italki

Who this is wrong for

• Absolute beginners with no self-study habit — lessons are expensive silence otherwise
• People who cannot commit to a scheduled time each week
• Anyone uncomfortable speaking badly in front of a stranger, at least at first

What this costs in hours

italki delivers 1-on-1 tutor, which our model prices at 1.05× the FSI baseline at A1 rising to 1.05× at C1. Below is what reaching C2 — the level this product supports — takes at an hour a day, five days a week.

What you actually pay

About $60 a month, which is $720 over a year and $1440 over two — and two years is an ordinary length for a language project rather than a pessimistic one.

At this rate you pass the price of a bought course in about 4 months. Whether that matters depends entirely on whether you are still studying then, and most people are not — which is the honest case for renting rather than buying on a first attempt.

Worth disclosing: renewals pay us nothing on this programme. We are paid once, whether you stay a month or three years, so nothing about our incentive rewards you sticking with it.

What else does this

Every option we track that delivers the same thing. We have not run side-by-side trials of any of them; what follows compares documented attributes and the same matching logic the calculator uses.

• Preply — about $40/month at a normal cadence, up to C2. Learners who want human lessons on a tight budget and are willing to try a few tutors.
• Anki — Free, up to C2. Anyone who needs to retain vocabulary — free, and better at spaced repetition than every paid app. Earns us nothing.
• Language Reactor — Free, up to C1. Intermediate learners who want native input from video with dual subtitles, at no cost. Earns us nothing.

What we do not know

• We have not used this in a controlled trial. No star rating appears on this site because we have no basis for one. What is above is arithmetic on published attributes.
• Prices change. Ours was checked on 2026-08-07 and is recorded with that date precisely so you can distrust it once it ages. Confirm on their site before paying.
• The method coefficients are estimates. FSI publishes hours for its own classes and nothing else, so the 1.05× and 1.05× above are ours. How they were set.