Review: italki
One of three products on my Recommendations page for serious learners of Latin American Spanish. An online marketplace connecting language learners with native-speaker tutors from around the world for one-on-one video lessons, with the distinguishing feature that learners can choose tutors by country of origin.
I have included italki among the three products I actively recommend to serious learners of Latin American Spanish, alongside Spanish Uncovered and Rocket Spanish. This review explains why.
I have been using italki for more than ten years.
In that decade, I have booked lessons with tutors from nearly every Spanish-speaking country in Latin America — Mexicans from Guadalajara and Mexico City and the Yucatán, Argentines from Buenos Aires and Córdoba, Colombians from Bogotá and Medellín and the coast, Chileans, Peruvians, Costa Ricans, Venezuelans, Dominicans, and others. Some of these tutors I worked with for a few lessons and moved on. A handful I have been speaking with for years. The accumulated experience has shaped how I hear Latin American Spanish more than any single book or course I have read.
This is the strongest recommendation I can give italki: I have used it for a decade, and I would still recommend it to anyone serious about Latin American Spanish today.
What italki is
italki is an online marketplace that connects language learners with native-speaker tutors and teachers from around the world for one-on-one video lessons. The model is straightforward. You browse profiles of available tutors, watch their introductory videos, read their teaching philosophies, and choose the ones who interest you. You book lessons at times that suit your schedule. The lessons happen over italki's built-in video tool. You pay per lesson, with no long-term commitment.
The platform itself is utilitarian rather than elegant — it has been around long enough to feel slightly dated in places — but the core function works reliably. The booking system, the payment system, the video calls, the messaging with tutors. After ten years, I cannot remember a single technical failure that mattered.
Why italki is uniquely valuable for Latin American Spanish
The platform's most important feature, for readers of this site specifically, is the geographic spread of its Spanish-speaking tutors. Most language-learning platforms aggregate Spanish tutors as if they were interchangeable. italki does not. You can filter tutors by their country of origin, and you can find genuine native speakers from every major Spanish-speaking country.
This matters in ways that learners new to Latin American Spanish often underestimate.
If you have decided that the Spanish you want to speak is Mexican Spanish, you can find a tutor born and raised in Mexico, who will teach you Mexican vocabulary, Mexican intonation, the diminutives and the ahoritas and the linguistic textures that mark someone as Mexican. The same is true for Argentine Spanish, where you will find tutors who speak with vos, who use che naturally, who pronounce the ll and y sounds in the distinctive Rioplatense way. Colombian tutors will introduce you to the famous clarity of Bogotá Spanish or the lilt of the Caribbean coast. Costa Rican tutors will teach you pura vida not as a tourist phrase but as a way of being.
This is not theoretical. After ten years of using the platform, I can tell you specifically: italki has given me access to native speakers from every Latin American country I have wanted to learn from, at price points that range from genuinely affordable to moderately expensive. There is no other practical way for a learner outside Latin America to get this kind of regional exposure consistently.
Two kinds of tutors
italki distinguishes between two categories of tutors, and the distinction matters.
Professional teachers are credentialed language educators, often with formal teaching qualifications and structured curricula. They tend to charge more (typically $15-30 per hour, depending on country and experience) and provide structured progression — lesson plans, homework, formal feedback, and clear pedagogical methodology. These are the tutors to choose if you want structured learning, particularly at beginner and lower-intermediate levels where having a clear curriculum matters.
Community tutors are native speakers who offer conversation practice and informal instruction, typically without formal teaching credentials. They charge less (often $8-15 per hour) and provide what their name suggests — community tutoring. They are conversation partners more than teachers. These are the tutors to choose once you have reached the point where you mainly need practice speaking, hearing, and being corrected gently in real conversation.
In ten years on italki, I have used both. My early lessons were almost entirely with professional teachers, who built my structural foundation. My later lessons have been overwhelmingly with community tutors, because what I have needed is not more grammar instruction but more time speaking with native speakers from specific regions. Both are useful at different stages.
How to use italki well
A few specific suggestions, drawn from a decade of trial and error:
Take trial lessons with several tutors before settling. italki lets most tutors offer a trial lesson at reduced cost. Take three or four trials before committing to anyone. Tutors vary widely in style, and the right teacher for you is something you discover, not something you can predict from a profile.
Choose tutors from the specific country whose Spanish you want to learn. This is the one piece of advice I would emphasize most strongly to readers of this site. If you want Mexican Spanish, learn with Mexicans. If you want Argentine Spanish, learn with Argentines. The Spanish you absorb will reflect the Spanish your teachers speak.
Book lessons consistently rather than intensively. Two lessons per week, sustained over months, will produce better results than ten lessons in a week followed by silence. Language is built through repetition, not through bursts.
Don't be afraid to switch tutors. If a tutor isn't working for you — too strict, too lenient, wrong level, wrong personality — find someone else. italki has thousands of Spanish tutors. There is no shortage.
Speak more than you study. The point of italki, more than anything else, is to put you into conversation. Use the lessons to speak Spanish, not to listen to your tutor explain grammar in English. Push yourself to talk through your discomfort.
Who I recommend italki for
italki is for any learner who has reached the point — usually somewhere around the upper-beginner or lower-intermediate level — where they are ready to stop only consuming the language and start producing it. Reading articles, listening to podcasts, watching films, working through Spanish Uncovered or Rocket Spanish: these build comprehension. None of them builds the specific muscle of speaking. That muscle is built only through speaking, and for most learners, italki is the most accessible way to do that consistently.
If you are a complete beginner with no Spanish at all, italki is still useful, but you may want to begin with a structured input-rich course — Spanish Uncovered or Rocket Spanish, both also among my Recommendations — to build a foundation first. Once that foundation is in place, italki is, in my honest opinion, the single most valuable platform you can invest in.
After ten years, I am still using it. That is the recommendation in its simplest form.
Find a Spanish tutor on italki →
— A.C. Maas