How much do Romanian lessons cost?

Romania's Ministry of Education runs a course of initiation in Romanian for adult foreigners, under Order 6129/2022 (Monitorul Oficial no. 1099 of 15 November 2022). Its article 2 gives foreigners who hold a form of international protection in Romania the right to take it free, once.

The course is at least 216 hours, at 6 hours a week over about 36 weeks, normally in three modules matching A1, A2 and B1. Groups are 10 to 20 people, courses can start whenever there are applicants, and at the end you are assessed and given a certificate of language competence, free. You apply at the county school inspectorate or at an office of the General Inspectorate for Immigration (IGI), which forwards the application within five days.

Everyone else pays. Article 10 lets foreigners with a right of residence, and EU, EEA and Swiss citizens, take the same course for a fee, which the minister sets each year by order. We have not read this year's figure, so we do not quote one; ask the inspectorate.

If you came to Romania to work, your employer may owe you a course: since Emergency Ordinance 32/2026, employers of non-EU workers must provide Romanian lessons, at least 6 hours a week for at least 6 months. See our guide to OUG 32/2026.

The visible text. "Romanian lessons on Preply start from $9 per hour, with an average price of $26 per hour."

By the tutor's country of birth: Romania $23, Moldova $25, Ukraine $25 an hour. The page prints no native against non-native table for Romanian.

Structured data for search engines: "$30/hr to $55/hr (avg: $39/hr)". The bottom of that range is above the average printed for readers.

The tutor cards are personalised by location: from our address in Denmark they quoted kronor per 50-minute lesson.

Of the four pages we read on 22 October 2026, Romanian has the widest gap: $26 printed for readers, $39 in the code for search engines, a difference of half again. We do not know why they differ and are not suggesting either is wrong. The practical point: an average quoted in a search result or an AI answer may not be the one on the page.

Greek, Czech and Hungarian show the same split on the same day; see our lesson-price research.

Romanian citizenship is checked at a recorded interview, and descendants of former citizens who were never citizens themselves must hand in a B1 certificate by 14 March 2027. Both are set out in our Romanian citizenship guide. The free state course above ends at B1 and issues a certificate; whether that certificate serves your file is a question for the authority handling it.

On Preply, lessons are bought as a subscription. Its help centre states you are charged automatically every 28 days for a fixed number of lessons, and that plan lessons not booked before the end of the cycle expire at renewal. Compare on cost per lesson actually taken.

We run a marketplace for language teachers, so we are not neutral. There is no subscription and no billing cycle, the wallet is 1:1 in US dollars with no expiry, and package terms are snapshotted at purchase. There is no unpaid-trial mechanic.

Where that is worse. No cheap way to sample a teacher, and we just launched, with far less choice of Romanian teachers than a site that has run for a decade. We do not print our own prices: teachers set and change them.