Last Updated date 18th March, 2025
Inspired by the success of platforms like Preply, many entrepreneurs are planning to develop their own similar language-learning platforms. Moreover, the growth of the online language learning industry is forecasted to reach USD 41.63 billion by 2030, making it the right time for entrepreneurs to enter this lucrative business space. However, in the journey to build and launch a successful language-learning platform, the first challenge is to define the cost to build a platform like Preply.
This blog post will be helpful for those who want to know about building a language learning platform like Preply and get an idea of the overall development costs of building an online learning platform. But before proceeding with cost, let’s know a bit more about Preply.
Preply is a leading online language learning platform that connects language experts with learners worldwide. It was initially co-founded by three Ukrainian entrepreneurs: Kirill Bigai, Dmytro Voloshyn, and Serge Lukyanov. The company now operates in 180 countries teaching more than 50 languages to 800,000+ students that are assisted by over 32,000+ tutors. This platform offers one-on-one online lessons, personalized lesson plans, group lessons, corporate language training, and more.
The platform earned revenue of $50 Million in 2022, its revenue grew approximately 4X from the previous year. Currently, Preply’s estimated annual revenue is $1.6 Billion. The total valuation of Preply stands at $395 Million in 2022.
The business model of Preply revolves around connecting students and tutors for their language learning requirements. The platform matches students with the tutors as per their preference. Here is the workflow of an online language learning platform like Preply.

Preply connects tutors with learners from all across the globe and provides an engaging virtual learning environment. The students purchase sessions on the platform offered by the tutors, and Preply deducts a commission fee from the tutor’s fee. This is how Preply works.
Learners can gain access to native language speakers and start their language learning journey with just five easy steps.
Step 1: Find Your Tutor
After registration and filling out a questionnaire, learners gain access to a list of tutors who match their goals, learning style, schedule, and preferences. Learners can select the tutors who fit their needs and schedule.
Step 2: Assess The Tutors
Learners can watch their introductory videos and explore verified reviews to select the right fit for their needs. Preply even allows learners to switch tutors anytime.
Step 3: Book Session
Later, they can book a 25 to 50-minute trial lesson and connect with the tutor in a one-on-one session. Learners can discuss their goals with tutors and explore how they would like to proceed with the learning journey.
Step 4: Subscribe
Learners subscribe to a flexible lesson plan by making payment online.
Step 5: Start Learning
Begin your language learning journey successfully, get the needed help, practice, build confidence, and progress week by week.
Tutors can register themselves and start earning with these four steps on Preply.
Step 1: Sign Up On The Platform
Interested tutors can register on the platform and create their tutor profile.
Step 2: Get Profile Approved
The Preply team assesses tutors’ profiles and approves them in 5 business days.
Step 3: Start Earning
Once the profile is approved, tutors can teach students from all across the world and start earning.
Step 4: Receive Revenue
After the students start booking and confirming sessions offered by the tutors, tutors start receiving revenue in the Preply wallet after a commission is deducted.
Now that we have discussed the workflow of Preply in depth, next, let’s look at how Preply makes money.
Preply incorporates diverse range of monetization channels to generate revenue. Let’s break it down.
1. Commission: Although it is free for tutors to enroll on the platform and host their profile, Preply starts charging a commission fee when tutors start to get bookings from students.
| S.No | Completed Hours | Commission Rate |
| 1. | 0-20 Hours | 33% |
| 2. | 21 – 50 Hours | 28% |
| 3. | 51 – 200 Hours | 25% |
| 4. | 201 – 400 Hours | 22% |
| 5. | 400+ Hours | 18% |
2. Subscriptions: Preply offers subscription plans for learners, enabling them to purchase a bundle of lessons they would like to take each week. Learners can purchase sessions for 28 days to keep learning without interruptions. This acts as a recurring source of revenue for Preply.
3. Tutor Profile Advertising: Preply allows tutors to promote their profiles across various channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, and more, for free. However, business owners can charge a fee and monetize the traffic on their platform by promoting aligned businesses or services.
4. Preply Enterprise: Businesses and organizations pay Preply for corporate training solutions for customized programs tailored to their unique needs.
