Preply

Independent Sources

Shown for context — not merged with USAComplaints' own numbers.

Contacts

• Official website: https://preply.com/
• Customer/refund support: [email protected]
• Legal notices: [email protected]

Locations

Paying for or teaching on Preply? What to check

Preply, Inc. is not itself the tutor you booked a lesson with — Preply's own Subscription Services Terms state that Preply "is a technology services provider that does not provide online tutoring services or function as a language learning school," acting instead as "an on-demand intermediary connecting Students and Tutors." Most students use Preply through a subscription plan ("Subscribe to a Tutor"): a set number of lessons refilled every 28 days with a chosen tutor, billed on a recurring "Subscription Fee." Preply's terms state plainly: "your subscription will automatically renew for additional periods of the same duration, unless you cancel your subscription at least one day before the end of the applicable billing cycle."

• To cancel before the next charge: Preply's Help Center instructions (cancellation is web-browser only, even for app users) are: go to Settings > Subscriptions on your dashboard, click the three dots next to the tutor's subscription, select "Cancel Subscription," choose a reason, and confirm. Preply's own article states "There is no cancellation fee and no lock-in." Cancel at least 1 day before your billing date — Preply's Help Center states plainly, "Cancelling on the billing date itself does not stop the charge": cancelling only stops future renewals, not a charge already due that day. If your renewal is less than 24 hours away, Preply's Help Center says to "contact our support team" via the in-app "?" chat icon on the homepage, or Profile > Help > Customer support on the app.
• Refunds are limited and not automatic, and the two official Preply documents cover different things. Preply's Refund and Payment Policy states, for the lesson packages and top-ups it directly covers, that to the fullest extent permitted by law "payments are non-refundable, and we do not provide refunds for any partial subscription periods or unused lessons" — but for subscriptions specifically, that same Refund and Payment Policy says: "The refund policy for subscriptions is outlined in the Preply Subscription Services Term[s]." It is Preply's Subscription Services Terms, not the Refund and Payment Policy, that actually set subscription refund eligibility: a monthly plan can be refunded only if no lessons were used and the charge was made less than 28 days ago; a yearly plan cancelled within its 14-day trial qualifies for a full refund if no lessons were used, or a partial refund of the unused-lesson value (processing fee excluded) if some trial lessons were used; a yearly plan cancelled after the trial period does not qualify for a refund at all. Preply's Help Center directs students to a chat for the request itself: "Refunds are not available directly from your account settings. To request one, go to the Preply homepage and open a chat via the ? icon, or go to Profile > Help > Customer support on the app." Preply's Refund and Payment Policy instead instructs: "You are required to send your refund request to [email protected]." Either way, a refund request must be made within 28 days of the charge, and "each request is reviewed individually" — cancelling a subscription "does not automatically issue a refund." Approved refunds go to the original payment method and can take up to 30 days to appear on a bank statement; where a refund is due, Preply may instead offer it as Preply account credit, but "accepting Preply credit is optional" and a refund to the original payment method "remains available... throughout."
• Charged after you thought you'd cancelled? First check, in Settings > Subscriptions, the billing date and status of the specific tutor's subscription you cancelled (each tutor you subscribe to has its own separate subscription and billing date), and compare it against any cancellation-confirmation email Preply sent you. Preply's Help Center is explicit that "cancelling on the billing date itself does not stop the charge" for that cycle — only future renewals stop. Keep your subscription and cancellation confirmation emails and any support chat transcript as proof, then contact Preply support via the "?" chat icon (or Profile > Help > Customer support in the app) to ask about a refund under the narrow exceptions above. Separately from Preply's own policies, a US cardholder who believes they were billed in error also generally has the right under the Fair Credit Billing Act to dispute the charge in writing with their card issuer within 60 days of the first bill showing it, per the FTC's own consumer guidance on disputing credit card charges.
• If a trial lesson didn't happen or didn't work out, Preply's policy allows a free replacement trial with a different tutor (up to two tutor changes without extra charge) or a refund of that specific payment.
• Disputes, per Preply's Terms of Service, must first go through "informal negotiations": "Either party may initiate informal dispute resolution by sending a written notice of the Dispute to the other party. You shall send your notice to Preply at [email protected]." The parties then have "a period of sixty (60) days from receipt of the written notice" to resolve the dispute in good faith; if it remains unresolved after sixty (60) days, either party may proceed to individual, binding arbitration under American Arbitration Association Commercial Arbitration Rules before a single arbitrator. Preply's terms include a class-action waiver, though a batch-arbitration process applies if 25 or more materially similar disputes are filed at once.
• Tutors should check Preply's declining commission scale (33% for new tutors, down to 18% after 400+ completed hours, and 100% on a student's first trial lesson) against their own hourly rate before setting prices. Earnings post to a Preply balance only after a lesson is confirmed (automatically, about 15 minutes after a lesson conducted in Preply's own video classroom, or 72 hours after a lesson held elsewhere) — Preply's Help Center advises that if a lesson has been "awaiting confirmation" for more than 72 hours, "contact support with the lesson's date and time, and we'll check what's holding it." Before withdrawing any earnings, tutors must complete identity verification: "Starting from October 5, 2020, all Preply tutors will need to verify their identity prior to withdrawing their earnings" (a live photo of a passport or other government-issued ID). If a withdrawal instead shows as "pending" with an error, Preply's Help Center explains this is "the financial security check from our withdrawal system to prevent fraudulent activities": the withdrawal option becomes temporarily unavailable while Preply's financial team reviews the case, and Preply says it "will follow up with you within 1-3 business days to provide updates and possible solutions" once the problem is reported to support. If Preply suspends or terminates a tutor's account for breach of its Terms, the Terms of Service state the tutor receives "no refund or compensation for any unused lessons," and that "Preply is entitled to withhold any funds remaining on your account as liquidated damages" — a separate clause of the same Terms says the parties "acknowledge and agree that the funds that may be withheld... shall constitute liquidated damages and not penalties," citing the difficulty of estimating actual loss. As independent contractors, tutors are "solely responsible for determining applicable tax reporting requirements and obligations" and for paying income tax in their own country of residence — Preply does not withhold or file taxes on a tutor's behalf. Each withdrawal method carries its own fee: PayPal charges "a transaction fee of 2% (up to $20)"; Skrill "charges a 1% transaction fee"; Wise "charges an average transaction fee of 0.6% for cross-currency withdrawals"; and Bank transfer (powered by Wise) and Payoneer charge a fixed fee plus, for Bank transfer, a currency-conversion fee that varies by country.
• Keep records of your subscription confirmation emails, cancellation confirmation, and any support chat transcripts in case a dispute arises over billing dates or refund eligibility.
• EU consumers: under EU Directive 2011/83/EU (the Consumer Rights Directive), Article 9, consumers generally have a statutory 14-day right to withdraw from a distance service contract without giving a reason, subject to the exceptions in Article 16 of that Directive — a right that exists independently of, and is not overridden by, Preply's own contractual refund terms.

