Last updated: August 2026. Written by Josh Hutcheson, OnlineCourseing editor. Every rate and billing term below was verified against Preply’s own tutor listings and Help Centre on 8 August 2026. See our review methodology.
QUICK ANSWER
How much does Preply cost? Tutors set their own rates, from about $3 to $40+ an hour. English averages roughly $25 an hour for native speakers; Spanish averages about $16. You do not pay per lesson — you pay a subscription charged every 28 days.
- Smallest plan: 4 lessons per 28-day cycle with one tutor
- The catch: unscheduled lessons expire at renewal and do not carry over
- The other catch: a 28-day cycle means 13 charges a year, not 12
- Trial lessons are paid, not free
Preply’s advertised price and Preply’s actual cost are two different numbers, and the gap is entirely in the billing model. The hourly rate you see on a tutor’s profile is real. What is easy to miss is that you are not buying that hour — you are starting a recurring subscription with rules about what happens to hours you do not use.
This page covers both: what tutors charge, and what the subscription actually does to your money. Every term is quoted from Preply’s own Help Centre rather than paraphrased, because several widely-read guides currently describe the rollover rules incorrectly.
What Preply tutors charge per hour
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Preply is a marketplace, so there is no single price. Each tutor sets a rate, and Preply’s own listings show the spread running from about $3 to $40+ an hour. These averages come from Preply’s public tutor directories:
| Tutor group | Average rate |
|---|---|
| English — native speakers | $25 / hr |
| English — non-native speakers | $24 / hr |
| English — tutors from the UK | $28 / hr |
| English — tutors from the US | $25 / hr |
| Spanish — overall average | about $16 / hr |
| Spanish — native speakers | about $29 / hr |
| Spanish — tutors from Spain | about $37 / hr |
| Spanish — tutors from Colombia | about $28 / hr |
| Cheapest tier, any language | from $3 / hr |
Two things follow from this. First, the native-speaker premium in English is almost nothing — $25 against $24. If you have been paying up for a native speaker on price signals alone, the data does not support it; judge the tutor, not the passport. Second, the country premium in Spanish is large: a tutor in Spain averages roughly a third more than one in Colombia. If you have no strong preference on accent, that is real money.
How Preply billing actually works
This is the part worth reading twice. In Preply’s own words: “A Preply subscription is between you and one tutor. Every 28 days, you are automatically charged for a fixed number of lessons with them.”
Three consequences that the tutor’s hourly rate does not tell you:
1. It is tied to one tutor. A subscription is not a wallet you can spend across the platform. Switching tutors means changing the subscription, not just booking someone else.
2. The smallest plan is four lessons. Preply’s worked example: if your tutor charges €10 per lesson, the minimum plan is €40 per cycle for four 50-minute lessons. So a $25/hour English tutor means a floor of roughly $100 every 28 days, not $25 whenever you feel like a lesson.
3. Shorter lessons do not cost less. Per Preply: switch to 25-minute sessions “and you still pay €40.” You are buying a number of lessons, not a number of minutes, so a 25-minute session is exactly twice the hourly cost of a 50-minute one.
THE 13TH PAYMENT
A 28-day cycle is not a month. There are 365 days in a year and 28 × 13 = 364, so you are billed 13 times a year, not 12. On a $100 plan that is $1,300 a year, not $1,200 — an extra payment most people never budget for. Nothing is hidden here; Preply says “every 28 days” plainly. It is just that almost everyone reads that as “monthly.”
What happens to lessons you do not use
This is the single most expensive detail on the platform, and it is also the one most commonly reported incorrectly. Several popular guides state that a week’s worth of unused hours rolls over. Preply’s Help Centre says otherwise, in two separate articles:
“Any lessons you have already booked are fully protected and will take place as planned. Unscheduled lessons expire at renewal and do not carry over.”
“Unscheduled lessons expire at the end of your current billing cycle.”