After gaining an understanding of the revenue generation channels of Preply, you must know about the most important aspect of launching an online language learning platform i.e features. Features can make or break the success of your online tutoring platform. Let’s more about it in the section below.
Here are important features for a language learning platform like Preply for each user: Learners, Tutors, and Admin.
Learners
Tutors
Admin
Further, let’s know more about the essential features of an online learning platform like Preply in detail.
One of the reasons behind the success of Preply is its comprehensive suite of features that offer a tremendous user experience on the platform. Following are some of the popular features offered by Preply.
These are some of the popular features that make Preply stand out among its competitors. To achieve the same success and provide user satisfaction as Preply, you must consider incorporating these features on your platform.
Next, let’s cover another most important aspect for launching a language learning platform like Preply, which is the technology stack.
The tech stack plays a crucial role in ensuring your platform is robust and resilient. At the same time, it also determines the cost of your language learning platform. The choice of technologies, programming languages, and frameworks directly affects the development cost.
To maintain the system’s performance, scalability, and security, advanced tech stack implementation is recommended. However, implementing advanced technologies would require a skilled development team, eventually contributing to more investment.
Let’s know more about it.
It is crucial to choose the right technology stack for your online tutoring platform. Here is the recommended tech stack that you can consider.
For developing intuitive interfaces and creating an advanced tutoring platform, technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can be leveraged.
A robust backend is essential for user data management, sessions, and payment handling. PHP frameworks are reliable for a secure online tutoring environment.
A robust database system is essential for handling real-time data requests and synchronization on an online tutoring platform. Choose a reliable database that best aligns with your needs. MongoDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Firebase can manage complex queries and unstructured data.
Cloud services and hosting data are essential for the scalability and reliability of your online tutoring platform. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud are some of the popular cloud services that offer storage, hosting, and security.
To ensure students securely complete payments and enroll in tutoring sessions, payment tools such as Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, Payfast, and Paystack are extremely crucial.
To facilitate seamless and real-time interactions between your tutors and learners, you need a reliable technology. Lessonspace, AtomChat, Zoom, Twilio, or WebRTC, are some of the best video streaming tools for online tutoring platforms.
Additional Necessary Tools & APIs to scale your online tutoring platform:
The cost of building an online language learning platform like Preply depends on several factors and aspects. In this section, let’s touch upon those parameters in detail so that you can make a smart and informed decision.

No wonder UX/UI design is essential when determining the cost of building an online language learning platform. The complexity of your platform’s design is the most obvious factor affecting cost. A simple, minimal graphics and functionality would cost less as compared to a complex, visually appealing design with interactive features. Therefore, the complexity desired in the design directly correlates with the cost, time, and expertise required to build a platform.
The number of features you want to incorporate on your platform directly correlates to the cost of building an online language learning platform. The more advanced features you want to integrate on your platform the more time and resources will be needed to develop them, consequently, increasing the overall cost of development.
The required server space for hosting significantly impacts the cost of building and launching an online language learning platform. Numerous factors such as maintenance costs, security measures, upgrades, downtime, and more contribute to the overall cost of server management. Beyond this, you also have to bear miscellaneous costs associated with procuring, installing, and ongoing maintenance of the server space.
Domain registration and web hosting are also some of the most important expenses that you have to bear while launching an online language learning platform. The overall cost of obtaining a domain name is decided based on numerous factors such as the popularity, availability, length, and type, of the domain name. Depending on these factors the cost of the domain name may vary and you have to bear the expenses as per your needs.
Prioritizing the security of user’s data on your platform is very important to build trust and credibility. To protect your data and maintain the platform’s integrity in the long run you can obtain GDPR-compliance and must abide by other data protection laws as per your region. Implementing all these security measures may leads to additional investment. Moreover, additional expenses may be incurred for securing an SSL certificate for data encryption.
Content management is a necessary expense if you want to reach out to your target audience effectively. Curating, developing, and managing content involves costs related to content creation. For creating content including website content, webpage content, blogs, articles, and social media content, you need to invest in professional writing and pay the content curation team.
