Preply's Global Tutor Arbitrage

Preply’s core advantage is that it turns differences in local wage levels into a better deal for both sides of the lesson. A student in a high cost market can book a tutor living in the target language’s home market, often at a lower rate than a domestic tutor, while that tutor still earns more than they likely would from local students. That makes price, authenticity, and access reinforce each other instead of trading off.

• The product is built around this cross border match. Students filter by language, price, tutor location, learning context, and schedule, then take lessons inside Preply Classroom. That matters because a US learner can specifically look for, for example, a Spanish tutor in Colombia or Spain rather than just any local bilingual teacher.
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• The money model preserves the arbitrage. Tutors set their own rates, Preply takes 100% of the first trial lesson, then 18% to 33% on later lessons. On other tutoring marketplaces like Wyzant, tutors also set rates but students typically face US market pricing, with average tutoring prices often around $35 to $100 per hour.
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• This is also where Preply differs from Cambly. Cambly pays tutors a fixed $10.20 per hour for adults and $12 for kids, so the platform captures the pricing decision. Preply leaves pricing to the tutor, which is better suited to a global market where tutor quality, native fluency, and local cost of living vary widely.
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Going forward, the strongest marketplaces in language learning will look less like local tutoring directories and more like global labor markets with trust, scheduling, and payments built in. Preply is positioned to keep widening that gap as it adds more tutors, more language pairs, and more software that helps tutors run a business on top of teaching.