Preply Review: What Happened When I Tried to Get My Spanish Back

I thought I still spoke Spanish. Then I landed in Costa Rica…

As I climbed into the airport taxi, I could manage a cheerful “Hola, ¿cómo estás?” But when our driver spoke very little English and I actually needed to say something back, my Spanish simply didn’t show up.

Later that night, at the small B&B near the airport in San José where we stopped for our first night, the restaurant staff spoke almost exclusively Spanish. I could point, gesture and get by, of course, but I kept thinking: surely some of the Spanish I’d learned over the years is still in there somewhere?

That really should have been the easy part. I studied abroad in Lima, Peru for six months back in 2012, living in Spanish every day, ordering food, asking for directions, arguing with taxi drivers, all of it.

That was fourteen years ago now and I’ve been back to Spanish-speaking countries since, including Mexico, so it’s not like the language disappeared completely. But standing there in Costa Rica last year, on the Spanish-speaking leg of our around-the-world honeymoon, my brain kept reaching for words that just weren’t there anymore.

I’m not new to languages generally. German is actually my first language, not English. I grew up speaking German at home, at school and in everyday life for the first two decades of my life. After many years of living in Australia, my English is now close enough to native that most people wouldn’t pick that it’s my second language in conversation.

So I know what it takes to properly learn a language. Spanish was different. It went in deep once, in Lima and then sat unused for over a decade. Which meant what I needed wasn’t a beginner course, it was a way to knock the rust off something that used to be much more fluent.

That’s what made me interested in trying Preply. Rather than starting from scratch with an app or textbook, I wanted to see whether a few lessons with a native speaker could actually bring some of that Spanish back. My goal was simple: to get comfortable ordering food, having basic conversations and getting around in Spanish before my next trip catches me out again.

What Preply Actually Is

Preply is a marketplace of independent language tutors who teach one-on-one over video call. It isn’t a course with a fixed syllabus you work through on your own and it isn’t an app that drills you with flashcards! You’re booking a real person, choosing them yourself and building a schedule to learn with them.

Sure, if you’re starting a language from nothing, a structured app can get you through the basics well enough. But if you already have a language sitting somewhere in your memory and just need it working again, what actually helps is talking to a real person who can hear exactly where the gaps are and work with you to improve and that’s the entire premise Preply is built on.

Setting It Up: The Test, the Tutors and the Trial

Booking in was genuinely easy, which I wasn’t expecting from a platform with this many tutors on it. A few things stood out about how it’s all set up:

The placement test

Preply has you take a short test before you start and it’s meant to slot you into roughly the right level so your first lesson isn’t a guessing game. Mine came back higher than I would have rated myself, which I think comes down to the gap between what I actually know and what I can produce on the spot without warming up, yep, fourteen years of not speaking daily does that.

Choosing a tutor

Every tutor has a short video introducing themselves, which sounds like a small thing until you’re scrolling through profiles trying to work out who you’ll actually get along with. This is so much better than to read someone’s written bio!

You can also see how many students a tutor has taught and read their reviews and message them before booking anything, so there’s no committing blind. I specifically filtered for tutors who also spoke English, because I was under no illusion I’d understand instructions delivered entirely in Spanish at my level.

Dialect choice

One feature I didn’t expect but really liked: you can filter by dialect, not just “Spanish” as one broad category but Latin American Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Colombian Spanish (and so many more!) are all separate options. Given where I actually travel, being able to match a tutor’s dialect to the region I was heading to felt a lot more useful than generic Spanish practice.

I deliberately looked for native speakers from Peru, because I’d lived there and still have a connection to the country, Colombia, because I’d really love to travel there and Mexico, because it’s one of my favourite countries. Rather than choosing just one tutor, I decided to try a few different ones and see who I clicked with.

I really enjoyed my lessons with Daniela from Colombia. She had such a worldly perspective and so many interests in common with me, from travelling and discovering new cultures to surfing. The lessons felt conversational yet challenging and I could understand her accent perfectly.

The trial lesson

Trials come in 25-minute or 50-minute lengths, which is enough time to work out whether you click with a tutor before committing to anything ongoing. I definitely prefer the longer lesson, as it gives you more time to get into a proper conversation.

But I liked having the shorter option too. It makes it easy to try someone out without committing to a full hour if you’re not sure they’ll be the right fit. And you do click with some more than others, that’s just true of any one-on-one teaching relationship and it’s exactly why the trial exists rather than being a box-ticking exercise.

What a Lesson Is Actually Like

Lessons happen in Preply’s own virtual classroom, one-on-one, with everything built around your test result and whatever you’ve told your tutor you’re trying to get out of it. I didn’t feel intimidated to speak, even with how rusty I was going in. The whole format is built so you’re not performing for anyone, you’re just talking to one person who already knows your level.

One thing that surprised me was how much vocabulary started coming back when my tutors used images to prompt me. Sometimes the word was right there on the tip of my tongue and I just needed the smallest prompt to get it out. It was a good reminder that the Spanish was probably still in there somewhere, just very rusty.

Pronunciation was another story. I’ve never been able to properly roll my R and one of my tutors picked up on it straight away. She gave me a specific exercise to practise at home, while another turned pronunciation practice into a fun little game I could keep doing between lessons.

I liked that each tutor approached the lessons quite differently, but they all had the same balance: the lessons felt fun and unintimidating, while still being challenging enough to make me work.

What struck me most, across a small number of lessons, is how much had genuinely stayed in there. Language is like anything else. It needs practicing, not just knowing and a handful of sessions on a proper weekly rhythm did more to loosen it up than I expected.

What Happens After the Lesson

One thing I liked about the process is that it doesn’t just stop when the lesson ends. Afterwards, you get the chance to rate how the lesson went, with options to mark it as great, okay or bad and you can also report an issue if something went wrong or the lesson didn’t happen as planned.