To ensure that your platform is successfully built and launched, you need to hire a team of experts who will take the hassle for you. Experienced web developers and designers would implement your ideas and assist in launching your platform. The cost of platform development directly depends on the number of resources you need to hire to implement your business idea.
The geographical location of the development team also affects the overall cost of the platform. In general, platform development cost will be higher in the regions with higher labor costs, such as North America, as compared to regions with lower labor costs, such as Asia. Countries like India, China, the Philippines, and more generally have the lowest hourly rates for web developers and designers.
To enhance the functionality of your online platform and offer a seamless user experience you may need to integrate third-party APIs. Essential APIs for an eLearning platform include payment gateways, video conferencing systems, analytical tools, and more. These integrations come at an additional cost and require developmental efforts. You also have to incur costs related to licensing, customization, and more.
Another important aspect on which the cost to build a platform like Preply depends is the development approach you choose to build your platform. There are primarily two development methods: custom development, and readymade software.
This development approach involves building the language learning platform from scratch. A team of web developers and designers will implement your business idea and build the online tutoring platform. High financial investment is required for custom development. Moreover, the time of development may vary from a few months to years.
Cost of Custom Development: The approximate cost of custom development may vary from $25,000 to $500,000, depending on the enterprise size, feature requirements, and business needs.
It is an white label language learning software that comes pre-built with all the essential features and functionalities. The software enables business owners to launch and build their online tutoring platform seamlessly. Unlike custom development, this option is extremely cost-effective and enables business owners to launch their platform in a quick time (within a few weeks).
Cost of Readymade Software: The cost of readymade software starts from $2,000 and reaches up to $25,000 or more, depending on your customization needs and feature requirements.
The development cost is the primary investment that business owners have to bear initially; however, the total cost to build a platform like Preply depends on many other things as well. In the next section, we break down the cost covering various components to build an online tutoring platform like Preply.
When planning to launch a language learning platform like Preply, it is important to understand how your budget will be distributed across key areas. The total cost depends on the scale of your platform (MVP, mid-scale, or enterprise-grade), required features, infrastructure, and third-party services like video conferencing APIs, and post-launch needs such as maintenance, updates, and marketing.
| Cost Component | MVP Version (USD) | Mid-Scale Platform (USD) | Enterprise-Grade Solution (USD+) | Cost Includes |
| Development Cost (Core Platform, depending on the development approach selected) | $15,000 – $40,000 | $40,000 – $120,000 | $120,000 – $500,000+ | Includes UX/UI, Backend, and basic marketplace features. |
| Hosting & Server Costs | $2,000 – $6,000/year | $6,000 – $15,000/year | $15,000 – $50,000+/year | Depends on cloud services such as AWS, GCP, & more, including expected traffic. |
| Video Streaming & Conferencing API | $3,000 – $10,000 | $10,000 – $30,000 | $30,000 – $100,000+ | For live lessons and high-quality video communication. |
| Other API Integrations | $2,000 – $8,000 | $8,000 – $20,000 | $20,000 – $50,000+ | For Payment gateways, multi-currency, messaging, push notifications, analytics, and more. |
| Maintenance & Updates (Annual) | $3,000 – $8,000 | $8,000 – $25,000 | $25,000 – $100,000+ | Bug fixes, security patches, platform enhancements. |
| Marketing & User Acquisition | $5,000 – $15,000 | $15,000 – $50,000 | $50,000 – $200,000+ | SEO, PPC, Social media, Content marketing. |
| Total Estimated Cost | Approximately $30,000 – $85,000 | Approximately $100,000 – $260,000 | Approximately $260,000 – $1M+ | Scales with feature complexity and further business goals. |
Note: The costs mentioned above are mere estimations; the quoted values can increase or decrease depending on several factors.
The costs mentioned above may be a high investment for some of the aspiring business owners. However, building a language learning platform doesn’t always require a massive upfront investment. With the right approach, businesses can significantly reduce development costs while still building a high-quality, scalable online tutoring platform.
If you want to optimize your expenses and want to go for a cost-effective option, ready-made software seems like an ideal choice. Ready-made software like Yo!Coach is the best alternative to custom development, allowing you to launch your online language learning platform without hassle.
