LingoAce review for parents: prices, teachers, refunds and the fine print

Strong teachers, a weaker company around them

LingoAce does the teaching well and the business around it less well. We read its terms, payment agreements and store listings, then the reviews, and scored each part:

Sources: LingoAce's website, terms and payment agreements, its App Store and Google Play listings, and the reviews we read, checked 6 November 2026. Each row is explained below.

If your child needs a live adult to talk Chinese with, LingoAce delivers that. Go in knowing the money rules, because that's where most complaints start.

What LingoAce sells today

LingoAce is a Singapore company that sells live online classes to children aged 3 to 15. It teaches Chinese, English and maths, mostly one to one, by video call.

Hugh Yao founded it in 2017, its own history says. Its biggest funding rounds, led by investors including Sequoia Capital India and Tiger Global, raised $160 million. It now runs in-person ACE Academy centres in Singapore, the US and Australia too.

For Chinese, it sells four programmes by age and level:

• Preschool, for ages 3 to 5: games, songs and stories for children who speak Mandarin at home.
• Core, for ages 5 to 15: for beginners, and for children who hear some Chinese at home.
• Discovery: the intermediate programme, for the same ages.
• Advanced: for confident speakers, up to exam preparation.

One-to-one classes last 25 or 55 minutes, and they're taught in Chinese, at your child's level. LingoAce also runs small groups of up to six children, and a Singapore version follows the local school syllabus.

Each family gets a team: a course consultant who places you and sells the package, a learning advisor for ongoing help, the teacher and IT support. You use two apps. LingoAce Student runs the classes and homework, and LingoAce Connect handles booking, reports and replays for parents. Classes work on a computer, an iPad or an Android device.

One caveat: treat LingoAce's own numbers as marketing. Its pages put its teacher count anywhere from 4,000 to 9,000.

So you're buying a school, not a marketplace. LingoAce chooses the course and suggests the teacher, and you choose the times.

Twelve levels, labelled with the old HSK

LingoAce's main course runs through 12 levels, from about age six into the teens. Its level chart pairs its levels with the YCT, China's test for school-age children, and with the HSK, its main test for teens and adults. The top level points at AP® Chinese.

Each unit is four lessons: three new ones, then a review with a test. LingoAce's FAQ says what a beginner should manage. After two weeks, a child can greet people, as in hello, 你好(nǐ hǎo), and count to ten. After six months, they can hold short conversations about hobbies and food.

The HSK labels are the catch. LingoAce pairs Level 5 with both YCT 4 and HSK 3, the match in the YCT syllabus. That match was drawn for the old HSK, when HSK 3 also had 600 words.

The new HSK, which starts on 13 December, asks for more at every level. Here's what each HSK level on LingoAce's chart asks for, old exam against new:

Sources: LingoAce's placement guide; CTI's 2009 word totals for the old HSK and the November 2025 syllabus for the new one, as counted in our HSK 3.0 guide. LingoAce doesn't say which HSK it means, or how many words each level teaches.

The gap starts early. When we matched all 600 YCT words to the new HSK lists, word for word, the full YCT 4 list covered about two thirds of the new HSK 1.

So read LingoAce's HSK labels as a rough guide. If your child is aiming at a test, check the new word lists and try a sample paper before you book a date.

The teachers are why families stay

Children praise LingoAce's teachers more than anything else. In the App Store reviews children wrote over the last two years, about two in five mention a kind or patient teacher.

LingoAce says its teachers are hard to get into. Its FAQ asks for a four-year degree, a teaching certificate or licence, and at least two years of teaching, tutoring, coaching or mentoring. Its Chinese-language blog adds that its Chinese teachers are native speakers with a Mandarin certificate at level 2-A or above, 二级甲等(èr jí jiǎ děng). It also claims that 2% of applicants get through.

Those are LingoAce's own claims, and we found no outside check of them. What you can check is the teacher, and we think that matters more. Profiles show each teacher's years of experience before you book, as this booking screen from its listing shows:

You can also change teachers at any time, and the new teacher sees your child's history.

The teacher is also where things go wrong. In our sample of recent App Store reviews, nine children and four parents describe a strict, rude or unhelpful teacher.

Some teachers are unhappy, too. Thirteen of the 40 latest one- and two-star Trustpilot reviews come from teachers or job applicants, mostly about fines and pay cuts. And teachers do change: one British parent there said their child's teacher was switched without explanation.

So we'd use the trial to judge the teacher, not the slides. If your child isn't comfortable after a few classes, ask for someone else.

