Teach English from Europe in 2026: Get Paid in EUR

#TL;DR

If you teach English online from Europe, you probably get paid in US dollars. Preply, italki, and Cambly all run their tutor payouts through USD rails, which means every euro that lands in your account first passed through an FX conversion. Depending on your payout method and currency pair, that costs you roughly 3-8% per transfer. Kadensy is built differently. We pay tutors in EUR via Stripe Connect Express, directly into a European bank account, with no minimum threshold and no second-leg currency hop. This article walks through the math, the platform mechanics, and an honest side-by-side of what a French tutor’s monthly P&L looks like on Preply versus Kadensy.

#The hidden cost of teaching English on US-based platforms

If you’ve taught on Preply, italki, or Cambly from a European address, you’ve felt this quietly. According to Wise’s currency conversion benchmark, the all-in cost of a USD-to-EUR transfer through traditional bank rails sits between 3% and 6% once the exchange-rate markup and incoming-wire fee are stacked. PayPal and Payoneer, the two payout rails most US-based tutoring platforms use, sit at the higher end of that range.

The platforms themselves are transparent about the rail. Preply’s tutor commission is disclosed at 18-33% of lesson revenue (Preply Tutor Center). italki publishes its standard commission at 15% (italki Help Center). Cambly’s tutor terms describe a per-minute rate paid out in USD (Cambly Tutor Information). What none of those disclosures show is the second invisible margin: every USD payout converts to EUR at some bank or fintech, and that’s where another 3-8% can disappear.

The platform’s commission is the bill you see. The FX cost is the bill you don’t.

#How much do European tutors actually lose to FX?

Let’s put numbers to it. Say you teach 60 hours a month at an average gross of $20 per hour on a USD-denominated platform. After the platform commission (15-33% depending on which one), you’re left with somewhere between $804 and $1,020 in USD before any conversion happens.

Now move that USD into your European bank account. According to the European Central Bank’s reference rates, the mid-market EUR/USD rate gives you the “fair” conversion. But you don’t get the mid-market rate. PayPal’s published currency conversion fee adds 3-4% to the mid-market rate for transfers between USD and EUR. Payoneer’s similar conversion margin sits around 2-3%, plus a withdrawal fee to a local bank.

Add bank-side receiving fees on the European end, which are typically 5-15 EUR per incoming international wire, and the round trip costs you roughly 3-8% of the dollar value you started with. On $900 of monthly earnings, that’s $27-$72 vaporized per month, or $324-$864 per year that never reaches your kitchen table.

That math is the entire reason Kadensy exists for the tutor side.

#Why Preply, italki, and Cambly pay in USD

None of this is malicious. It’s a legacy of where these platforms were built and who their first customers were. Preply was founded in Boston in 2012 and built its payment rails in USD before expanding into a global product. italki is headquartered in Hong Kong and chose USD as a neutral global currency for its multi-country tutor base. Cambly is San Francisco-based and pays its US-dominant tutor pool in their domestic currency by default.

For each of those platforms, switching to multi-currency tutor payouts is a serious infrastructure project. PayPal Mass Payouts, Payoneer, and Wise for Business all support multi-currency disbursements in theory, but plumbing them into a settlement system that already runs in USD is non-trivial. The path of least resistance is to keep paying in USD and let tutors absorb the FX cost downstream.

That’s the strategic gap Kadensy targets. We started in 2025 with EUR as the default currency, not as a feature added later.

#How EUR-native payouts work on Kadensy

Kadensy is a credit-wallet English tutoring marketplace built on Stripe Connect Express, with EUR as the default platform currency. When a European tutor onboards, they connect a European bank account through Stripe’s hosted Express flow. Stripe derives the payout currency from the bank country: a French IBAN means EUR payouts, a German IBAN means EUR payouts, a UK account means GBP payouts directly. There’s no USD leg in the middle, no second conversion, no hidden margin. Tutors withdraw on demand via TOTP-confirmed transfer, with no minimum threshold and no rolling-reserve gimmicks. Stripe Connect Express supports 40 countries on Kadensy (Stripe Connect Express documentation), which covers the full EU plus the UK, Norway, Switzerland, and 25 other jurisdictions.

The platform commission default is 20%, with a subscription overlay that drops it to 15%, 10%, or 5% depending on tier. That’s it. No FX leg, no PayPal surcharge, no withdrawal fee.

#A French tutor’s monthly P&L: Preply vs Kadensy

This is a transparent, illustrative example. Numbers are hypothetical, used purely to show the structure of the difference. Your actual figures will vary with your hourly rate, payout method, and FX pair.

Assume Jeanne, a French tutor in Lyon, teaches 60 hours a month at an average gross of €18 per hour on each platform.

The gross hourly rate is roughly comparable. The commission percentages differ slightly. The decisive line is the FX cost: roughly 5% of the post-commission net, plus a wire fee, eaten before the euros reach Jeanne’s bank.

In this illustrative scenario, the EUR-native rail puts an extra ~€94 per month in her pocket. Over a year, that’s roughly €1,128. Your mileage will vary depending on which platform’s commission tier you sit in, which payout method you use, and the live EUR/USD rate the day you withdraw. The structural point holds either way: a domestic payout costs nothing to receive; an international USD payout costs a percentage.

