Liguastic vs Preply (2026)

Take one learner, roughly B1, target band 7, test in eight weeks, working six days a week. She reads Arabic fluently, writes English slowly, and her spoken English falls apart when she is nervous. Here is her week in each product, written from what each one publishes.

With Preply:

1. Sunday she reads through tutor profiles, filters by price and by evening availability, and books a paid trial lesson with a tutor who lists IELTS as a specialism. The trial is 25 or 50 minutes, her choice at booking (how to book a trial lesson).
2. Monday the trial happens. There is a short level check, a conversation about her goals, and a plan the tutor suggests. She likes him. She subscribes to the minimum plan, four lessons every 28 days at his rate (how a Preply subscription works).
3. Tuesday she writes a Task 2 essay. There is nowhere to hand it in until Thursday's lesson, so it sits in a document for two days.
4. Thursday the lesson happens and it is the best hour of her week. He reads the essay, argues with her introduction, makes her say the argument out loud, and corrects her pronunciation of three words while she does it. She writes four things down. Afterwards Lesson Insights gives her an AI summary of the vocabulary and grammar from the lesson (Lesson Insights).
5. Friday she has one lesson left this cycle and a second essay she has not written. She can buy more hours, or wait.

With Liguastic:

1. Sunday she takes the placement. It returns a CEFR level per skill, names the skills it could not grade, and includes two recorded speaking turns scored from the audio.
2. Monday the plan is waiting, written from that placement and from band 7 in eight weeks, with one step open at a time and a note on whether the plan lands before the test date.
3. Tuesday she writes the Task 2 essay at midnight and hands it in at midnight. It comes back with up to six corrections quoting her own sentences, a score on each of four criteria in half bands, and one next focus.
4. Wednesday she records a Part 2 cue card and gets pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary and grammar read from the audio, with the phrases that cost her quoted back. She rewrites the essay and the rewrite comes back compared with the first draft.
5. Thursday the questions she missed on Monday are in front of her again, and will come back at 3, 7 and 21 days. She has done no listening work beyond the clips on the listening page, because her plan contains no listening step, and nobody has spoken to her all week.

Preply gives her one very good hour and a person who noticed things. Liguastic gives her five marked attempts and a schedule that does not care whether she was tired.

These are differences you can check on a published page, not opinions about which is nicer.

1. Whether marking needs an appointment

Preply: the marking happens in a lesson, and a lesson happens in a slot. Its subscription charges every 28 days for a fixed number of lessons with one tutor, and unscheduled lessons expire at the end of the cycle.

Liguastic: an essay handed in at any hour comes back scored on four criteria with up to six corrections quoting your words; a recording comes back with four bands read from the audio.

The proof: Preply's own description of a subscription and what happens when you cancel it, both checked 6 September 2026.

2. Whether there is a published rubric

Preply: no page on its help centre sets out a marking scale its tutors apply. Its IELTS page describes exam tasks and immediate feedback on grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and exam technique, which is a description of good teaching rather than of a scale.

Liguastic: four criteria on every essay, half bands on IELTS and a CEFR level on General English, and four bands on every recording, applied the same way to every attempt.

The proof: Preply's IELTS tutors page beside how scoring works, which sets out every source of every number on Liguastic and where the method is weaker than it looks.

3. What automated marking each one has

Preply: Lesson Insights, which its help centre describes as AI-generated lesson summaries with personalised feedback on vocabulary, grammar and speaking, produced by transcribing the lesson audio and analysing it; and Scenario Practice, short AI speaking tasks that its help centre calls a limited beta for a small group of learners with an active subscription.

Liguastic: the marking is the product. Essays scored criterion by criterion, recordings scored from the audio, a reading mock scored off a fixed ladder, and a placement that grades each skill separately.

The proof: Lesson Insights and Scenario Practice, both checked 6 September 2026.

4. What a month costs and what it contains

Preply: a rate per lesson set by each tutor, with a minimum of four lessons every 28 days, plus a student Processing Fee at checkout. Preply's price filter on its English tutors page runs from $3 to $50+ a lesson.

Liguastic: one monthly price per course, unlimited marking inside it, 15% less paid yearly, a free placement check with no card, a 14-day refund on an unused first payment, and cancelling in two clicks.

The proof: Preply's English tutors page, its refund and payment policy beside Liguastic's pricing and refund terms.

5. Interface language

Preply: a full Arabic version of the site, and tutors who can be filtered by the languages they speak, so the explanation itself can be in Arabic.

Liguastic: the interface in Arabic and the material in English on purpose.

The proof: Preply's Arabic site, checked 6 September 2026. Both products meet an Arabic reader properly; the difference is what happens to the work you produce afterwards.

