Preply Reviews

Preply vs Cambly: which one your money is better in

Cambly is an English conversation subscription: every tutor costs the same, lessons run 30 minutes, and you pick a plan by lessons per week. Preply is a marketplace across many languages where each tutor prices themselves. These are not two versions of one product, and picking between them is really a choice about what you want a lesson to be.

[verified 2026-09-17]

See Preply's current tutor rates

Comparison table

Figures below come from each company's own published pages where one exists, checked on 2026-09-17. The highlighted cell is the side with the practical advantage on that row, and the reason sits under the row label so you can disagree with it.

Preply compared with Cambly, 2026-09-17. A highlighted cell marks the side with the advantage on that row; rows with no highlight are too close to call.

Compared onPreplyCambly
What you are buyingCambly is English only, and does not replace a language coursePreply has the edge here: Hours with a specific tutor you chose, in any of dozens of languagesEnglish conversation practice with any tutor in the network
How the price is setNothing to compare and no rate to negotiate, which suits some peopleEach tutor sets their own rate, $3 to $40+ an hourCambly has the edge here: Flat subscription, every tutor costs the same
Published priceCambly's mid price sits inside Preply's range$3 to $40+ an hour, plus an 18% one-time fee per new tutor$18.75 a 30-minute lesson monthly, down to $12.12 on annual billing, Pro plan
Lesson lengthA 50-minute lesson exists when 30 is not enoughPreply has the edge here: 25 and 50 minute formats30 minutes, one length only
Tutor credentialsNative speaker and qualified teacher are different claimsMixed, judged from the tutor's own profile and reviews100% native English speaking tutors, per Cambly's homepage
Trustpilot scorePreply's sample is a hundred times larger and far less polarisedPreply has the edge here: 4.4 out of 5 from 25,330 reviews2.0 out of 5 from 264 reviews, and Trustpilot flags the sample

Pricing compared

Rates are only half of it. Put the same weekly plan through both platforms and the gap usually opens up on the fees and the billing cycle.

Cambly's own subscribe page prices the Pro plan at $18.75 for a 30-minute lesson billed monthly, $15.58 quarterly and $12.12 on a year up front. Double it for an hour and Cambly sits between roughly $24 and $37.50 an hour depending on how far ahead you are willing to commit. That lands in the upper half of Preply's $3 to $40 range.

So a budget Preply tutor undercuts Cambly heavily, and a premium Preply tutor costs about the same. What you get for the same money differs though: on Cambly the price buys access to a pool, while on Preply it buys a named person's time.

One caveat worth stating plainly. Cambly shows per-lesson pricing only for its Pro tier on the page we fetched, and the figures are quoted against ten lessons a week on annual billing, which is a heavier commitment than most learners want. Treat the $12.12 figure as the floor of a large annual purchase and not as what a casual learner pays.

Is Cambly better than Preply for speaking practice?

For unstructured English conversation, Cambly's design is the more direct answer. One flat price covers any tutor in the network, all lessons are 30 minutes, and there is no rate to compare or negotiate before you start talking. Preply can do the same job, and often for less if you pick a tutor at the lower end of its published $3 to $40 range, but you have to choose that person yourself and you pay an 18% one-time fee the first time you book them. The trade runs the other way too. Cambly teaches English and nothing else, its lessons come in one length, and its Trustpilot profile carries a 2.0 score from only 264 reviews, which Trustpilot itself marks as possibly unrepresentative because the company has not invited recent reviews. Preply covers dozens of languages and holds 4.4 from more than 25,000 reviews.

Verdict by use case

There is no winner here, only a better fit. Find the description that sounds like your week.

When does Preply suit you better?

You are learning something other than English, or you want a tutor who plans a course rather than a conversation partner. You also get a choice about price, which matters if $24 an hour is above what you can spend every week. Preply's 50-minute format is the other practical reason: half an hour disappears quickly once you are past the small talk.

When does Cambly suit you better?

Your goal is speaking English more often, and choosing a tutor is the part that has stopped you before. A flat fee removes the comparison shopping entirely, and a 30-minute slot is easy to keep. Take the monthly billing first, at $18.75 a lesson, before committing to a year for the $12.12 rate.

Check rates on PreplySee all four alternatives on one table

Questions people ask about this pair

  1. Does Cambly have a free trial?

    Cambly's subscribe page shows no standing free trial, and its pricing sits behind a login for anything beyond the plan cards. Promotional codes circulate widely, so the price you are quoted at signup may be below the published figure. Check what the renewal costs, because that is the figure you live with.

  2. Which has better tutors?

    Two different claims. Cambly states all of its tutors are native English speakers. Preply makes no equivalent blanket claim and instead shows each tutor's profile, reviews and rate. Native fluency and teaching qualification are separate things, and neither platform promises both.

Keep reading before you pay

Preply charges a 18% one-time platform fee on your first lesson with each new tutor, then only the tutor's own rate, and it bills every 28 days in advance. Both of those are on Preply's own help pages and both change the arithmetic above.

Where these figures come from

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.