The distinction that matters is booked versus unbooked, not taken versus untaken. A lesson you have scheduled for after the renewal date is safe. A lesson sitting in your balance with no date on it is not. If you pay for four lessons and book two, the other two are gone at renewal.
So the single highest-value habit on Preply is simple: put every lesson on the calendar before your billing date, even if you later move it. Booking costs nothing and converts an expiring balance into a protected one.
Extra lessons work differently — and better
Top-ups are the exception, and they are treated more generously than the base plan. Per Preply, you can buy additional lessons “for your current cycle without changing your plan,” up to 2 top-ups per billing cycle and a maximum of 12 extra lessons per purchase.
Crucially: “Extra lessons do not expire at the end of your current cycle. They carry over into your next cycle and are only removed if they remain unused after two full billing cycles.”
That inverts the usual advice. If your schedule is uneven, you are better off holding a small base plan and topping up in busy weeks than carrying a large plan you routinely underuse: the top-up lessons survive two cycles, while the base-plan lessons die at one.
The trial lesson is paid, not free
Preply states it flatly: “Trial lessons are paid lessons.” You choose 25 or 50 minutes when booking, and you pay the tutor’s rate for it. Any page describing a “free Preply trial” is wrong.
What you do get is protection against a bad match: if the tutor is not right, “you can request a replacement trial,” and Preply markets this as trying two more tutors at no additional cost. Cancel a lesson more than 12 hours ahead and the cost “returns to your balance with that tutor and you can reschedule it.” Inside 12 hours, it does not.
Practical reading: budget one paid lesson as the cost of finding a tutor, and treat the replacement guarantee as insurance rather than a free sample.
What the price actually includes
Preply’s pricing is unusually simple in one respect: there is no separate platform fee, no signup charge and no materials cost bolted on. What you pay is the tutor’s rate multiplied by the number of lessons in your plan. Preply takes its cut from the tutor’s side rather than adding a line to your bill, which is why the number on the profile is the number you pay.
Included at no extra charge: the video classroom and chat, scheduling, and the ability to reschedule a lesson if you cancel more than 12 hours ahead — in which case the cost “returns to your balance with that tutor.” Also included is the replacement guarantee, which lets you request a replacement trial if your first tutor is not a fit.
Not included, and worth knowing: lesson materials and homework are whatever the individual tutor chooses to provide, and they vary enormously. Two tutors at the same rate can offer very different amounts of preparation, correction and follow-up. Since the platform does not standardise this, it is a fair thing to ask about directly in a trial lesson — it is the largest quality variable that price alone will not tell you.
Is any part of Preply free?
Not in any meaningful sense. Creating an account, browsing tutors, reading reviews and filtering by price, country and availability all cost nothing, and that browsing layer is genuinely useful for sizing up the market. But the moment you want a lesson — including the first one — you pay, because trial lessons are paid lessons.
There is no free tier, no free trial period and no free conversation practice. If your budget is genuinely zero, tutoring is the wrong category to start in; free comprehensible-input resources will take you further before you need to spend, and you can add a tutor once you have something to say. Our Spanish app guide covers where the free options are strongest.
Pausing, resizing and cancelling
The controls are reasonable, and knowing them is what keeps the subscription from costing more than the lessons are worth.
| Action | Terms |
|---|---|
| Change plan size | Increase or decrease lessons per 28-day cycle at any time in account settings |
| Pause | Delays renewal up to 20 days, once per cycle; you can still take lessons while paused. Must be applied before the billing date |
| Cancel | Stops auto-renewal. No cancellation fee, no lock-in. Must be at least 1 day before the billing date |
| Unscheduled lessons | Expire at the end of the current cycle |
Note the pattern: pausing and cancelling both have to happen before the renewal date. Preply gives you the controls but not retroactive relief, so a cycle you meant to skip and forgot to pause is a cycle you have bought.
How to pay less on Preply
Start at the smallest plan. Four lessons per cycle is the floor and the safest place to begin. You can size up in settings once you know you are actually showing up.
