Preply Review: Is Preply a Legit Platform for Tutors?

Preply is a major online learning marketplace. Although the platform is primarily geared toward language learning, there are actually more than 120 subjects you can teach on Preply. Since their founding in 2012, they’ve connected more than 800,000 students and 44,000 tutors from more than 180 countries.

Here’s a brief summary of how Preply works:

• For students: Students search through tutor profiles to find the best fit for their needs. They then book a paid trial lesson. If the student feels like the tutor is a good fit, they continue booking sessions with that tutor on a regular basis for a certain number of hours per week or month. The platform is suitable for students of all ages at all levels of experience.
• For tutors: Tutors simply sign up by creating a profile and getting approval. After that, they can begin receiving tutoring requests from students.

If you’re thinking of becoming a tutor or becoming an ESL teacher giving lessons online, then Preply is one of the main options you’ll want to consider.

Costs and fees

Tutors can create a profile for free on Preply. However, Preply does charge commission fees and payout fees. Preply’s commission fees start out very high and gradually decrease as you complete more lessons.

For every trial lesson you conduct with a new student, Preply takes 100% of your earnings. For every subsequent lesson, Preply takes a lower percentage, with that percentage based on the total number of hours you’ve taught on the platform.

Preply Commission Fee Chart

Source: Preply.

This first-lesson-free approach, alongside high commission fees, is understandably a big drawback for tutors. In addition to commission fees, you’ll have to pay fees for withdrawing funds from your Preply account, as detailed in the table below.

Preply Payment Fees by Method

Source: Preply.

Is Preply legit?

Yes, Preply is a legitimate platform. However, plenty of tutors complain that the high commission fees—especially the free lessons for first-time students—are predatory.

While Preply’s unpaid trial lesson scheme is certainly a drawback for tutors, the commission fees may not be as bad as they appear. Some competitor tutoring platforms take a similar cut without ever even telling tutors or disclosing how much they’re taking. At least Preply is upfront about their high fees.

Additionally, Preply does offer some support and protections for tutors. For starters, you have 24/7 customer support. Second, if a student makes you feel uncomfortable at any time, you can block and report them.

Before you become a tutor on Preply, make sure you understand exactly what you’re signing up for. Below is an overview of the platform’s key features and what you can expect as a Preply tutor.

Subjects you can teach

While Preply’s primary focus is language learning, it is possible to teach and tutor in over 120 other subjects, including school and university subjects, hobby subjects, and art.

Within these broad categories, you’ll find a wide range of specialties to choose from. You can even tutor in niche subjects like SEO, web development, public speaking, or business analytics, just to name a few. If you have an unusual area of expertise like one of these, it could make for a unique side hustle opportunity.

Eligibility requirements

If you’re looking for ways to make money from home without any specific experience or qualifications, Preply might be just the ticket. Their website states that “no specific certification or teaching experience is required” to become a tutor. You don’t necessarily need a degree, teaching qualifications, or even prior tutoring experience.

You just need to be 18 years old or older (or over 13 years old if you have an adult’s supervision, making Preply a potentially good side hustle for teens), and you need knowledge of a particular subject.

With that said, some disappointed applicants have reported that Preply has gotten a little stricter in recent years when it comes to who they accept as a tutor. If you can’t demonstrate outstanding communication skills and significant knowledge in a particular field, there’s a chance your profile may not be approved.

Notably, Preply does not require tutors to pass a criminal background check. However, you will need to verify your identity by uploading a photo of a government-issued ID (e.g., passport or driver’s license) when you sign up. You also need to upload proof of any credentials you have (e.g., diplomas or certificates).

Locations

Preply does not accept tutors from Iran, Sudan, Cuba, Syria, North Korea, or Crimea. However, if you’re originally from one of these countries but currently reside in another country, you may be able to apply to work as a tutor using proof of residency in that other country.

Tutor resources

Preply offers a few useful tools and resources for free. For example if you’re teaching English or Spanish, you’ll have access to free materials to use in your lessons. There are also free placement tests for select other languages.

