or not. I have stopped having classes with a teacher and they kept charging me for a few months.
This is a very manipulative and disgraceful practice. I strongly suggest to avoid Preply to let them know that this kind of practices are unacceptable. There are many other platforms providing similar service without stealing like subscription models.
I am very, very disappointed.