Preply pricing: the rate, the fee and the cycle
Preply pricing is set by the tutor, not by Preply. Each one publishes their own hourly rate, from $3 to $40 and above, and Preply adds an 18% one-time platform fee on your first lesson with each new tutor. You are then billed every 28 days in advance for the weekly hours you committed to. Three numbers, and all three are on this page.
[verified 2026-09-17]
- Tutor rate
- $3 to $40+/hr
- One-time fee
- 18%
- Billed every
- 28 days
Price range by tier
Preply sells no named tiers. Every tutor picks a number inside the published $3 to $40 range, so the three bands below describe what that range looks like in practice rather than products you can buy. Use them to work out where your budget lands.
Descriptive rate bands inside Preply's published $3 to $40+ range, 2026-09-17. Preply publishes no tier names of its own, so nothing here is highlighted as a winner.
| Compared on | Hourly rate | What you tend to get |
|---|---|---|
| The lower end | $3 to $10 an hour | Newer tutors who are still building up reviews, best used for conversation practice |
| The middle, where most people land | $15 to $25 an hour | Where most learners land: experienced tutors running structured lessons |
| The top end | $30 to $40+ an hour | Qualified teachers for exam preparation or a specific professional goal |
Rates are per hour of tutor time and they move. A tutor who charged $18 when you found them can charge $24 by the time you plan a second term, and nothing on Preply locks the figure in.
Cost calculator
Set your hours and where your tutor sits in the range. The total updates as you change either one, and it shows the working so you can check it against your own basket.
Between 1 and 20. Preply bills the commitment you set here, whether or not you make every lesson.
$15 to $25 an hour. Where most learners land: experienced tutors running structured lessons.
The band figures are midpoints, so treat the total as the shape of your bill. Your tutor's actual rate is on their profile, and it is the only number Preply will charge you on.
How does the 18% Preply fee work?
Preply charges a one-time platform fee of 18% on your first lesson with each new tutor, and its own help centre states this plainly. After that first lesson you pay only the tutor's hourly rate, with nothing added. Two things follow. First, the fee is small in absolute terms: on a $20 lesson it is $3.60, once. Second, it is the cost of changing your mind, because it applies again for every new tutor you book. A learner who tries five tutors before settling pays it five times over, which is $18 at that rate before the right person is even found. That is worth planning around. Read the tutor profiles and the reviews properly, use the trial lesson as an audition, and try to make one or two attempts do the work of five.
Premium add-on
Preply Premium costs $24.99 a month and takes 3-20% off lesson packages. That spread is doing a lot of work. At the 20% end it pays for itself on about $125 of lessons a month. At the 3% end you would need to spend north of $830 a month before it broke even. The number that matters is which end of that spread you get offered.
Work out your own cycle total first, then check the discount you actually see at checkout against it.
Billing cycle
Preply charges every 28 days in advance for the hours you committed to each week. Four weeks is shorter than a calendar month, so a year holds thirteen of these charges. Budget on thirteen and the extra one will not surprise you.
Because it is paid up front, hours you do not use are hours you have already bought. Some people need exactly that pressure, and for anyone whose weeks are uneven it is the main argument for a pay-as-you-go platform instead.
How the subscription and billing work in detailPricing questions worth settling first
Does Preply have a free trial?
No. The trial lesson is paid, and Preply refunds it in credits if the tutor was not right for you. We have not yet confirmed the exact window against Preply's own terms, so we are flagging that rather than guessing at a number of days.
Can you pay for a single lesson?
Preply is built around a weekly commitment billed every 28 days, so single lessons are not the model. If buying one lesson at a time is what you want, italki sells exactly that from prepaid credit that does not expire.
What is the cheapest realistic monthly cost?
One hour a week from a tutor at the bottom of the range is about $32 a cycle, plus roughly $1.44 in first-lesson fee. That is the floor. It buys four hours of conversation practice a month from a tutor who is still building up reviews.
Do prices differ by language?
Yes, because tutors set their own rates and supply varies. A widely taught language has more tutors competing at the low end. For a language with few tutors, expect the range to start higher than $3 whatever the platform-wide figure says.
Before you commit a cycle
Where these figures come from
- Preply commission model (Preply Help Center) · company's own page
- Preply on Trustpilot · Trustpilot profile
- Preply company facts (Wikipedia) · reference work
Checked on 2026-09-17. Prices on these platforms move, and a figure that was right in September can be wrong by spring, so treat the date as part of the number. Anything we could not verify is marked on the page rather than filled in.