I spent three years on Preply. Three years of green "available" dots, frantic schedule-juggling, and watching the platform take a third of everything I earned with the cheerful indifference of a tollbooth.
I learned a lot. About language teaching, about business, about myself — and about the very specific kind of frustration that comes from building something valuable inside someone else's walls.
This isn't a hit piece. Preply genuinely helped me when I needed help. But there are things I wish someone had told me before I signed up, things I only figured out the hard way, and if you're considering Preply — or already on it and wondering if there's a better way — I hope this saves you a few years of expensive lessons.
What I Actually Liked About Preply
Let me be honest, because the internet is already drowning in "platform bad, go independent" hot takes that gloss over why platforms exist in the first place.
The student supply was real. In my first month on Preply, I had paying students. Not many, but enough. If I'd gone independent from day one, I'd have spent that same month building a website, stressing about payment processors, and wondering why nobody was booking. Preply handed me a queue of people who already wanted lessons. That's not nothing — that's actually a lot.
The admin burden was zero. Payments landed in my account. Scheduling happened inside the platform. There were tools for homework and session notes. For a tutor just starting out, or someone who really just wants to teach and not run a business, the convenience is genuinely valuable.
The built-in credibility helped. Students trust Preply the brand. When you're new, you're borrowing that credibility. Reviews accumulate, and eventually you get profile momentum. It feels good.
So yes — Preply works. It worked for me. And then, slowly, it stopped working well enough.
The Commission Problem
Here's where we need to do some maths. I know, I know — but stick with me, because this is the number that eventually made me leave.
Preply's commission starts at 33%. One third of every pound, euro, or dollar you earn goes to the platform from your very first lesson. It only drops to 18% after you've completed 200 hours on the platform.
200 hours. At a typical pace of 40 hours a month, that's five months of teaching before your rate improves. If you're teaching part-time — 15-20 hours a month — you're looking at almost a year at 33%.
Let's put real numbers to it. Say you charge $30/hour and teach 40 hours a month:
- Gross: $1,200
- At 33% commission: you take home $804
- At 18% commission: you take home $984
That's $180/month you're leaving on the table — and that's after you've put in the grind to reach 200 hours. Meanwhile, if you were running your own practice at the same rate with zero platform fee? $1,200. Every month.
Now, I understand Preply isn't a charity. They provide the traffic, the infrastructure, the payment handling. Fair. But the commission doesn't drop below 18%, no matter how long you stay, no matter how many thousands of hours you log. The ceiling is permanent.
I once calculated what I'd earned over three years versus what I'd have earned keeping that commission. I'm not going to share the number because it made me genuinely sad and I'm supposed to be over it.
The Control Problem
Commission is the obvious thing. The control problem is subtler and, in some ways, more corrosive.
Your schedule isn't entirely yours. Preply's algorithm rewards availability. Show up in the slots students want, or watch your profile sink in search rankings. I found myself teaching at hours that suited the platform's demand patterns more than my actual life. When I tried to narrow my availability, bookings dropped. It felt less like running a business and more like managing a shift.
Your pricing is under constant pressure. Students can filter by price. Preply suggests rates. The platform's structure nudges you toward being cheaper, because cheaper tutors get more bookings and more bookings means Preply earns more commission. You can hold your rate — I did, stubbornly — but you'll feel the drag.
The review system is asymmetric. Students can leave reviews. You can't really respond meaningfully, and one bad review from a difficult student carries disproportionate weight. I once got a one-star review from a student who was upset that I'd politely suggested his intermediate grammar was, perhaps, not quite advanced. He wanted C1 lessons. He had not achieved C1. This is not a story that ended well for my rating.
And you cannot contact students outside Preply. Which seems fair — they introduced you — but it also means that every relationship you build is mediated through a platform you don't own. More on why this matters in a moment.
The Dependency Problem
This one crept up on me slowly.
By year two, I had a core group of students I genuinely liked teaching. We'd built rapport. They were the kind of long-term students who made teaching feel worthwhile — people who were actually progressing, actually appreciating the work.
And then I realised: none of those relationships belonged to me.
If Preply changed their algorithm — my search ranking could drop. If they updated their terms — I'd have to comply or leave. If they suspended my account (for any reason, correctly or not) — I'd lose access to every student I'd spent years building trust with. I wouldn't even have their email addresses.
This isn't hypothetical paranoia. Tutors get deactivated. Accounts get flagged. Platforms pivot. The rules that existed when you joined are not the rules that will exist in five years. And every hour you spend building your reputation inside Preply is an hour you're building on rented land.
