Speak Greek vs Preply: Course or Private Tutor?
Preply connects you with private Greek tutors by the hour. Speak Greek is a structured self-paced course. Here is how to choose, and why many people use both.
These two aren’t really the same kind of thing, which is exactly why people compare them. Preply is a marketplace for private tutors. Speak Greek is a structured course you work through yourself. Both can get you speaking Greek. They ask very different things of your time, your budget, and your self-discipline.
Here’s how to tell which fits, written by people who think a good tutor is worth their weight in gold and still built a course.
The short version
Choose Preply if you want live, one-to-one time with a Greek speaker, you have a flexible budget, and you value someone holding you accountable in real time.
Choose Speak Greek if you want a clear path through the language at your own pace, a predictable cost, and the freedom to learn at 6am or midnight without booking anyone.
Many learners do both: the course for structure, a tutor for conversation practice. That combination is hard to beat.
What Preply is, exactly
Preply lists thousands of tutors across many languages, Greek included. You filter by price, availability, and reviews, then book lessons by the hour over video. Greek tutors on Preply run from about $8 to $100 an hour, with the average sitting around $27, and beginner-focused tutors averaging near $31. You pay per lesson, and Preply takes a commission from the tutor.
The appeal is obvious. A real person, responding to you, correcting you on the spot, talking about whatever you like. For building the confidence to actually speak, nothing quite matches it.
Where a tutor marketplace gets tricky
The honest downsides are mostly about consistency and cost.
Quality varies. A marketplace is only as good as the tutor you land on. Some are trained teachers with a clear method. Others are friendly native speakers who’ll happily chat but won’t structure your learning. Finding the right one takes a few paid trials.
There’s no built-in curriculum. Unless your tutor brings their own, lessons can drift. You can spend a lot of hours, and money, without a clear sense of what comes next.
It adds up. At an average $27 an hour, two lessons a week is around $216 a month. That buys real progress, but it’s a different commitment from a one-off course price.
How Speak Greek compares
We give you the structure a marketplace doesn’t guarantee, at a fraction of the running cost.
- A planned route. Units in a deliberate order, from the alphabet to holding a conversation. The syllabus shows the whole thing.
- Practice in all four skills. Reading, writing, listening, and speaking from the first lesson, with AI feedback on what you produce. It won’t chat back like a human, but it will catch the ending you got wrong and explain why.
- Predictable pricing, any hour you like. No booking, no per-lesson maths, no time zones. Two tiers: the full course, or the full course plus AI feedback on your writing and speaking.
| Preply | Speak Greek | |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Live 1-to-1 tutoring | Self-paced structured course |
| Greek availability | Many tutors | Full Greek course |
| Typical cost | ~$27/hour average | Affordable, monthly subscription |
| Structure | Depends on the tutor | Built-in curriculum |
| Feedback | Live, human | AI feedback, instant |
| Best for | Conversation, accountability | Foundations, flexibility |
The honest recommendation: use both
A tutor is brilliant at the thing a course can’t do, which is unscripted conversation with a human who reacts to you. A course is brilliant at the thing tutoring rarely delivers cheaply, which is a steady, structured foundation.
The setup we’d suggest: build your grammar, vocabulary, and reading through Speak Greek, then spend an occasional hour with a Preply tutor putting it to use out loud. You’ll get more from each tutor hour because you’ll arrive with something to say, and you won’t burn paid lessons on material a course covers for less.
If you’d rather a tutor with no subscription and pay-as-you-go pricing, italki works in a similar way and is worth a look. You can also see every option side by side.
Want to lay the foundation first? Try Unit 1 + 2 for free.