Short answer
No. Preply's help centre states that "the commission for every trial lesson with a new student is 100%". The tutor teaches the lesson and the platform keeps the entire amount the student paid. This applies to each new student separately, so a tutor who takes five trials in a month is unpaid for all five. By comparison TutorBoost charges 50% on a trial, so the tutor keeps 50% of it.
No. This is stated plainly in Preply's own help centre: "The commission for every trial lesson with a new student is 100%."
What that means in practice
A trial lesson is the introductory lesson a prospective student books to find out whether you suit them. On Preply the student pays for it, you teach it, and the platform keeps all of it.
It applies per new student, not once per tutor. Every new person who books a trial with you is another unpaid lesson.
Why it costs more than it looks
The obvious cost is the lesson fee. The less obvious one is that trials are where your unpaid time concentrates:
- Conversion is never 100%. Some trials do not become students. Those hours produce nothing at all.
- Trials carry the most preparation. A first lesson with a stranger takes more planning than the fifth lesson with a regular, not less - you are assessing level, finding out what they want, and building a plan.
- It is front-loaded onto new tutors. A tutor building a roster from zero teaches proportionally far more trials than an established one, so the unpaid share of their work is highest exactly when their income is lowest.
The argument for it
Platforms defend the rule on the grounds that they spent the marketing money to put that student in front of you, and the trial is what converts them. That is a real cost and a real service, and if the trial converts into a long-running student, the tutor does eventually come out ahead.
The disagreement is about who absorbs the risk when it does not convert. Under a 100% trial commission, the tutor absorbs all of it.
What tutors do about it
Tutors who work on platforms with a full-commission trial generally use one of four tactics, and they vary a lot in how well they work.
Make the trial shorter. A 30-minute trial rather than 60 halves the unpaid time. This is the most common adjustment and the most reliable one.
Make the trial do more work. If the hour is unpaid regardless, spend it on a structured assessment that produces something the student can see: a level estimate, a written plan, a list of what to fix first. Conversion rises when the student leaves with a document rather than an impression.
Filter before the trial. A short message exchange about goals and availability, before a slot is booked, removes the trials that were never going to convert. This is where the largest saving usually is.
Price the trial into the ongoing rate. Some tutors raise their standard rate slightly to cover the unpaid first lessons. It works arithmetically, and it makes you more expensive to the students who did convert.
None of these fix the underlying structure, and it is worth knowing that the structure varies between platforms rather than being a fact of the industry.
The alternative
TutorBoost's rule is that a trial is discounted but never free and never unpaid. It is enforced in the booking code rather than stated as a policy: a trial priced at zero is rejected at booking time on the server, so it cannot be set even by mistake.
A trial is charged at 50%, so the tutor keeps 50% of it. That is a higher commission than an ordinary lesson on either plan, and it is worth stating plainly rather than burying: a trial costs a tutor more here than an ordinary lesson does. It costs them the entire lesson elsewhere.
It is also capped at one per student-tutor pair, so the discounted price cannot quietly become your standard rate for anyone willing to rebook it.
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