You also get a recap of the lesson through the Preply platform, so you have something to refer back to rather than simply closing the video call and moving on with your day. I found that useful because language learning is really about repetition and having a record of what you covered gives you a starting point for your next lesson or something to practise between sessions.

Finding the Right Time(zone)

There is one practical trade-off worth mentioning. Sitting in Australia, the tutors I was most interested in, particularly those based in Peru and Colombia, meant working around a real timezone difference to find a lesson time that suited both of us.

That’s not really a downside of Preply, but more the reality of choosing a specific native speaker based on their dialect and regional knowledge rather than simply picking whoever is easiest to book. With tutors based all over the world, you could just as easily choose someone whose schedule overlaps more comfortably with Australia, especially if convenience is a bigger priority for you.

For me, the timezone juggling was worth it because I specifically wanted that connection to the Spanish I’d learned and the countries I’d travelled to. But it’s something to keep in mind when you start filtering for a particular native speaker or dialect. Sometimes the best fit on paper isn’t necessarily the easiest fit for your calendar.

What Preply Costs

The tutors on Preply set their own rates and they range from only a few dollars an hour up to US$50 or more for a 50-minute lesson, with most people landing somewhere around the US$20-40 mark.

Two things worth knowing before you book:

• After your trial lesson, all lessons are bought in a package with a specific tutor with a minimum of four lessons on a rolling 28-day cycle. It renews automatically every 28 days unless you pause or cancel it yourself.
• Cancelling a lesson inside 12 hours of its start time means you lose it with no refund, no reschedule. Cancel with more notice than that and it goes back into your balance to use with the same tutor or a different one.

Neither is unreasonable once you know it’s there, but it’s a little detail that catches people out if they’re not told in advance.

Is Preply Legit?

Yes, I’ve tried it and it’s 100% legit. Plus, the independent numbers back that up: Preply sits at 4.4 out of 5 on Trustpilot across more than 25,000 reviews. The praise that comes up again and again is tutor quality and how responsive their support team is when something goes wrong.

The complaints that come up most are the occasional tutor no-show and inconsistent formal qualifications between tutors, which is really just the trade-off of an open marketplace where you pick your own teacher rather than being assigned one by an institution. It matches my own experience: the platform itself is easy to navigate and the quality of what you get depends heavily on which tutor you land with, which is exactly why the video intros and trial lessons matter as much as they do.

Preply vs the Alternatives

I won’t pretend I tested every platform on the market, but it’s worth knowing where Preply sits: it’s broadly the same model as competitors like italki, a marketplace of independent tutors you choose and pay per lesson, rather than a fixed curriculum delivered by the company itself.

Which means the decision that actually matters isn’t really “which platform” so much as “which tutor” and that’s true whichever of these you pick. The video introductions and the trial lesson are what do the real work here, more than the platform brand sitting behind them.

Who Is Preply Actually Good For?

For me, Preply worked because I already had Spanish sitting somewhere in my memory. I didn’t need to learn the language from scratch. I needed to make it functional again before my next trip, with a bit of structure, a loose weekly schedule and a tutor who spoke a dialect connected to the places I actually wanted to travel.

But What If You’re Starting From Scratch?

I don’t think you need to already speak a language to get value from it.

I actually want to try a Thai lesson before my next trip to Thailand. At the moment, I know exactly one thing in Thai: sawasdee ka, hello. That will be a completely different experience for me because I’ll be starting from essentially zero. I’ll be curious to see how useful it feels to have a real person guiding me through a language I don’t have any existing foundation in.

That said, I do think speaking with another person becomes especially valuable once you have even a very basic understanding of the language. There’s a difference between recognising a word in an app and actually having to find it in your brain when someone is sitting across from you waiting for an answer.

Why I Still Prefer Speaking to a Real Person

I recently had my husband try Preply too. He only speaks English and is learning German, my mother tongue, so he booked a German lesson. He really enjoyed it and it made me realise why I’ve always found language apps somewhat limiting.

He’s been using Duolingo and, of course, gets plenty of immersion when we travel to Germany and spend time with my family. Apps are great for building vocabulary and getting you to practise regularly, but the gamified format can only take you so far. They don’t really give you the opportunity to work on pronunciation with someone who can immediately correct you or experience what a real conversation actually sounds like.

And that, for me, is where Preply adds something different. You’re not just collecting words. You’re hearing how someone actually speaks, trying to respond in real time, getting corrected when you need it and slowly becoming more comfortable using the language out loud.

Whether you’re trying to revive a language you haven’t used in years, like I was, or starting from scratch, I think there’s real value in having an actual person on the other side of the conversation. And the research backs this up: in a 2026 study, 9x as many learners found Preply more motivating than a self-learning language app, while 92% said the experience felt more personalised. For me, having a tutor I genuinely connected with made practising feel natural, enjoyable and so much less intimidating.

Quick FAQ

How much does Preply cost? Tutors set their own rates, generally from a few dollars an hour up to US$50+ for a 50-minute lesson, with most students paying around US$20-40/hour. After the trial lesson, you buy lessons in a package with a specific tutor rather than paying a flat platform fee.

How does Preply work? You take a short placement test, browse tutor profiles (including video introductions and student reviews), book a trial lesson and then continue on a recurring 28-day lesson package with whichever tutor you click with.

Is Preply free? No. Even the trial lesson is paid, though you can choose a 25-minute slot that’s priced lower than the ongoing lesson with the same tutor. There’s no free tier.

How do you cancel a Preply subscription? You can pause once per 28-day cycle for up to 20 days before your next renewal or cancel outright with at least one day’s notice before your renewal date.

This post was created in partnership with Preply. All opinions and experiences shared are my own.