How much does Preply take from tutors? (2026 commission, explained)

Preply takes a commission from tutors that typically starts at around 33% of your lesson price for new tutors and slides down toward roughly 18% as you accumulate teaching hours — and, importantly, it keeps 100% of your very first lesson with each new student (the trial). So on a $30 lesson at the higher end, you keep about $20; at the lower end, around $24.60. The exact percentage depends on how many hours you have taught on the platform, and terms change, so always verify your own rate in your Preply account. This commission is the single biggest factor separating your headline rate from what actually reaches your bank account — far more than payment fees or anything else. That does not automatically make Preply a bad deal: when you are brand new and have no way to find students, its commission buys you discovery you could not get alone. But the moment you have loyal, repeat students, paying a percentage of every future lesson to a platform they already chose becomes an expensive habit. This guide breaks down exactly how Preply's commission works, what your real take-home is at different rates, how it compares to iTalki, Wyzant and Superprof, the costs beyond commission, and how much you could keep by moving regulars to your own booking link.

How Preply's commission actually works

Preply operates on a sliding-scale commission: the more hours you teach on the platform, the smaller the cut it takes. New tutors reportedly start at the highest rate — around 33% of each lesson's price — and the percentage decreases in tiers as cumulative teaching hours grow, reaching toward the high-teens (around 18%) for very high-volume tutors. The precise thresholds and percentages are set by Preply and can change, so the authoritative number is always the one shown in your own tutor dashboard. The key point for planning is that a new tutor keeps roughly two-thirds of each lesson, and even an experienced one rarely keeps more than about 82%.

This model has a clear logic from Preply's side: it rewards tutors who stay and teach a lot, and it charges the most to newcomers who are benefiting most from the platform's discovery. From the tutor's side, the effect is that your effective rate is always lower than your displayed rate, and it takes a great many hours to earn your way down to the smaller cut. Understanding this is the difference between pricing on your headline rate — and quietly underpaying yourself — and pricing on what you actually take home.

The trial lesson: why Preply keeps 100%

The part that surprises many new tutors is the trial lesson. When a new student books you for the first time on Preply, that first lesson is a "trial", and Preply keeps 100% of it — you earn nothing for that hour. The rationale is that the platform found you the student and the trial is part of its customer-acquisition cost, converting a browser into a paying learner. If the student continues, you then earn your normal (post-commission) rate on subsequent lessons.

In practice this means the true cost of acquiring a student through Preply is your commission on every future lesson plus one entirely free lesson of your time. For students who become long-term regulars, that can be an acceptable trade. For students who take the trial and never return — which is a meaningful share — it is an hour of unpaid work. This is one of the strongest arguments for running your own trials on your own platform once you can find students yourself, because there you keep 100% of a trial, whether you charge for it or offer it free as your own choice.

What your take-home really is (worked examples)

The clearest way to feel the commission is to look at take-home at a few rates and tiers. These are illustrative, using round numbers — check your own Preply rate for exact figures — but they show the shape of it:

The pattern is stark: a new tutor charging $30 keeps about $20, and even a seasoned one keeps under $25, while the same lesson on a commission-free booking link keeps the full $30 minus only a small processor fee. To take home $30 on Preply as a new tutor, you would need to charge nearly $45 — which is harder to sell against every other tutor in your subject. Run your own rate to see the yearly difference:

Preply vs iTalki vs Wyzant vs Superprof: commission compared

Preply is not the only option, and the platforms charge in genuinely different ways — none is free, but the models vary enough to matter. Below is an honest, high-level comparison; verify current terms with each platform, since they change often.

iTalki's roughly 15% flat cut is simpler and lower than Preply's starting rate, which is why many language tutors prefer it for discovery. Wyzant, strong for US academic and test-prep, has historically taken around a quarter. Superprof works more as a lead directory. The common thread is that every marketplace trades discovery for a slice of your income and control of the relationship — the differences are only in how big the slice is and how it is dressed up.

The hidden costs beyond commission

The headline percentage is not the whole cost of a marketplace. Several quieter costs stack on top, and ignoring them makes the platform look cheaper than it is:

• The free trial lesson: an hour of unpaid time for every new student, including those who never return.
• Payout timing and fees: earnings are often held and paid on a schedule, sometimes with withdrawal fees via PayPal or Payoneer.
• Price pressure: competing against hundreds of tutors pushes rates down, so your pre-commission price is lower too.
• The ranking treadmill: fast replies, no cancellations and discounting to stay visible — unpaid work layered on teaching.
• No ownership: reviews, history and the student relationship live inside the platform, not with you.
• Rules on contact: many marketplaces forbid moving students off-platform, limiting what you can build.

