Preply Commission: The Real Hidden Cost of Teaching

Everyone knows marketplaces take a commission. It's baked into the small print, mentioned briefly during onboarding, and then quietly ignored while you get on with teaching. The cut feels abstract — until you do the maths.

Most tutors on Preply and iTalki have never actually sat down and calculated what they hand over to the platform in a year. Not because they're bad with numbers. Because the number, when you see it written down, is genuinely uncomfortable.

This post is about making that number impossible to ignore. We're going to run through the real commission structures, build out a proper year-one and year-three comparison, and figure out exactly when marketplace teaching makes sense — and when it's costing you more than your rent.

Buckle up. This is the maths nobody wants to do. But it's the maths every tutor should.

What is Preply's actual commission structure?

Preply uses a sliding scale commission model. Your commission rate starts high and decreases as you accumulate teaching hours on the platform. Here's how it works:

Hours taught on Preply	Commission rate	Your take
0 – 20 hrs	33%	67%
21 – 50 hrs	28%	72%
51 – 200 hrs	25%	75%
201 – 400 hrs	22%	78%
400+ hrs	18%	82%

Those are Preply's own published bands (Preply's commission model). Two details that catch people out: the hours are your total across the platform, not per student, and trial lessons count towards them.

Year 1 income comparison: Preply vs iTalki vs <a href= Independent" class="kg-image">

So you start by giving Preply a third of every lesson. A full third. If you charge $25/hour, $8.25 goes straight to Preply before you've made a cup of tea.

Preply publishes this openly, and to be fair to them the rate comes down faster than tutors often expect. At 20 hours a month you'd clear the opening 33% band inside your first month, reach 25% at around three months, and 22% at roughly ten.

The floor is the real story. Getting to 18% takes 400 hours — about twenty months at that pace. And 18% is where it stops. There is no tier below it. However many thousands of hours you go on to teach, close to a fifth of every lesson keeps going to the platform, permanently.

That's the part worth sitting with. The sliding scale is real, but it slides to a floor, not to zero. And it sits on top of a cost that never improves at all: every trial lesson with a new student is charged at 100% commission. You teach it, Preply keeps all of it, and that hour still counts towards your tier — which is the one small mercy in the arrangement.

iTalki's Commission Structure

iTalki has no hours-based ladder at all. What moves the rate is the type of lesson you sell (how iTalki charges commission):

Lesson type	Commission
Trial lesson	0%
Single lesson	21%
5-lesson package	19%
10-lesson package	17%
15- or 20-lesson package	15%
Group class	30%

So there's no grind — but there's also no 15% unless you're selling in blocks of fifteen or more. Sell single lessons, which is how most tutors start, and you pay 21%. That is above Preply's 18% floor, not below it.

The unambiguous win is the trial lesson. iTalki charges 0% on trials. Preply charges 100%. If you teach a lot of trials that never convert into regulars, that single difference outweighs most of the commission gap.

That said, the platforms are different in character. Preply is more corporate-client focused with subscription students; iTalki is more of a global open marketplace. Both take their cut. One takes considerably more.

The Year 1 Maths

Let's get specific. Assume a tutor teaching 20 hours per month at $25/hour. That's $500 gross revenue per month, $6,000 per year. Not a full-time income, but a solid side income — or the start of something bigger.

Here's what each platform actually pays out in Year 1:

Because Preply's rate steps down through the year, you can't just apply 33% to the whole lot. Twelve months at 20 hours takes you to 240 hours, which crosses four bands: 20 hours at 33%, 30 at 28%, 150 at 25%, and the last 40 at 22%.

	Preply (tiered)	iTalki (single lessons, 21%)	Independent + Tuton ($29/mo)
Annual gross	$6,000	$6,000	$6,000
Platform commission	$1,533	$1,260	$0
Platform fee	—	—	$348
Annual net	$4,467	$4,740	$5,652
Effective cost of the platform	25.5%	21%	5.8%

Preply costs you $1,533 in year one — an effective 25.5% once the tiers are accounted for. iTalki on single lessons costs $1,260. Selling nothing but 15-lesson packages would bring that down to $900, but that's a best case, not a default.

Independent with Tuton? $348/year — the $29/month subscription, and nothing else. You keep everything you charge.

The difference between Preply and independent: $1,185 in year one, on a modest 20-hour teaching load. Note that none of these figures include unconverted trial lessons, which are free to Preply and free to you.

The Year 3 Maths

Three years in. You've been grinding on Preply. Accumulated hours. Things get better, right?

Keeping the same 20 hours a month, you pass 400 hours partway through Year 2 and sit on the 18% floor from then on.

	Preply (tiered → 18% floor)	iTalki (single lessons, 21%)	Independent + Tuton
Year 1 net	$4,467	$4,740	$5,652
Year 2 net	$4,760	$4,740	$5,652
Year 3 net	$4,920	$4,740	$5,652
3-Year Total Net	$14,147	$14,220	$16,956
3-Year Lost vs Independent	$2,809	$2,736	—

This is the honest version, and it's worth being precise about it: Preply's tiers do improve, and by Year 3 a Preply tutor on the floor rate is very slightly better off than an iTalki tutor selling single lessons. The marketplace grind is not endless.

What doesn't change is the destination. Even sitting on Preply's best possible rate, having taught 400+ hours to earn it, you're still handing over roughly $2,800 across three years compared with running independently — and you'd keep paying that 18% for as long as you stay. The maths gets friendlier over time. It never gets good.

The Non-Commission Costs Nobody Talks About

The commission is the obvious cost. But there's a cluster of invisible costs that marketplace tutors absorb without realising it.

