Guide
What French lessons cost, and what changes the price
Prices for French lessons range enormously, and almost nobody explains why. The spread is not mostly about quality: it is about format, about where the teacher lives, and about who takes the commission.
In short
- Format explains most of the spread: a group hour and a one-to-one hour are not the same product.
- Platforms take a commission, often a large one. The same teacher is cheaper directly, or better paid for the same price.
- A cheap lesson you do not book again is more expensive than a good one you keep for a year.
- What you are buying is corrected speaking time. Anything that reduces it makes the hour more expensive, whatever the price.
Why the same hour costs three times more or less
Four things move the price, and only one of them is the teacher's ability.
- Format. A group of ten and a private lesson cannot cost the same, because the teacher's hour is divided by ten in one case and not in the other.
- Where the teacher lives. An hour is priced against local costs of living, which is why online teaching produces such wide ranges for identical work.
- The intermediary. Platforms, schools and agencies take a share, sometimes a third or more. It is paid by you, the student, or absorbed by the teacher — usually both.
- Specialisation. Exam preparation and professional French cost more everywhere, because they demand preparation outside the lesson.
What you are actually buying
Not knowledge. Grammar explanations are free, abundant and often excellent. What an hour buys is corrected speaking time: minutes in which you produce French and somebody who knows the language tells you what was wrong with it, immediately.
That makes the useful comparison easy. Divide the price by the minutes you actually spoke and got corrected. A cheap group hour where you spoke for five minutes can cost more per useful minute than a private hour at three times the price. It is the only arithmetic that tells you anything.
How to tell a fair price from an expensive one
- Is there a free first conversation? A teacher confident in their work will spend twenty minutes finding out whether they can help you, and say so if they cannot.
- Is there a plan, or just hours? Selling hours is easy. Saying how many, at what pace, and towards what, is the actual work.
- Are you tied in? Long compulsory packages protect the teacher, not you. Discounts for volume are fine; obligations are not.
- Do you leave the lesson with something to do? An hour that produces nothing for the week between lessons is an hour sold, not taught.
Spending less without learning less
The cheapest strategy that actually works is to buy only what cannot be done alone. Vocabulary, listening and reading are free and abundant — do them every day, on your own. Pay for the part that needs another person: speaking, correction, and a plan aimed at your deadline.
In practice: one or two lessons a week rather than four, plus twenty minutes a day alone. That combination costs half as much as intensive lessons and produces more, because it puts the gaps where the memory needs them.
My own prices are on this site
They are written on the pricing section, with the discounts, and the first conversation is free. Publishing them is deliberate: a teacher who will not say what an hour costs before a sales conversation is telling you something about the sales conversation.
Ask what the hour contains
Before comparing two prices, ask each teacher the same question: how many minutes will I speak, what will I take away, and what is the plan. The answers separate people faster than the rates do — and they are free to obtain.
See also: which exam · rates · all the guides