If you want the broader context on how Kadensy is structured as a marketplace, our pillar guide on what Kadensy is walks through the product end-to-end.

#What you need to onboard as a Kadensy tutor

The onboarding gate is shorter than most marketplaces but it is real. You apply at /tutor/register, complete a basic profile, then complete the Stripe Connect Express KYC flow. Stripe handles the identity verification, the bank account linkage, and the tax-form collection on its side. You don’t see a custom Kadensy KYC form; you see Stripe’s, which means the same evidence Stripe accepts for any Connect-Express seller globally is what we accept.

Once your Connect account is verified, you fill in your tutor profile: headline, bio, intro video, hourly rate in credits, weekly availability calendar, and which CEFR levels you teach. A short qualification check follows, and once your profile reaches “published” status, you appear in the public marketplace at /tutors.

You set your own credit-per-hour rate. Kadensy doesn’t impose a platform-wide rate. Tutors with stronger reviews or specializations (IELTS, business English, exam prep) tend to price higher; newer tutors price for volume. There’s no race to the bottom because credit values are denominated in EUR, not in an opaque platform token.

Two things to flag honestly. First, drop-in mode requires you to be online and to open a “drop-in window” from your dashboard for students to instantly join. It’s optional, not mandatory. Second, payouts are tutor-triggered: you click “request payout” when you want the funds, confirm a TOTP code, and Stripe handles the transfer within standard banking timelines.

#When Kadensy is NOT the right fit

We’d rather lose your application than waste your time. Four situations where Kadensy is probably not your best move right now.

Your students need a massive marketplace at launch. Preply has hundreds of thousands of monthly active learners. Kadensy is in Phase 1 with a small tutor pool and a growing student base. If you’re hoping to fill 30 hours a week from day one with inbound bookings only, the demand isn’t there yet.

You teach a language other than English. Phase 1 ships English only. Spanish and French are seeded in our taxonomy but not yet active for student-facing browsing.

You need a native mobile app. We don’t have one. The platform is mobile-responsive web, including the lesson room, but iOS and Android native apps are on the Phase 2 roadmap, not shipping today.

Your bank is in a country Stripe Connect Express doesn’t support. Our list is 40 countries. If you live and bank outside it, we can’t onboard you for payouts.

For everyone else, especially European-based English tutors tired of watching FX margins eat their income, the alignment is strong.

#FAQ

#How fast do I get paid?

You request a payout from your earnings dashboard whenever you want. There’s no minimum threshold and no rolling reserve. Once you confirm with a TOTP code, the transfer is initiated via Stripe Connect Express, and standard SEPA settlement is typically 1-2 business days for EU bank accounts (Stripe Payouts documentation). Some countries see same-day or instant payouts depending on the rail. No weekly delay, no held funds.

#What countries are supported?

Kadensy supports tutor payouts in 40 countries via Stripe Connect Express. That includes all EU member states, the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, plus the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, the UAE, and more. The full list is enforced by Stripe’s own Express country coverage. If your residency and bank country sit inside that list, you’re eligible to onboard.

#What if I’m not in the EU?

You can still onboard, but your payout currency follows your bank country, not the platform default. A UK-based tutor with a UK bank account gets paid in GBP. A US-based tutor with a US bank account gets paid in USD. A Brazilian tutor with a BRL account gets paid in BRL. The EUR-native angle is specifically a benefit for tutors who live and bank in the Eurozone; tutors outside it still get a clean Stripe Connect payout in their domestic currency, with no double conversion.

#Do I need a teaching certification?

We require a qualification check during onboarding, but we don’t gatekeep on a single certificate. A CELTA, TEFL, TESOL, DELTA, university degree in English, native-speaker status with relevant experience, or equivalent professional teaching history can all qualify. We review your evidence as part of your profile publication. Around 70% of online English-teaching jobs ask for some teaching credential, but the bar for what counts varies a lot platform by platform.

#What does Kadensy take from each lesson?

Our default platform commission is 20%, which is competitive with the lower end of Preply’s 18-33% range and slightly above italki’s 15%. A tutor subscription overlay can drop your effective commission to 15% (Basic, €9/month), 10% (Pro, €29/month), or 5% (Premium, €69/month). Whether the subscription makes sense depends on your monthly volume. Above roughly €600 of monthly net revenue, Premium typically pays for itself.

#Read next

• What is Kadensy? A No-Expiry Credit Wallet for Live English Lessons — the full product tour: how credits work, what’s inside a lesson, and the pricing tables.
• Who Kadensy Is For: 5 English-Learner Archetypes Our Credit Model Fits Best — useful if you want to understand who your students will be on Kadensy.
• Building Kadensy: Why We Chose Credits Over Subscriptions — the team’s reasoning on the credit-wallet model and the EUR-native architecture.

If teaching English from Europe and keeping every euro you earn sounds like the right trade, apply at /tutor/register. The onboarding takes most tutors under an hour once their Stripe Connect KYC is in hand.