The race to the bottom on pricing. On any marketplace, you're listed alongside hundreds of other tutors. Students filter by price. There's constant pressure to keep rates competitive — meaning low. On Preply, you can see what other tutors charge. If you price above the median, you get fewer enquiries. Marketplaces structurally depress your hourly rate. That $25/hour might be $35/hour if you weren't on a platform.

No upsell, no packages, no bundles. On Preply, you sell hours. That's it. You can't offer a 10-lesson grammar intensive. You can't create a conversation practice bundle. You can't sell a pronunciation course alongside your lessons. The platform determines your product catalogue: one lesson at a time, at whatever rate you set. The ability to sell packages and courses is one of the highest-margin moves a tutor can make — and marketplaces remove it from you entirely.

You don't own your students. This is the one that hurts most. A student you've taught for two years on Preply is not your student. They are Preply's student. You cannot email them. You cannot message them outside the platform. You cannot give them your number, invite them to your newsletter, or maintain any contact if they leave the app. If Preply shuts down tomorrow, that entire relationship history disappears. Your client list — which should be a professional asset you build over years — is owned by someone else.

Deactivation risk. Marketplace accounts get suspended. It happens. Tutors report being locked out with no warning, no clear reason, and no meaningful appeals process. If your income depends on a marketplace account, it depends on the platform not deciding to deactivate you. That's a risk with no premium, no notice period, and no exit package.

These aren't theoretical concerns. They're the texture of marketplace dependency. They don't show up in the commission calculations, but they compound the financial cost with something harder to quantify: a ceiling on your professional growth.

When does Preply's commission actually make sense?

Here's the honest answer, because this isn't a hit piece.

If you're a new tutor with zero students, no online presence, and no idea how to find clients — a marketplace is a reasonable starting point. You're essentially buying student supply. Preply and iTalki spend significant money on marketing and SEO to attract students. That infrastructure has value when you have nothing.

The commission, in those early months, is the price of a lead generation service. If you're new, uncertain about your niche, and still figuring out your teaching style, paying 33% for a stream of ready-made students is defensible.

The problem isn't starting on a marketplace. The problem is staying there indefinitely — past the point where the commission is buying you anything you couldn't acquire yourself.

Once you have 10–15 regular students, a sense of your niche, and a basic understanding of how to retain clients, the marketplace is no longer a growth tool. It's a tax.

The Breakeven Point

How many students do you actually need before going independent makes financial sense?

Tuton costs $29/month. That's your total overhead as an independent tutor. See Tuton pricing for the current plans.

At $25/hour, a single student doing one lesson per week generates roughly $100/month in revenue. In your first month on Preply, at the opening 33%, that student nets you $67. With Tuton ($29/mo, no commission), the same student nets you $71 — even after the subscription. On Preply's 18% floor rate it'd be $82, so the gap narrows as you climb; it just never closes.

With just two students, the comparison looks like this:

	Preply (opening 33%)	Preply (18% floor)	Tuton ($29/mo)
2 students × 4 hrs/mo × $25	$200 gross	$200 gross	$200 gross
Platform cost	$66	$36	$29
Net	$134/month	$164/month	$171/month

Two students. Two regular weekly lessons. And Tuton already wins.

At five students, you're pocketing roughly $185 more per month going independent. At ten students — $370 more per month. Per year, that's $4,440 you're not giving to a marketplace.

The breakeven isn't some distant milestone. It's reachable almost immediately for any tutor with a handful of regulars.

The Bottom Line

Marketplaces are a starting point, not a destination. They're scaffolding — useful while you're building, expensive once you're standing.

The numbers in this post aren't cherry-picked edge cases. They're conservative assumptions on a modest teaching load. And they show clearly that for any tutor with regular students, marketplace commissions are the single biggest drag on earnings — larger than taxes in many jurisdictions.

Preply isn't a scam. iTalki isn't a villain. They provide a service, and that service has a price. The question is whether you're still getting value for that price — or just paying out of habit.

If you have students, a teaching style that works, and any ambition to grow beyond selling hours one at a time: the maths points one way. See Tuton's independent tutor features for what going off-marketplace actually looks like in practice.

Start your independent practice with Tuton — your first 14 days are free →

Keep what you earn. You taught for it.

Frequently asked questions

How much commission does Preply take per lesson?

Every trial lesson with a new student is charged at 100% — you teach it, Preply keeps the payment. After that it's a sliding scale based on your total hours taught across the platform: 33% for your first 20 hours, then 28% to 50 hours, 25% to 200, 22% to 400, and a floor of 18% beyond that. Figures from Preply's published commission model.

Is Preply worth it for new tutors?

Yes for months 1–6 if you need volume and don't have a profile yet; the economics shift once you have 5–10 regulars and an independent pipeline of your own to fall back on.

Can I take Preply students off-platform?

No — Preply's terms prohibit it explicitly and tutors lose their accounts over it. Build your independent roster from new students who find you directly, never from your Preply students.

What's the real hourly cost of teaching on Preply over a year?

A tutor charging $20/hr and teaching 20 hours a week bills around $20,800 a year. Once they're on the 18% floor that's roughly $3,700 a year in commission; in their first year, while still moving through the higher bands, it's closer to $5,000. Unconverted trial lessons sit on top of both figures and are never paid.

Does iTalki have lower commission than Preply?

Not straightforwardly. iTalki charges 21% on single lessons, dropping to 19%, 17% and 15% on 5-, 10- and 15-lesson packages, and 30% on group classes (iTalki's commission table). So a tutor selling single lessons on iTalki pays more than a Preply tutor who has reached the 18% floor. Where iTalki clearly wins is trials: 0%, against Preply's 100%.

What's the cheapest way to teach independently after leaving Preply?

A single platform that handles scheduling, lessons, payments, and student profiles. Tuton starts free; Calendly + Stripe + Zoom + Notion is the "stitched" alternative.