Book everything immediately. The most common way to overpay is not choosing an expensive tutor — it is letting unscheduled lessons expire.
Use top-ups for busy periods. They survive two cycles; base-plan lessons do not.
Ignore the native-speaker premium in English. At $25 against $24 an hour there is barely a premium to pay, so filter on reviews, qualifications and whether the lesson style suits you.
Filter by country when accent does not matter. In Spanish this alone can move your rate by a third.
Prefer 50-minute lessons. Since a 25-minute session costs the same as a 50-minute one, the short format doubles your effective hourly rate.
Preply cost vs italki cost
The nearest alternative bills on the opposite principle, and for cost purposes that difference matters more than the headline rates.
| Preply | italki | |
|---|---|---|
| Billing | Subscription every 28 days | Pay per lesson |
| Minimum commitment | 4 lessons per cycle | One lesson |
| Payments per year | 13 | Only when you book |
| Unused lessons | Expire at renewal | Nothing to lose |
| Typical rate | $3–$40+/hr; English ~$25 | $4–$60/hr |
| Cheaper if | You take every lesson you buy | Your schedule is unpredictable |
Neither is simply cheaper. Preply is cheaper per lesson at the same rate if you use the plan, because the subscription pushes you to show up. italki is cheaper in any month you do not, because you only pay when you book. Our full Preply vs italki comparison goes through teaching quality and tutor vetting as well as price.
Is Preply worth the cost?
For one-to-one speaking practice, yes — at roughly $25 an hour for English or $16 for Spanish, live conversation with a person who corrects you is the most efficient money in language learning. No app matches it for output practice, which is where nearly everyone stalls.
The honest qualifier is that Preply’s pricing rewards consistency and quietly penalises the opposite. If you take four lessons a cycle, the cost is fair and the routine is an asset. If you are the sort of learner who buys a plan in January and books twice, the expiry rule will take real money from you and the subscription is working against you rather than for you.
Be honest about which of those you are before you subscribe. That single judgement matters more to your total cost than any tutor’s hourly rate.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Preply cost per month?
Preply does not bill monthly. It bills every 28 days, which works out to 13 charges a year. The smallest plan is four lessons per cycle, so at a $25/hour English tutor you would pay about $100 per cycle, or roughly $1,300 a year rather than $1,200.
Do Preply lessons roll over?
Subscription lessons do not. Preply’s Help Centre states that unscheduled lessons expire at renewal and do not carry over, though lessons you have already booked still go ahead. Separately-purchased extra lessons are the exception: those carry into the next cycle and are only removed if unused after two full cycles.
Is the Preply trial lesson free?
No. Preply states plainly that trial lessons are paid lessons. You pick 25 or 50 minutes and pay the tutor’s rate. If the tutor is not a good fit you can request a replacement trial.
Is a 25-minute Preply lesson cheaper than a 50-minute one?
No. Preply’s own example shows the plan price is unchanged when you switch to 25-minute sessions, because you are buying a number of lessons rather than a number of minutes. That makes the short format twice as expensive per hour.
Can I cancel Preply at any time?
Yes. Cancelling stops auto-renewal, with no cancellation fee and no lock-in, but it must be done at least one day before your billing date. You can also pause once per cycle for up to 20 days.
Is Preply cheaper than italki?
It depends entirely on whether you use your lessons. Rates overlap heavily, but Preply charges a subscription whose unscheduled lessons expire, while italki charges only when you book. Consistent learners often pay less on Preply; irregular ones almost always pay less on italki.
RELATED GUIDES
- Preply review — is the platform itself any good?
- Preply vs italki — the two tutor marketplaces compared in full
- Best apps to learn Spanish — where tutoring fits alongside a course app
- Lingoda cost — live group classes priced by package
- Babbel cost — the self-study app to pair with a tutor
- Best apps to learn English — where Preply fits for English learners