Additionally, Preply offers AI tools that help you create lesson materials and reduce your overall lesson prep time. Depending on your goals, these may be enough to persuade you that Preply is worth it.

How Preply ranks tutors

Preply will assign you a tutor profile score on a scale of 0 to 100. The higher your score, the more likely it is that you’ll receive lesson requests. Your profile score is based on the quality of your profile photo, introductory video, and tutor description.

Across all three, Preply is looking for high quality, thorough information, and marketing finesse. If you change these three parts of your profile, the Preply team will review the changes within 48 hours and then adjust your profile score accordingly.

You set your own hourly rate on Preply, so how much you earn is entirely up to you. However, Preply will recommend a rate when you set up your account. According to their website, Preply tutors typically net around $15–$25 per hour teaching English online, for example. The most popular Preply tutors make up to $550 per week.

How much you’re able to earn on Preply strongly depends on your background/experience, subject matter, and reviews from students. Students are generally willing to pay more to learn from tutors who have specialty knowledge and/or lots of good reviews.

How you’ll get paid

After you conduct a lesson, the student will confirm that the lesson occurred. As soon as that happens, the payment for the session will be added to your Preply wallet and you’ll be able to withdraw the funds immediately.

From there, you can transfer the earnings, minus Preply’s commission, via your chosen third-party provider. Preply pays offers four payment methods: Wise, PayPal, Payoneer, and Skrill. Note that Payoneer has a minimum withdrawal amount of $20 (account deposit) or $23 (bank transfer).

No-show/cancellation policy

If a Preply student is a no-show at a lesson’s scheduled start time, you’re expected to wait 15–20 minutes. After that, you can leave the video call. If it’s a regular student, you have the option to either charge them for the full lesson within 7 days or reschedule the lesson.

On the other hand, if it’s a trial lesson, you won’t get paid. Instead, you’ll have the option to either reschedule the lesson or direct the student to the Preply Support team to arrange a trial lesson with a new tutor.

Getting started on Preply takes minimal time. Just follow the steps below:

1. Register to become a tutor: Click “Become a tutor” on the Preply website’s home page, and then enter your email address and a password to create an account.
2. Fill out an application: Enter personal information like your name, location, subjects you can tutor, descriptions of your qualifications, your rates, and your availability. The information in your application will be used to create your tutor profile.
3. Verify your identity: Upload proof of identity and proof of the qualifications you outlined in your application.
4. Upload an introductory video: This video should be between 30 seconds and 2 minutes long, consisting of information about you (15–20 seconds), your skills (30–50 seconds), and a conclusion (15–25 seconds).

Once you’ve completed the application process, Preply will review your profile and let you know within 5 business days whether you’ve been approved. It’s worth noting that there’s a chance you may not be approved simply due to lack of demand for your expertise. Once your profile is live, you can begin receiving tutoring requests.

Where to download the Preply app

App Store Google Play

Preply reviews from tutors are mixed. The biggest complaint tutors have concern the high commission fees and unpaid initial lessons. However, plenty of tutors also like the platform for the opportunities it provides to get tutoring experience, build a client base, and earn money from home.

Here’s a roundup of some of the most insightful Preply tutor reviews circling the web—both the good and the bad.

Case A:

“I teach with preply and have been for more than a year, and it’s working well for me. Yes, the commission model is ouchy, starting at 33% and down to 18% when you hit 400 teaching hours. And yes, I do NOT love the free trial situation at all. Even though it’s been reduced to 50 minutes now, it’s still s%#t, and I wish they would change it. My retention rate is good, though, so I’m pretty much guaranteed a new student from a trial and haven’t experienced any time wasters or weirdos during a trial, as yet.

“I’m down to 18% commission and have students paying between $14-18 per hour. My lower paying students have been with me from the beginning. They are amazing, and we have a good thing going so I’ve no intention of increasing their prices.