None of these appears on the commission line, but together they widen the gap between what a student pays and what you keep, and they cap how much of a real business you can build on rented land. A fair comparison of "Preply vs your own link" has to count them, not just the percentage.

What you get for the commission (the honest other side)

It would be dishonest to frame Preply's commission as pure loss, because you do get something real for it — and when you are starting out, that something is valuable. The platform puts you in front of a large, global stream of students who are actively searching for a tutor right now, which is genuinely hard to replicate when nobody knows your name. It handles booking, payments, video and reminders, so you can teach without assembling any tools. And it offers a low-pressure way to build reviews and confidence before you rely on your own reputation.

The honest verdict is that the commission is fair value when you are buying discovery you cannot get otherwise, and poor value when you are paying it on students who already chose you. Knowing which situation you are in is the whole game.

How much you could keep on your own booking link

On your own commission-free booking link, the maths inverts: you keep the full lesson price minus only the ordinary payment-processor fee of around 2.9% + 30¢. A $30 lesson nets roughly $28.90 to you, versus about $20 on Preply as a new tutor — a difference of nearly $9 on a single lesson. Across a busy schedule that gap becomes serious money. A tutor teaching 20 lessons a week at $30 keeps about $578 a week on their own link, versus around $402 on Preply at the new-tutor rate — a difference of roughly $9,000 a year for the exact same work.

The tooling that used to make independence hard is now trivial: a platform like Tutafy gives you the booking page, video, payments and reminders that a marketplace provides, at a flat price (free, or a small monthly fee) that does not grow as you earn more. You trade a percentage of your income for a fixed, predictable cost — and a flat cost is always cheaper than a percentage once you are teaching real volume. The only thing you give up is the marketplace's discovery, which is exactly why the smart move is to keep a marketplace profile for finding new students while routing your regulars through your own link.

The 3-year cost of Preply's commission

A single lesson's commission feels small; three years of it is a different number. Take a steady tutor billing $24,000 a year in lessons. On Preply at an average 25% cut, that is $6,000 a year handed to the platform — $18,000 over three years, before counting the free trial lessons on top. On their own booking link, the same tutor pays a flat tool (free, or roughly $144 a year for a paid tier) plus the ordinary processor fee, keeping the overwhelming majority of that $18,000. The gap is not a rounding error; it is a car, a deposit, or most of a year's rent, quietly transferred to a platform for discovery the tutor stopped needing long ago.

This is the real case against staying marketplace-dependent: not that any single lesson costs too much, but that a percentage of your income, forever, compounds into a figure worth taking seriously. The commission is invisible — skimmed before the money reaches you, with no bill to scrutinise — which is exactly why it survives unquestioned for years. Making it visible, by multiplying your yearly lesson revenue by the cut, is usually all it takes to change the decision.

When paying Preply's commission is worth it

Independence is not always the answer, and it would be dishonest to pretend it is. If you are brand new, have no audience, and no idea where to find students, Preply's commission is genuinely worth paying — it is buying you students you simply could not reach on your own, plus a low-pressure way to gather your first reviews and find your feet. For a beginner, the platform's discovery is not a cost so much as an investment in getting started.

The mistake is not using Preply; it is staying 100% dependent on it after you have built relationships that would happily follow you anywhere. The moment a meaningful share of your income comes from regulars and referrals — students who chose you, not the platform — is the moment the commission flips from a fair price for discovery into a tax on your own reputation. Use the marketplace while it is finding you students; keep 100% of the ones who would come back regardless.

How to keep more of what you earn

You do not have to quit Preply to keep more. A gradual, ethical approach works:

• Set up your own commission-free booking link so it is ready before you need it.
• Keep your Preply profile for discovery — don't burn the bridge that finds you new students.
• As students become regulars, offer your own booking link as an easier way to book directly with you.
• Sell prepaid packages on your own link to secure income and encourage commitment.
• Always follow each platform's terms — focus on students you already have a genuine relationship with.
• Reinvest the commission you save into a small referral perk so your own pipeline grows itself.