For a lot of people Preply is simply the right answer, and this section is not a formality. Preply is better if:

• You need a person. A tutor answers the follow-up question, hears the hesitation you did not notice, and can tell in ten seconds whether you understood or were being polite. Nothing automatic does that, and Liguastic does not pretend to.
• You need to be held to a schedule. Someone expecting you at seven on Tuesday beats every reminder ever built. Preply's subscription is a standing appointment with one tutor every 28 days (how a Preply subscription works, checked 6 September 2026).
• Listening is your weak section. Liguastic measures listening at placement and practises it from a bank of approved clips at your level, but it teaches no lesson, puts no listening step in the plan, and the bank is finite; a Preply tutor can spend a whole hour on it, every week, at whatever speed you need. Its IELTS page describes timed listening tasks in lessons (IELTS tutors on Preply).
• You want an explanation in Arabic from a person. Preply lets you filter tutors by the languages they speak, so you can book someone who will explain the third conditional in Arabic and then drill it in English.
• You want a language other than English, or a subject other than a language. Preply's homepage lists “120+ Subjects taught”; Liguastic teaches English and nothing else (preply.com).
• You want to spend very little or a great deal. Preply's price filter runs from $3 to $50+ a lesson, so both ends of the market exist there in a way a single monthly subscription cannot cover (Preply's English tutors page).

Preply also publishes what learners think of it in public: its App Store listing shows 4.8 from 44K ratings and its Google Play listing 4.7 from 62.6K reviews with over 5M downloads (App Store, Google Play, both checked 6 September 2026). Liguastic publishes no rating, review count or testimonial of its own, so there is nothing to set beside those numbers, and we would rather say that than invent one.

Before the verdict, the limits, and on this comparison they are the important part.

• There is no live lesson and no conversation with a person. Our AI writes the coaching and marks the essays, and our speech assessment scores the recordings. Nobody will hear you hesitate, argue with your introduction, or ask what you meant. Talking practice without a person is a different trade-off again, and our comparison with ChatGPT covers that one.
• Listening is practised from a fixed bank, not taught. The placement gives you a listening level; after that you are dealt clips a person approved, at your level, you may play each as often as you like, your answers are marked on our side and the script comes afterwards. The progress page tracks your accuracy across the clips you answer. There is no listening lesson and no listening step in the plan, it does not move your CEFR level, and because the clips are approved rather than generated the bank can run out. A Preply tutor can spend a whole hour on it.
• Nothing here is an official score. Every band is an estimate from our own grader, there is nowhere to submit one, and no examining body has reviewed a single number. See how scoring works.
• Nobody is expecting you. The plan opens one step at a time, but no appointment makes you turn up, and for some learners that is decisive.
• TOEFL is not open to new learners, and four add-ons are marked coming soon and cannot be bought: Advanced Grammar and Vocabulary, Advanced Writing, Advanced Reading and Advanced Listening.
• English only. One language, one interface language beside it, and no other subject.

Everything the site says it never does is on the about page, at the same size as the offer.

These two are not really competing for the same hour of your day, and the honest recommendation for many readers is both.

Preply is the better product for contact. It gives you a person you chose, at a rate you chose, in a slot you both agreed, and its own additions around that person are sensible: a paid trial lesson with each tutor, a free replacement tutor if the first is wrong, Lesson Insights summarising each lesson from the audio, and Scenario Practice in limited beta for speaking between lessons. Its terms are clear: no cancellation fee, access to the end of the 28-day cycle, and refunds requested within 28 days of the charge where no lesson from that cycle has been used (cancelling a Preply subscription, how refunds work at Preply, both checked 6 September 2026). What it does not publish is a marking scale, so the standard applied to your essay is the standard of the tutor you happened to book, and the cost of a second opinion is another hour.

Liguastic is the better product for marking volume and consistency. Every essay is scored on the same four criteria with up to six corrections quoting your own words; every recording is scored on the same four bands from the audio; the reading mock is a single passage, up to ten questions and fifteen minutes on a fixed ratio ladder that runs 2.5 to 9 and is shared by every track, which makes it a reading-accuracy estimate rather than an IELTS score; Exam Day runs the reading mock and a timed essay under the clock with no pausing, for one combined estimate. There is no full four-section mock. The plan comes from a placement, one step at a time, and misses come back at 1, 3, 7 and 21 days. General English from 15.00 JOD a month, IELTS at 80.00 JOD a month with every finished add-on included, 15% less paid yearly; a free placement check with no card and a 14-day refund on an unused first payment, cancelling in two clicks, access to the end of the period you paid for. See IELTS preparation and pricing.

The bottom line: Choose Preply if the thing you are short of is a person: conversation, listening, a follow-up answered on the spot, and an appointment you will keep. Choose Liguastic if the thing you are short of is marking: many attempts, scored the same way every time, at any hour, for one monthly price.

Nothing transfers between the two, and nothing needs to. They record different things: Preply records the lessons you booked with a tutor, Liguastic records the level it measured and the work it marked. Liguastic imports nothing from Preply, and it does not need to: the first thing it does is measure you.

Step 1: Take the placement. It returns a CEFR level per skill and names the skills it could not grade rather than leaving them blank. It includes two recorded speaking turns, scored from the audio.

