The loft
One room per language, one per question
Live teaching, taken one question at a time: which platform actually teaches your language, what a lesson costs on each of them, where group classes beat a private teacher, and where the free option is the right answer. No number appears here without a date beside it and the currency we were shown it in.
Group classes or a private tutor: which problem are you solving?
One is cheaper per hour, the other gives you all the talking. The deciding question is not price — it is whether you fail to show up or fail to speak.
Sep 24, 2026
What online language tutors cost, and why no one can tell you
Seven languages, two marketplaces, one day of reading — and the discovery that a platform's published average is the average of the ten teachers it showed us.
Sep 24, 2026
Lingoda, described honestly — including the prices we could not read
How Lingoda's group classes and credit bundles are built, in its own words, and why this page carries no Lingoda price at all.
Sep 24, 2026
Online ASL classes: the platforms do not sell them
Three sellers, three dead ends. For American Sign Language the honest answer is a free course and a local class, and we earn nothing from either.
Sep 24, 2026
Online French classes: two kinds of seller, one language
French is sold both by marketplaces and by a class provider. The difference matters more than the brand — and one of them would not show us a price.
Sep 24, 2026
Online German classes: where the filter and the average disagree
German has the widest gap we found between what a platform's filter offers and what its own summary claims — and one marketplace publishes no German price at all.
Sep 24, 2026
Online Italian classes: the page that gives two averages
Preply's Italian page published two averages fifteen dollars apart on the same day. Here is where each came from, and how to read past both.
Sep 24, 2026
Online Japanese classes: buy the half-hour, not the hour
Japanese is where short frequent lessons earn their keep — and where the scheduled group-class route does not exist at all.
Sep 24, 2026
Online Korean classes: the cheapest bracket, and the missing option
Korean had the lowest published tutor range of the seven languages we priced — and no scheduled group classes at all.
Sep 24, 2026
Preply vs italki: the same business, two stories about price
Two tutor marketplaces, read on the same day. Neither has one price, and neither agrees with itself — here is what each actually published.
Sep 24, 2026
Spanish conversation classes online: the lesson with no syllabus
What a conversation class is, when you are ready for one, and why two half-hours a week beats an hour — on the platforms' own published figures.
Sep 24, 2026