Do this and, month by month, the share of your income that keeps 100% grows while the share taxed by commission shrinks — without ever cutting off the discovery you still want. That is the whole strategy: a marketplace as a launchpad, your own link as the home.

Why Preply's commission is so easy to overlook

Part of why tutors accept a 20–33% cut for years is that they never write a cheque for it. Preply simply keeps its share before the money reaches you, so there is no monthly bill, no invoice, no moment where you feel the outflow. That invisibility is exactly what makes it dangerous. A $30 subscription you actively pay every month gets scrutinised and cancelled the moment it stops earning its keep; a third skimmed silently off every lesson never gets that scrutiny, even though it costs many times more. The pain of a visible cost is what protects you from waste — and marketplace commission is engineered to avoid that pain entirely.

The fix is simply to make the invisible visible. Once a quarter, take your Preply lesson revenue, multiply by your commission rate, and look at the result as if it were an expense that landed in your inbox. For most working tutors it is the single largest cost in their business — larger than any tool, subscription or piece of equipment — and it is the one they never chose to pay on purpose. Seeing it plainly, next to a free or flat alternative, is usually all it takes to change the decision.

Does teaching more hours (a lower commission) fix it?

A reasonable hope is that you can simply teach your way down to Preply's lower commission tier and make the problem go away. It helps, but it does not solve it. Even at the best tier — around 18% — you are still handing the platform close to a fifth of every lesson, forever, on students who may have chosen you years ago. And reaching that tier takes a very large number of hours, during which you are paying the higher rate. So the "just teach more" answer trades a bigger cut now for a smaller-but-permanent cut later, on income you could be keeping in full today.

The deeper issue is that any percentage, however small, scales with your success — the better you do, the more you pay. A flat, commission-free tool inverts that: your cost stays fixed while your income climbs, so every extra dollar you earn is entirely yours. Lowering your commission tier is worth doing if you are staying on Preply anyway, but it is not a substitute for moving the students who no longer need discovery onto your own link. The lowest commission Preply offers is still infinitely more than the 0% you pay on a lesson booked directly with you.

Preply for students vs tutors: who pays what

It is worth being clear that the tutor commission is not the only money changing hands. Students pay Preply the full lesson price they see; Preply then passes you your share after its cut. In effect, the platform sits between the student's payment and your income, taking its percentage in the middle. This matters for your pricing psychology: the number the student pays and the number you keep are two different figures, and only one of them is yours.

On your own booking link there is no middle layer. The student pays through your own processor (Stripe, PayPal, Paddle) and the money lands with you, minus only that processor's ordinary fee of around 2.9% + 30¢. Nothing is skimmed for discovery, because you found the student yourself. The same $30 the student happily paid on Preply is now nearly $29 in your pocket instead of $20 — the student pays the same, you keep far more, and the difference is simply the middleman you removed.

A gentle plan to move your regulars off Preply

If the numbers have convinced you, the transition does not have to be abrupt or risky. Do it gradually and ethically — the goal is to give students you already have a relationship with an easier way to keep learning with you, not to break any platform's rules:

• Set up your own booking link, profile, price and policies first, so it is ready before you mention it.
• Keep your Preply profile active for discovery — it is still finding you brand-new students.
• As a regular finishes a package or hits a natural break, offer your direct link as a simpler way to book going forward.
• Move history over: a tool like Tutafy accepts a CSV, so notes and progress carry across.
• Steer migrated students to prepaid packages so their income is secured on your side too.
• Respect Preply's terms — focus on genuine, existing relationships, not students you only met through an unpaid trial.

Month by month, the share of your income that keeps 100% grows while the share taxed by commission shrinks — and you never cut off the discovery you still want for new students. Most tutors who make this move describe wishing they had started sooner, not because Preply was useless, but because so much of what they paid was commission on students who would have stayed regardless.

So, is Preply worth it?

Preply is worth it for exactly one job: finding you students when you have no other way to. Its commission — roughly 18–33% plus a free trial lesson — is a fair price for that discovery when you are starting from zero, and a genuinely useful on-ramp to earning as a tutor. But it is a poor deal as a permanent home, because you pay that percentage on every future lesson from students who already chose you, and you never own the relationship, the reviews or the data. The tutors who earn the most are not the ones who refuse marketplaces or the ones who depend on them forever; they are the ones who use Preply to get started, then keep the students who would come back regardless on their own commission-free link. That is how you get the discovery when you need it and keep 100% when you don't.