Step 2: Read the plan it wrote. One step is open at a time. On IELTS it is written with your target band and any test date you gave, and it says whether it finishes before, on or after that date. See how it works.

Step 3: Hand in a first essay and a first recording. That is the fastest way to see whether the marking is worth a monthly price to you, and it is also the fastest way to see its limits.

Step 4: Keep a tutor for what a person does better. A sensible split for someone sitting IELTS in two months is one live lesson a week for speaking and listening, and daily marked writing in between. If you take that route, Preply's minimum plan of four lessons every 28 days is designed for exactly it.

Step 5: If you leave either one, read the terms first. On Preply, unscheduled lessons expire at the end of the cycle, so schedule what you have paid for before you cancel. On Liguastic, cancelling is two clicks in Settings and access runs to the end of the period you paid for.

The switch, in either direction, costs a placement and a first essay, not a data export.

Every claim about Preply on this page was read from Preply's own published pages on 6 September 2026 and is linked below. Live counts on marketplace pages move daily, so figures are given as they stood on that day. Nothing here is a rating we made up: Liguastic publishes no ratings, review counts or testimonials of its own, and quotes no learner.

Preply sources

• preply.com: the headline “Learn with a tutor who turns lessons into real progress”, “100,000+ Experienced tutors”, “120+ Subjects taught”, “4.8 on the App Store”, “300,000+ 5-star tutor reviews”, and “Try another tutor for free if you're not satisfied.”
• Preply: online English tutors: the price filter “$3 – $50+”, 45,691 English teachers listed, an average rating of 4.94 out of 5 from 465,671 customers, and average hourly rates of $27 for native speakers and $25 for non-native speakers.
• Preply: online IELTS tutors: rates from $3 an hour with an average of $17 an hour, an average rating of 4.93 out of 5, and the description of an IELTS lesson: finding where you need help, a two-minute speaking task, essay planning, timed listening, reading and writing tasks, and immediate feedback on grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and exam technique.
• English tutors for kids: more than fourteen thousand tutors listed for children, lessons built on games, stories and visual aids, and tutors filterable by the child's first language.
• Preply in Arabic: the Arabic version of the site, with navigation and buttons in Arabic and a switcher offering more than twenty site languages.
• Teach on Preply: “No specific certification or teaching experience is required!” and “Choose your hourly rate and change it anytime.”
• Help centre: how to book a trial lesson (the trial is paid, 25 or 50 minutes, one per tutor, with a short level check and a suggested plan); how a Preply subscription works (“Every 28 days, you are automatically charged for a fixed number of lessons with them”, a minimum of four lessons a cycle, a lesson meaning 50 minutes, tutors setting their own rates, a rate rise needing your acceptance, and pausing once per cycle for up to 20 days); cancellation policy for students (a lesson cancelled more than 12 hours before it starts returns to your balance, and one cancelled inside 12 hours does not); what happens when you cancel your subscription (no cancellation fee, access to the end of the cycle, unscheduled lessons expiring at the end of it); how refunds work at Preply (a refund where you cancel and no lesson from that billing cycle has been used, requested within 28 days of the charge, reviewed individually, not automatic); Lesson Insights (AI-generated lesson summaries with feedback on vocabulary, grammar and speaking, produced by transcribing lesson audio); Scenario Practice (short AI-powered speaking tasks, eight ready-made scenarios, assignable as homework, described as a limited beta); what is a Professional Tutor (the badge for verified teaching qualifications); evaluation of tutors (only students who have paid for a first lesson may leave feedback; verified tutors carry a blue shield). All checked 6 September 2026.
• Preply refund and payment policy (updated 16 August 2026): Preply “is only a platform and in no event shall be a party to any contracts between Tutors and Students”; a student Processing Fee applied to each purchase and displayed at checkout; payments processed in US dollars, euros or pounds with other currencies indicative only; refund requests by email, decided within 30 calendar days.
• Store listings, checked 6 September 2026: App Store (4.8, 44K ratings) and Google Play (4.7, 62.6K reviews, 5M+ downloads). No review is quoted on this page, because no individual review was verified on the listing on the day of writing.

Liguastic sources

• How scoring works: what is measured, what is not, and where the method is weaker than it looks
• IELTS preparation and General English: what each course contains
• Pricing and refunds and cancellation
• About: the six things this site never does

Method

1. Read Preply's own product, policy and help-centre pages, not third-party summaries or affiliate reviews.
2. Quote only what is printed on the page linked beside the quote, on the day given.
3. Treat marketplace counts as a snapshot, and say the day they were taken.
4. Check every claim about Liguastic against the product itself, not only against its own marketing pages.
5. Re-check prices and policies on every refresh, and bump dateModified.

If anything here is wrong or out of date, write to hello@liguastic.com and we will check it and correct the page.

IELTS® and TOEFL® are registered trademarks of their respective owners. Liguastic is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.