Preply
👤 Kirill Bigai (CEO), Dmytro Voloshyn, Serge Lukianov (Bigai 'knew' English but couldn't read a US menu. He + 2 Kyiv co-founders out-engineered rivals on tutor-student matching.)🌐 site𝕏LinkedIn
A two-sided marketplace matching 800k learners to 100k independent language tutors, taking a cut of every lesson.
Will it work? · our read
Lock-in by design. A declining commission plus a 100%-first-lesson rule punish tutors for leaving and reward those who stay. Preply builds loyalty into its pricing, not just its product.
01How the money moves
Learner picks a tutor and pays per lesson
→
Tutor teaches 1-on-1 over video
→
Preply takes 18-33% - and 100% of lesson one
02The numbers
about $50MEstimate2021 rev, +50%/yr (est)
2021
the sentence on the page
Highlight Unhighlight Revenue Note: Preply ’s revenue estimated using publicly available data. Preply made $50M in 2021, up 39% from last year. Its revenue grew 4X in 2020, driven both by the shift…
EBITDA-positive for over a year; about $299M raised total. Sacra
about $50M rev (2021, est), about 50%/yr growth; EBITDA-positive; $1.2B valuation Jan 2026.
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You have the verdict. Members get the work behind it.
- The CENTS scorecard — where it's strong, where it's soft
- The founder's key move, and the counter-move
- How it could die — the evidence, and how sure we are
- The case against our own call
- A 🚀 launchpad prompt — the case, as a plan for your business
We rate our own confidence — and argue against ourselves. Nobody else in this category does.
Sources always public on all 560 cases · cancel anytime · 14-day refund
See a full teardown, free → ImportYetiSourcesSources last checked 25 August 2026
Sacra - Preply revenue & financialsTechCrunch - Preply hits $1.2B unicorn (Jan 2026)Preply Help Center - commission modelPreply - About usWikipedia - Preply
Revenue is an estimate - Preply does not publish it. Sacra pegs 2021 revenue at about $50M growing about 50%/yr; the $1.2B valuation, $150M Series D (Jan 2026), 100k+ tutors, and EBITDA-positive-for-over-a-year are first-party/press facts. GMV is undisclosed and is not revenue. The commission percentages are documented in Preply's own help center (fact). Tutor resentment and the disintermediation/AI risks are [our read]. We never score you.