Company background

Preply, Inc. is registered in Delaware (registration number 5184438, EIN 46-0693826), with its principal office at 1309 Beacon Street, Suite 300, Brookline, Massachusetts, per Preply's own Legal Notice. Preply's About page states the company was "founded in the US by Kirill Bigai and Dmytro Voloshyn, with the early team and product built in Kyiv," launching in 2012 as, in the company's own words, "What began as a single landing page has grown into the world's largest language learning marketplace." Preply's Legal Notice separately names "Kyrylo Bigay" as Managing Director (a transliteration variant of the same co-founder's name).

According to Preply's own "milestones" timeline, the company raised "over $150M across Series A, B, and C from Owl Ventures, Horizon Capital, Hoxton Ventures, Full In Partners, Diligent Capital Partners, and others," opened hubs in Barcelona and New York, and reached roughly 40,000 active tutors by around 2019–2023; by 2024–2025 the company says it had grown a hub in London and passed 100,000 tutors worldwide. Preply's own page states that "In January 2026, Preply becomes a unicorn, reaching a $1.2B valuation following a $150M Series D round led by WestCap." These figures and the funding history are Preply's own claims about itself and have not been independently verified here.

Preply's own "by the numbers" statements (self-reported, not independently verified) claim "100K tutors from 180 countries, teaching 90 languages and 120+ subjects" and "1000+ companies" using its Preply Business B2B offering.

