Preply Review UK: Tutor Prices, Paid Trials and the 28-Day Subscription Catch

Preply is an online tutoring marketplace run by Preply, Inc., a Delaware company based in Brookline, Massachusetts. Its terms describe it as an intermediary rather than a school: tutors are independent, set their own prices and teach in Preply's built-in video classroom, while Preply handles search, booking and payment and takes a commission from the tutor.

Most people use it for languages. The page our link opens lists more than 33,000 English tutors and over 10,000 for Spanish, out of more than 100,000 tutors across 120-plus subjects. Preply bills in pounds, euros or dollars depending on where you are, and takes Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal, which always goes through in dollars. It isn't a regulated financial product, so the protections that matter are Preply's own refund rules, covered below.

Every tutor sets a price for a 50-minute lesson. Preply's English tutors page puts the average at $26 an hour for UK tutors, $28 for native speakers generally and $22 for non-native speakers, and the price filter starts at a few dollars. Prices are set in dollars and shown in pounds, so the sterling figure moves a little with the exchange rate.

On top of the lesson price, every purchase carries a processing fee plus any tax due where you live. Checkout shows the two together as Taxes & Fees before you pay; Preply doesn't publish a fixed rate, so compare checkout totals rather than headline prices.

A trial is a paid lesson of 25 or 50 minutes with a tutor you haven't had before, and each tutor gives each student one. You pick the length when booking and can't change it afterwards. Cancel 12 hours or more before the start and the trial goes back to your balance; inside 12 hours it's used up. If a tutor declines your request, the trial stays in your balance for another tutor.

If a trial goes ahead but the tutor isn't right for you, Preply can give you a free replacement trial with a different tutor, up to two per account, as long as you haven't subscribed to that tutor. Worth knowing: Preply keeps the whole fee for a tutor's first trial with a new student, so the tutor earns from you only once you subscribe, and the trial ends with an invitation to do so.

Our Preply link is a partner link, not a discount code. It opens Preply's normal homepage, and the prices, trial rules and subscriptions are the ones every new student gets: there's no sign-up discount and no code to enter. Open Preply through our link, create your account, set your time zone, then book a trial from a tutor's profile.

Before paying, check three things at checkout: the trial length, which is fixed once booked, the tutor's price, and the Taxes & Fees line. If you leave Preply before signing up, come back through our link.

Disclosure: this is a BonusRoam partner link. If you buy lessons after opening Preply through it, BonusRoam may earn a commission from Preply. It doesn't change your price.

Take a UK English tutor at Preply's average of $26 for 50 minutes, about £19.45 at the European Central Bank rate of 23 October 2026. That's what a 50-minute trial costs before the processing fee; a 25-minute trial costs less. Native speakers average $28 and non-native speakers $22, so the same lesson runs from about £16.46 to £20.95 at average rates.

Now the part that costs money. The smallest plan is four lessons every 28 days, so the same $26 tutor is $104, about £77.80, per cycle, and $1,352, roughly £1,011, over a year of 13 cycles. The trial is a quarter of one cycle. Treat it as a paid interview: book it with a tutor you'd realistically keep, at the time you'd take lessons each week.

If you continue, you subscribe to that tutor for a fixed number of lessons every 28 days, starting at four. Preply doesn't sell one-off lessons or packs, even through support. The charge renews automatically on a date that moves around the calendar, because 28 days isn't a month. Each tutor is a separate subscription, and you can split your lessons into 25-minute sessions for the same total time.

Plan lessons you haven't scheduled expire at each renewal; a lesson booked before the renewal date is safe even if it takes place afterwards. You can pause to push the renewal back by up to 20 days once a cycle, and buy extra lessons, up to 12 at a time and twice a cycle, which carry over and only expire after two full billing cycles unused. Cancel at least a day before billing; there's no cancellation fee. If your tutor raises their rate, the new price only applies to your plan if you approve it.

Payments are largely non-refundable. On a monthly plan Preply may refund a charge if you haven't used any lessons from that cycle and you ask within 28 days of the payment; cancelling on its own doesn't trigger a refund. Ask through the chat on the website or app, or by emailing [email protected]. Approved refunds go back to the original payment method and can take up to 30 days to show.

If a trial didn't happen, you can ask for a free trial with another tutor or a refund within 90 days of paying. Preply may offer credit instead of a refund, but accepting it is optional. Three traps: a chargeback through your bank lets Preply suspend your account, not logging in for 180 days suspends it and expires your balance, and deleting your account expires the balance too.

On 26 October 2026 Preply's app was rated 4.8 from about 13,700 ratings on the UK App Store and 4.7 from 65,200 reviews on Google Play, where it has more than five million downloads. Those scores cover the platform as a whole, and most of the praise is for individual tutors.

The recurring complaints are about money rather than teaching: tutors raising prices after a good trial, refunds cut by processing fees or refused after 28 days, slow support replies on refunds, lessons lost at renewal, tutors cancelling at short notice and glitches in the lesson room. Most trace back to the subscription rules above, so read them before you subscribe.

Use it if you want regular one-to-one lessons and are happy to commit to four or more every 28 days with one tutor. Book a 50-minute trial with a tutor you'd realistically keep, at the time you'd take lessons each week, so the trial tests the whole arrangement.

Skip it if you want occasional lessons without a subscription, prefer a fixed-price course or a classroom, or were hoping for a sign-up discount: our link doesn't carry one.