italki vs Preply for French: Prices, Tutors and the Fine Print
Preply's own help centre puts the commission on every trial lesson with a new student at one hundred percent. That is the number to hold on to in any italki vs Preply comparison for French: these platforms do not sell the same unit.
The short verdict, for anyone booking a lesson this week
If you want to buy one hour and then vanish for a month, italki. If you want the same person at the same time every week and you keep appointments, Preply. If you are honestly unsure you will keep them, read the twenty eight day clock in the next section before you read a single price.
Most comparisons never reach that answer, because they set an hourly rate for one platform beside an hourly rate for the other as though both were measuring the same object. On italki you buy credits and spend them one lesson at a time. On Preply you subscribe to a fixed number of lessons with one tutor, renewed every twenty eight days.
The commission in the opening line is the tell. Preply pays its tutors nothing for a trial with a new student, so the trial is cheap and the tutor sitting in it would like a plan agreed before the hour ends.
Either way, send the opening message in French. The reply tells you how that person handles a beginner, before any money moves.
A tutor who answers that in slow, clear French has just told you something no star rating can.
What italki and Preply charge, read on 31 August 2026
Both companies localise their pricing and run promotions, which is why no two reviews of either one quote the same figure twice. Everything below sits on pages the companies publish themselves, read on 31 August 2026 and named so you can reopen them.
On italki the teacher sets the rate. Its French tutors page states that French tutors cost between four and sixty dollars an hour, and its own pricing guide splits that into community tutors at four to twenty dollars a lesson and professional teachers at ten to forty, with nothing added at checkout beyond the price on the profile. The money still enters as italki Credits, a balance you top up first. italki Plus, at $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year, buys platform features and not one minute of teaching.
On Preply the French tutors page says private French classes start from three dollars, with an average of twenty one. What you buy after the trial is a plan: one tutor, a fixed number of lessons, charged automatically every twenty eight days, four lessons minimum.
Commission is where the two part company. Preply publishes its taper: one hundred percent on every trial with a new student, then eighteen to thirty three percent, starting at thirty three and dropping to twenty eight once a tutor has taught twenty hours. italki publishes no equivalent figure on the pages that open. Its Teacher Policy says platform service fees are charged when a student confirms a completed lesson, and vary with lesson type, package size and teacher performance; its help centre article on commission returned an error to us on the day of writing, so no italki percentage appears in the table.
| What you are comparing | italki | Preply |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of sale | One lesson, paid from a credit balance | A 28 day plan with one tutor, four lessons minimum |
| French tutors listed | 1,271 on its French page | 6,485 on its French page |
| Stated price | $4 to $60 an hour, set by the teacher | From $3 a lesson, $21 average |
| Trial lesson | Priced by each teacher, often 30 minutes | 25 or 50 minutes, tutor paid nothing for it |
| Platform subscription | italki Plus $5.99/mo or $59.99/yr, features only | The lesson plan is the subscription |
| Commission on tutors | Not published on the policy pages that open | 100% on the trial, then 18% to 33% |
| Free cancellation | More than 24 hours before the start | More than 12 hours before the start |
| What expires | Credits, after 12 months without a login | Unbooked lessons, at the end of each cycle |
Two things a table like that cannot hold. A cheap tutor who cancels twice a month costs more than an expensive one who never does, and month four, where all of this money is really decided.
The one variable this page cannot rank
Between two tutors on the same platform, at the same rate, the gap in what you walk away with after ten lessons is wider than the gap between the two companies above. That part is unrankable from here, and anybody who ranks it for you is guessing. What we can hand over is the material that makes an expensive hour worth its price: nine reference sheets in the free cheat sheet pack, built around pronunciation, false friends, the two past tenses, numbers and dates, the tu and vous call, and the lines of a first week in France. It downloads as soon as you type an email address.
Finding a French tutor: 1,271 profiles against 6,485
Those were the counts advertised on each company's French page on 31 August 2026, so Preply lists roughly five times as many French tutors. Both are catalogue figures. Neither company publishes how many of those profiles taught a lesson last week.
italki makes one distinction visible that matters more than the total: community tutors on one side, professional teachers on the other. A community tutor is a native speaker who will talk with you, decent value when what you need is mileage. Beginners book the cheap one and discover that talking to a French person is not the same service as being taught by one. Preply sells reassurance differently, with a free tutor replacement when the first match fails.
Neither figure answers the question that matters: whether the person on the screen can explain a French problem to an English speaker. Being French is not a qualification for that. You hear the difference inside ten minutes, because the good ones see your mistake coming.
You can steer that first lesson yourself, and almost nobody does. One sentence in the opening minute changes its shape.
Most tutors will not correct you unless asked. They are being polite, and it costs you the hour.
If the prospect of any of this makes you want to close the tab, the reaction is common enough to have a whole method built around speaking when you would rather not, better read before you book than after you cancel. A scheduled call with a stranger is also the closest rehearsal you can arrange for the French telephone call that breaks people around month three.
Say it once and most tutors hold the line all term.