Court cases naming Preply

A CourtListener search for federal cases captioned with "Preply," run September 29, 2026 and re-checked directly against the live dockets' newest entries, found two matters, both resolved quickly by settlement and dismissal rather than by a court ruling on the merits:

• Weekes v. Preply, Inc. (S.D.N.Y., No. 1:22-cv-00986), filed February 3, 2022, was a putative class action under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the New York City Human Rights Law brought by a legally blind plaintiff. The complaint alleged preply.com had accessibility problems for screen-reader users, including that "the screen reader reads the word 'link' without stating what the link is for" and "skips over certain text on the page." The docket's newest entries confirm a Notice of Settlement on May 31, 2022, an order dismissing the action without costs and without prejudice on June 1, 2022, and a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal on July 13, 2022 — the case ended by individual settlement without a class being certified.

Other litigation (not a consumer matter): Coretek Licensing LLC v. Preply, Inc. (D. Del., No. 1:21-cv-01657), a November 2021 patent-infringement complaint filed the same day against Preply and unrelated co-defendants in associated cases, was stayed for a noticed settlement in March 2022 and voluntarily dismissed, case closed, on April 8, 2022. It did not concern consumers and is not treated as a court case on this page.

No other class actions, MDLs, or additional lawsuits against Preply were identified in the federal court search performed.

Complaint and review record: USAComplaints, Trustpilot, and BBB, reported separately

USAComplaints found 0 posts about Preply in its own database as of September 29, 2026.

Preply's Trustpilot profile (claimed since September 2016; the page itself displays a "Paid Trustpilot subscription" label) showed 4.4 out of 5 from 25,474 reviews under the category "Language Course Provider" when checked live on September 29, 2026. Trustpilot's own AI-generated review summary on the page (labelled by Trustpilot as AI-generated, and not independently verified here) describes reviewers as having "overwhelmingly had a great experience," based on 6,371 reviews it considered. Individual reviews vary: a review posted September 27, 2026 described a paying student's regular tutor being suspended from the platform after roughly 60 completed lessons, with Preply support declining to explain the reason — presented here as one reviewer's account, not verified independently.

Preply, Inc. also has a live BBB business profile for its Brookline, MA headquarters (BBB file opened July 1, 2019), checked September 29, 2026. BBB states "Preply, Inc. is NOT a BBB Accredited Business" and assigns it a D- rating, giving as its stated reason: "Failure to respond to 58 complaint(s) filed against business." BBB's complaints page separately reports 68 total complaints in the last 3 years and 23 complaints closed in the last 12 months. BBB's own filters on that page break the 68 complaints down by status as 58 unanswered, 5 resolved, and 5 answered, and by type as Product Issues (41), Billing Issues (14), Service or Repair Issues (5), Customer Service Issues (4), Sales and Advertising Issues (2), Delivery Issues (1), and Order Issues (1); the published complaint texts include at least one billing/account-security dispute over an unauthorized charge that Preply says it reimbursed. Separately from its complaints, BBB's customer-reviews page (opt-in ratings, not the same population as its complaints) shows an average of 1.38 out of 5 stars from 37 customer reviews. These are BBB's own figures, snapshotted on the date checked; USAComplaints does not adopt BBB's rating, its stated reason, or its category breakdown as its own assessment.

Because each source (USAComplaints, Trustpilot, and BBB) covers a different population and methodology — and because BBB's complaint-driven rating and its separately-collected customer reviews are themselves two different measures — these figures are reported separately rather than combined into a single score.

Is Preply Legitimate?

Preply, Inc. is a real, operating company registered in Delaware (registration number 5184438, EIN 46-0693826), with a headquarters office at 1309 Beacon Street, Suite 300, Brookline, Massachusetts, per its own published Legal Notice. It publishes detailed, dated Terms of Service, Subscription Services Terms, and a Refund and Payment Policy that spell out billing, auto-renewal, cancellation, and refund rules, and it operates a public Help Center documenting its tutor commission structure and payout process. A 2022 federal lawsuit alleging its website was inaccessible to screen-reader users was resolved by individual settlement within about four months, without a court finding of liability; no regulator enforcement action against Preply was identified in the sources checked (searches of the FTC's case database and a Massachusetts state search did not surface a case, though these checks were not exhaustive). Preply has a live BBB business profile (not a BBB Accredited Business, D- rating, citing "Failure to respond to 58 complaint(s) filed against business," and 68 total complaints in the last 3 years per BBB, checked September 29, 2026) — a real, identifiable BBB record rather than an absence of one, though BBB's rating reflects BBB's own criteria (chiefly complaint responsiveness), not a finding of fraud. This page assigns Preply no rating, score, or "legitimate/scam" label of its own; readers can weigh the terms, court record, and review data above for themselves.

Court & Public Records

Frequently Asked Questions