“The things I appreciate about preply are;

1. The library – it’s really very extensive.
2. The vocabulary builder – each student can build up their own personal dictionary that they can access betweenclasses.
3. I don’t have to hunt for students. They come to me, and I can choose not to teach a student if it’s not working for me.
4. There are always training and webinars running to keep your skills updated.
5. I have found the support good too, I always get a friendly reply to any query I’ve made.
6. I can do what I want when I want with my calendar. I basically shut down my availability from October to January due to a close family bereavement, and there was no issue when I came back apart from losing my super tutor status.

“It just works for me and my personal situation, but it might not be for everyone.”

Case B:

“The commission is fairly ridiculous, and I started with Preply just to get my confidence up when I started teaching online with another company and felt very rusty. I didn’t think I’d stick with it but personally the students have been great – I currently teach around 30 hours per week on Preply and the vast majority of my students are people I would happily have a drink with if they came to my city. I do thunk it can be worth it if you stick with it until you get down to the lower levels of commission.”

Case C:

“I’ve been teaching French on Preply for a little over 4 years now, since the start of the pandemic basically, and it’s my full time-ish gig. It usually dies down a bit in the summer months so I do restaurant work to supplement it […] I’ve taught about 5000 classes, went from charging $10-15 an hour to $40 over time. […]

“What I’ll say is this. I think I got into at the perfect time, online classes were in such high demand and online tutoring platforms were less know about, I think now it’s much more saturated. I see a lot of posts about people having a hard time finding students, I started getting them pretty fast when I first started. […]

“The customer service is the worst […] Keep screenshot receipts for any lessons done off the platform, and my biggest piece of advice especially if you get a little established is don’t let people waste your time with late cancels or no shows, charge them and if they don’t like it let them find another tutor […] Preplys policy is 12 hours notice or the students have to pay, it used to be 4, which is a joke. […] Is it worth it? I mean it’s been a pretty big game changer for me, it might take a long time to start making decent money at it, try to get everyone to leave reviews.”

Case D:

“I’ve been a tutor for nearly 15 years and joined Preply about 2 years ago. Now it is the only online platform I use. […] The reason I use only Preply now it’s that all of their services are included in the fees and they (usually) work well. I pay them thousands of dollars a year and feel it’s very good value for money.

“Certified, experienced tutors can do well and charge a good amount per lesson, but if you’re just looking at offering conversation classes, you couldn’t charge as much and there are other services much more appropriate to you.

“If you wanted to make a career or if it, I’d recommend getting educated, certified and accredited. Otherwise, stick to conversation classes.”

Case E:

“I think it can be worth it. Just consider that you’re not employed, it is your own business, and it can take a while to build a business. Don’t expect to have a full schedule within a month and don’t expect to charge 30$/hour at the start. You have to build this up over time. I would estimate it takes about 2 years to become a well-paid, full-time Preply tutor.

“Also, there is a lot of learning involved (language, grammar, how to teach effectively, how to use all the tools, how to sell yourself in trial lessons). If you take it seriously, it is a lot of work.”

There are definitely pros of working with Preply as a tutor. You get to manage your own schedule, set your own rates, and benefit from Preply’s built-in base of students.

They also claim that their website gets more visitors than any of their competitors (meaning more potential students), though it’s tough to verify whether this is true. Despite the convenience, some argue that what Preply has to offer just isn’t worth the platform’s high commission fees.

The bottom line is that it seems Preply is more worthwhile for tutors who are willing to commit a substantial amount of time to tutoring—enough to access the lower commission fees and justify raising their rates. If you want to start a full-time tutoring business, Preply actually offers a lot of room to grow. Likewise, if you’re aspiring to eventually become a teacher and want some extra experience under your belt, again, this platform might be worthwhile.

On the other hand, if all you want is a casual tutoring side hustle, the high initial costs may just not be worth it. In this case, you may be better off with a platform that offers quicker payoff.

Pros and cons

Below are a few of the most consistent pros and cons that users report.

Alternatives to Preply

If you’re not sold on Preply, don’t worry. There are plenty of other online tutoring platforms you can check out.

Here are a few popular sites like Preply:

• Cambly
• Outschool
• Varsity Tutors

Each platform offers its own range of subjects you can teach. Differences in fee structure, student base, and job availability can also mean higher earning potential with another tutoring site.