Cancellations, and the money that leaves without a lesson
This is the section that decides which platform fits your actual life, and it is the one nobody reads until the money has gone.
italki runs a twenty four hour rule. Outside genuine emergencies, its Teacher Policy states that no lesson may be cancelled or rescheduled by either side within twenty four hours of the start. Cancel earlier and the credits go back to your student wallet. The credits are the catch: the Payment Policy says plainly that no refunds are given for italki Credits purchased, and that they expire after twelve months without a login.
Preply runs a twelve hour rule instead. Cancel more than twelve hours ahead and the lesson returns to your balance; inside twelve hours it does not, because the tutor's calendar was already blocked. Above that sits the plan itself: pause once per cycle for up to twenty days, cancel at least a day before the next billing date, and any lesson you have not booked by the renewal dies with the cycle. Refunds on unused hours are handled case by case by support, which is a polite way of saying there is no rule you can read in advance.
The two clocks punish opposite behaviour. Preply punishes not booking. italki punishes not logging in. Every January some version of the same message reaches us: somebody bought a ten lesson package in October, took three, and wants the rest moved to a different teacher.
Both of those conversations happen in French, and both go better when the message lands early.
Watch the verb. Décaler shifts the lesson to a later slot and sounds far less final than annuler, which is why French people reach for it first.
Un empêchement is the polite black box of French excuses. Nobody has ever asked what was inside one.
The third variable neither platform sells you
One lesson a week is fifty two hours a year, and fifty two hours is not a level. Before deciding on price, look at the hours sitting behind each CEFR level, because the arithmetic changes which question you are asking. The tutor is not the bottleneck. The six days between lessons are.
What happens in those six days decides whether the hour you paid for is a lesson or a chat. The students who move arrive with something they met during the week, in French, on their own.
We publish exactly that, so read this paragraph knowing where it comes from. The free tier is The French Briefing: one French news item a day, rebuilt so a learner reaches the end of it, vocabulary attached. Bring one to a lesson and you have handed your tutor a subject, a register and a reason to correct you. The paid tier, the French Progress Pass, adds the audio and a level that moves week by week, which is the part that tells you whether the lesson money is doing anything. It will not make you speak. Nothing you read alone will.
Your French should serve your life. Not a curriculum. That is the test for a tutor too: if the lessons drift toward a textbook chapter you did not choose, say so in the next one.
That turns a paid conversation into a lesson with an agenda, and it stops the tutor opening the same warm up they use with everyone.
Which one to pick, by what you are actually trying to do
- 1You have never spoken French to a human beingitalki, community tutor, three thirty minute trials in one week with three different people. Cheap, and it settles who you can bear listening to. If you cannot build a sentence at all yet, the app question comes first, and where Babbel and Duolingo actually differ answers it faster than a tutor will.
- 2You want a weekly habit and you keep appointmentsPreply, minimum plan, same tutor. Book the whole cycle the day you are charged rather than the week you feel like it, because unbooked lessons die with the cycle.
- 3You have a certificate with a date on itEither platform, filtered on tutors who name the exam and can describe its format. Which certificate your file needs is its own decision, and the difference between the TCF and the DELF decides what you drill between now and the session. If it is the B1, what the four tests actually ask is the brief to hand your tutor in lesson one.
- 4Your weeks are never the same shapeitalki. A twenty eight day cycle is a bad fit for a diary that moves, and one missed renewal costs more than the price difference ever saved.
Worth saying plainly on a page like this one: for a beginner the platform matters less than the tutor, and the tutor matters less than what you do on a Wednesday. We reached the same point from the other side when we priced eight French apps from their own store listings, where italki was a single row among them.
When the weekly slot is settled, one sentence puts it in the diary.
The French for booking, moving and cancelling a lesson
None of these words appear in a first course. All of them appear in the messages around it.
| 🇫🇷 French | 🇺🇸 English | 💡 Context |
|---|---|---|
| un cours d'essai | a trial lesson | What both platforms sell you first, at a reduced price |
| un créneau | a time slot | The word every tutor uses for an opening in the week |
| décaler | to move to a later time | Softer than cancelling, and usually accepted |
| annuler | to cancel | Say it more than a day ahead on either platform |
| un avoir | a credit | What comes back to your balance, never to your card |
| le forfait | the plan | A fixed package of lessons paid for in advance |
| un empêchement | something came up | The polite reason nobody ever asks you to explain |
| Vous pouvez me reprendre ? | Can you correct me? | The sentence that turns a chat into a lesson |
| On reprend où on s'est arrêtés. | Let's pick up where we left off. | Opens the second lesson without small talk |
One figure from italki's French page did not fit anywhere above. Its own list of common questions puts a thirty minute French lesson at between four and ten dollars, while the trial prices of the teachers it was featuring that same day ran from six dollars to fifty nine. Both statements sat on one page, a scroll apart.
Prefer to keep it free today? Read the French Briefing →
Make French a language
you live in.
Tell a story over dinner. Go beyond « Bonjour, ça va ? » Say what you mean without rehearsing every word.
Build confidence with a French tutor on italki, one conversation at a time. So when someone says « Raconte ! », you’re ready.
Explore tutors at different price points and find a lesson that fits your budget. À chacun son rythme.
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Un mot. Une phrase.Une vraie conversation.
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