A class is games, rewards and all-Chinese talk

A LingoAce class is a video call over animated slides. The teacher speaks Chinese at your child's level and keeps things moving with games, songs and on-screen rewards. Here's a class from LingoAce's App Store listing:

The live teacher is the big advantage over an app. A teacher hears tones, the pitch patterns that change a word's meaning. Buy, 买(mǎi), and sell, 卖(mài), differ only in tone, and a teacher can stop, model it again and wait for the repeat. Our guide to Chinese tones explains why that matters early.

All-Chinese classes suit children who hear Mandarin at home. A beginner from an English-speaking home may struggle at first. One child wrote on the App Store that they cried in a class taught entirely in Chinese, before learning the teacher spoke English too. The Chinese teachers LingoAce shows on its site list English as well as Chinese.

Homework comes in two kinds: games in the app and printed sheets. You photograph the sheets and upload them, and the teacher marks them. This is where families meet the app's bugs, from a camera that over-brightens the page to uploads that stall.

LingoAce recommends at least two classes a week, and the days between are yours. Young children also need you nearby during class: a Canadian parent wrote on the App Store in May that they had to be there the whole time.

Children like the classes; parents fault the company

LingoAce's ratings depend on where you look, and recent written reviews run lowest. Here's each store, with Trustpilot and our own sample:

Sources: the App Store and Google Play listings of both apps, and Trustpilot, which notes that LingoAce invites customers to review it. The last row is our average of the written reviews since November 2024 in Apple's feeds for six countries.

People who write reviews skew unhappy, so the last row sits below the rest. Still, the drop is recent. Written reviews averaged over four stars in 2021, and about three or lower in every year since 2023.

Who writes matters more. We read all 122 reviews from the last two years and sorted them by writer. Children wrote about half of them and gave LingoAce more stars than parents did.

Children write about the classes. About two in five praise a kind teacher, and nearly one in four calls the lessons boring or babyish. A child in the US put it simply on the App Store in July: "the teachers are patient like HECK."

Parents write about the company. Here's what the 25 parents in our sample raised:

Source: our reading of every written review of both apps since 1 November 2024 in Apple's feeds for the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand.

A Canadian parent on the App Store summed up the split in April: "The teachers are good, but everything else is extremely poorly managed."

Trustpilot tells the same story. LingoAce's profile there is overwhelmingly five-star, but we read the 40 most recent one- and two-star reviews. Of the 26 from families with a complaint, here's what they raised:

Source: Trustpilot, read 6 November 2026, our coding. The other 14 of the 40 came from teachers, job applicants, or a reviewer who gave no reason.

So judge the classes and the company separately. Many children enjoy the first, and the second is where parents get frustrated.

How much does LingoAce cost?

LingoAce publishes a range: $14.20 to $30 a class, depending on the programme and the package. The exact price comes from a course consultant, usually after the trial. You buy either a package of prepaid classes or a subscription with a set number of classes each billing period, the terms say.

Bigger packages cost less per class, according to a 2023 review that LingoAce sponsored. The class length matters too: that review put a 25-minute class at about $15 and a 55-minute class at about $30.

LingoAce advises at least two classes a week. Here's what a year costs at its published prices:

Source: LingoAce's pricing page and FAQ, 6 November 2026, and our arithmetic. Prices differ by country and promotion.

What parents report paying fits that range, or runs above it:

• A US parent, September 2026: about $23 a class, for group maths lessons, on Trustpilot.
• A Singapore parent, May 2025: S$77 for one 55-minute class added later, on Google Play.
• A Canadian parent, May 2026: $1,400 for classes, on the App Store.

For comparison, the median Chinese teacher on italki charges about $20 an hour, by our count of 783 teachers. There you pick and vet the teacher yourself, and nobody builds a course or reports back to you.

We'd want the price per class in writing before paying, along with the answers to the questions further down this page.

Does LingoAce give refunds?

Yes, for one-to-one packages, until the classes expire. The payment agreement for 1-on-1 programmes, revised in January 2024, sets a formula:

• Start with what you paid, not counting any payment processing fee.
• Take off every class used, at the package's average price per paid class.
• Take off any gift box LingoAce sent you.
• Keep 97% of the rest, because LingoAce charges a 3% administration fee.

Here's how that works out for a 48-class package at the top published price, after 12 classes:

Source: LingoAce's payment agreement for 1-on-1 programmes, read 6 November 2026, and our arithmetic on an example package.