I'd been treating it like my business. It wasn't. It was a job, with better branding.
What Made Me Finally Leave
I'll be honest: there wasn't one dramatic moment. It was more of a slow accumulation of smaller moments, until the weight of them was impossible to ignore.
There was the month Preply quietly adjusted how they calculated my commission tier — the details were in an email I'd apparently "agreed to" by continuing to use the platform. There was the student who wanted to continue lessons but couldn't figure out why we had to stay on Preply (the answer: platform rules, which neither of us had actually chosen). There was the realisation, sometime around lesson 400, that I was working harder than ever and earning the same as I had at lesson 100, because my commission tier had plateaued and I couldn't raise my rate without tanking my bookings.
The final nudge was simpler than all of that. I did the maths on what I could earn if I kept everything I made. And then I looked at what it would actually take to get there.
It turned out to be less than I'd assumed.
What I Needed to Make the Jump
Before I left, I made a list of everything Preply was doing for me — because I didn't want to go independent and immediately discover I'd romanticised it.
Here's what I actually needed:
A booking system. Students need to see my availability and book slots without emailing back and forth like it's 2003. This was my biggest practical concern.
Payment processing. Invoicing, taking card payments, handling the occasional refund. Not complicated, but genuinely necessary.
Student records. Who's at what level, what we covered last week, when their next lesson is. Spreadsheets can do this. Spreadsheets can also turn into a chaos document that you secretly dread opening.
A way to find students. This was the part that scared me most. Preply solved demand; I'd have to solve it myself.
The honest answer is that items one through three are now completely solved by tools built specifically for independent tutors. I use Tuton (tuton.io), which handles booking, payments, and student management in one place — and costs $29/month, which I earn back in roughly one lesson. That's the practical infrastructure side: sorted.
Student acquisition is the real work of going independent. It takes longer. It requires some upfront effort — whether that's social media, referrals, or word of mouth. But the students you find yourself are yours. You have their contact details. You build a real relationship. And you keep 100% of what they pay you.
Was It Worth Leaving?
Yes. With some honest caveats.
My income went up — meaningfully, not just theoretically. When you stop giving 18-33% of everything to a platform, the maths shift in your favour quickly. My first three months independent, my revenue was lower than on Preply (fewer students). By month six, I'd matched it. By month nine, I'd exceeded it.
The stress is different now. On Preply, there was always this ambient anxiety about rankings, about the algorithm, about whether my profile was optimised. That's gone. I have a different kind of stress — the "I need to keep marketing myself" kind — but it's stress I'm actually in control of. It responds to effort. That matters.
My relationships with students are better. Partly because I chose them (you get to be a bit more selective when you're not dependent on platform bookings), and partly because there's no intermediary. We just... talk. Book lessons. I send an invoice. They pay it. No friction, no platform in the middle reminding everyone that it exists.
The thing I underestimated: the psychological shift. On Preply, I was, in some deep sense, an employee. Even though I was technically a freelancer, the platform made the important decisions. Going independent meant accepting that I was running a business — genuinely running it, with all the responsibility that entails. That's uncomfortable for about two months, and then it becomes the thing you can't imagine giving up.
The honest caveat: if you're brand new to tutoring and have no existing students, Preply still makes sense as a starting point. Use it to build your hours, get reviews, develop your teaching style. Just don't mistake it for your destination.
If You're Thinking About Making the Move
Start with the infrastructure. The reason most tutors stay on platforms longer than they should isn't loyalty — it's that going independent feels administratively overwhelming. It's really not, anymore.
Tuton (tuton.io) is what I use: scheduling, payments, student records, all in one place. The Solo plan is $29/month. Set it up before you leave, migrate your existing students, and by the time you're off the platform you'll already know how it works.
Then focus on keeping the students you have. Every student currently booked through Preply is a potential direct booking. Handle the transition professionally — let them know you're moving to your own practice, make it easy for them, give them a reason to follow you.
The rest — finding new students — is genuinely just marketing, which sounds daunting but mostly means: tell people what you do, be findable, and be good enough that people recommend you. None of that is Preply's job anyway.
Three years on Preply taught me how to teach. Going independent taught me how to run a business. I needed both. But if I'd known earlier how achievable the second part was, I'd have started it sooner.
Ready to make the jump? Tuton handles the practical side so you can focus on the teaching part. Start free — you've got nothing to lose, and roughly 18-33% to gain.