However, before considering the suitability of the ready-made software solution for your business goals, you must understand how to choose the right software solution that aligns with your business needs. Let’s read about that in the next section.
Embarking on a new entrepreneurial journey can be exciting but intimidating at the same time. Choosing the right readymade software is no easy task. It may get overwhelming to choose one among many readymade software options out there and feel uncertain about what to finalize to get the job done.
Therefore, to help you out, we have compiled a list of things that you should consider while finalizing the readymade software to build a platform like Preply.
Consider the above-mentioned aspects carefully and choose the best software as per your business goals and requirements. Get a clear and in-depth understanding of the software before making a decision and then determine if it is the right fit for your business.
One such popular ready-made software that stands tall on all the criteria mentioned above is Yo!Coach. Let’s know more about it.
Yo!Coach offers industry-specific features and can cater to the needs of online learning businesses effectively. It is built on proven technology, hence, eliminating the chances of any error or issues after the launch. Ready-made software solutions like Yo!Coach offers a plethora of benefits as compared to custom development.
Yo!Coach is an ideal choice for entrepreneurs looking to enter the industry in less time and cost-effectively. It is a cutting-edge software that has already helped several entrepreneurs establish their online language learning platforms across the world.
Moreover, Yo!Coach comes pre-integrated with several essential APIs that are required for seamlessly running an online language-learning business. Yo!Coach’s comprehensive suite of features enables an intuitive experience for users on your platform.
Other benefits offered by this software include:
Explore these case studies to know more about the capabilities of Yo!Coach, and how they support their clients in their entrepreneurial journey.
Considering the tremendous growth potential of the online language learning industry, investing in a well-designed and feature-rich online language learning platform can prove to be highly lucrative and can lead to significant returns in the long run. By considering the information mentioned in this blog you must have got a fair idea about the cost to build a platforms like Preply. Remember, not to feel overwhelmed by the costs and expenses mentioned in this blog as these are just the estimated costs and may vary depending on your business needs, and goals.
Ans: Steps to build a website like Preply:
Ans : Well, the time to build an online language learning platform depends on several factors such as development approach, design complexities, feature integration, customizations, and more. However, custom development takes more time(months or years) to complete, whereas, ready-made software allows you to launch your platform within a few days.
Ans: Preply primarily generates revenue by charging a commission fee from the tutor’s earnings. The commission charge varies from 18% to 33% depending on the number of hours tutors have taught on the platform.
However, other revenue streams can be leveraged to earn more profits including–
Ans : Yo!Coach has been in the industry for a long time and has helped numerous entrepreneurs launch their online learning platforms in 15+niches. Yo!Coach with its capabilities can cater to diverse business models and can turn any elearning business idea into a successful business venture.
To name a few this software can launch platforms offering individual/group learning, course-based learning, live courses, enterprise eLearning and more. Also, this software can support diverse business models in different niches such as language learning, consultation, mentoring, tutoring, and more.
Ans : Yo!Coach offers numerous industry-specific features and functionalities that can cater to all requirements of the online language learning business. Other capabilities of Yo!Coach include:
Ans : Yo!Coach has served global clientele around the world and helped numerous entrepreneurs successfully kick-start their online language learning businesses. Some of the popular online language learning platforms build by Yo!Coach include Language Explorer, Convrld, Weyakyak, That English Accent, Amalingua, Language Center of Congo, Langoli, Valingo, and many others.
Ans : Some of the best alternatives to Preply are Cambly, Verbling, italki, and more. Certainly, Yo!Coach can build all these platforms with its cutting-edge capabilities.
Ans : There are numerous features and specifications in Yo!Coach that can help you in staying ahead of the competition in the industry. Let’s have a look at them.
Ans : Surely, Yo!Coach offers customizations and helps you transform your business idea into reality. Our team understands your requirements and further implements those customizations without causing you any hassle.
Ans : Yes, Yo!Coach offers a very intuitive and user-friendly interfaces for learners. This feature-rich software provides a personalized learning environment to learners and provides convenience. By leveraging mulit-device accessibility, the learners can access the platform on any device of their choice and enjoy an engaging learning experience and easily book, schedule, and attend their sessions through the platform.
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