Four things get nothing back:

• Bonus classes. You use paid classes first, and the formula leaves bonus ones out.
• Instalment plans. A package bought on a pay-later plan can't be refunded.
• Expired classes. Once a class passes its expiry date, its value is gone.
• Missed classes. There are no make-ups, so cancel at least 24 hours ahead.

Small groups are stricter. Their payment agreement refunds you in full, minus classes used, only within 14 days of the first class.

Subscriptions end through your consultant or advisor, at least 24 hours before the next billing date. The terms give you three months to dispute a charge, in writing. In the US, they send bigger disputes to individual arbitration, outside small claims court.

Every package expires, and bigger ones last longer. Here's LingoAce's expiry table, with how many classes a week use each package up in time:

Source: LingoAce's terms, for classes bought since 1 October 2022, and our arithmetic at the top of each band, or at 192 for the last.

So expiry only bites if you stop for months. By our arithmetic, one class a week uses up any package of up to 260 classes in time. At two a week, a 48-class package lasts about six months.

If you might want out, pay in one go rather than on a pay-later plan. And treat bonus classes as a bonus, not a reason to buy a bigger package.

A free trial, then the sales calls

LingoAce's trial costs nothing, and it doesn't ask for a credit card. You give your name, email and phone number, a course consultant calls to check your child's level, and your child gets one live class with a teacher. A short report and a package offer follow.

Plan for the calls. Sales calls or messages that kept coming are one of the two top complaints in families' recent one- and two-star Trustpilot reviews. Five of the 25 parents in our App Store sample raise them, and LingoAce's own review page lists "aggressive communication after a free trial" among the complaints it has seen.

One Australian parent wrote on the App Store in July of callers "harassing us again and again with different phone numbers". That's the extreme, but the complaint recurs in reviews from several countries.

So if you try it, we suggest an email you check, and a no in writing if you don't buy. Ask to be taken off the call list at the same time. The trial credit itself can't be refunded or passed on, the terms say.

Seven questions to ask before you pay

Most of the complaints we read trace back to something a parent didn't know when they paid. We'd put these questions to the course consultant and ask for the answers in writing:

• What does each class cost in this package, and when we renew? A Singapore parent on Google Play found the classes added later far pricier than the first ones.
• How many classes are paid, and how many are bonus? Bonus classes have no refund value, and two recent Trustpilot reviews say a bonus or a discount depended on posting on social media.
• When do the classes expire, and can we pause? The terms set expiry dates and don't mention pausing.
• Can we keep the trial teacher? One parent on Trustpilot says they were told yes, then found that teacher unavailable.
• What would we get back if we stopped after a month? Ask the consultant to run the refund formula on your package.
• Is this an instalment plan or a subscription? Instalment purchases can't be refunded, and subscriptions need notice before each billing date.
• For a group class, how many children will be in it? The terms cap groups at six, and the refund window is short.

If the answers don't match what you were told on the phone, that's your cue to wait.

Safety and privacy: good controls, a basic seal

LingoAce gives parents a lot of visibility. Classes are recorded, and you can replay them for a month, or for up to a year on request. Reports after classes show how your child is doing in each skill:

The privacy policy, updated in June 2025, says recordings stay inside LingoAce unless you agree otherwise. Children's data isn't used for targeted advertising, and you can switch recording off or ask LingoAce to delete your child's data.

Its safety seal is narrower than the name suggests. LingoAce has been a kidSAFE member since 2019, with the SAFE CERTIFIED seal. kidSAFE describes that seal as a baseline set of online safety best practices, and as a stepping stone to its separate COPPA certification, which LingoAce doesn't display.

A few reviews raise concerns we can't verify. Two Trustpilot reviews from May 2026 allege weak checks on teachers' identity papers. One is about LingoAce's English teachers, and the other says some teachers post class photos and videos on social media without parents' consent.

A former teacher wrote there in March 2026 that when they reported a parent slapping a pupil, they were told LingoAce could only remind the parents. One child's App Store review, from November 2025, says a teacher threatened them. They're a handful among hundreds of reviews, but they're a reason to stay close.

So keep recordings on, sit in on the first few classes and watch a replay now and then. With young children, you'll be nearby anyway.

Who LingoAce suits, and who should skip it

We think LingoAce suits you if:

• You speak Chinese at home. The all-Chinese classes and the Preschool programme are built for families like yours. Our guide for heritage speakers explains the head start a Chinese-speaking home gives a child.
• Your child needs a live adult. A teacher keeps a six-year-old talking in a way an app can't.
• You want to see progress. Recordings, homework marks and skill reports show what's happening.
• You can budget about $1,500 a year or more. That's two classes a week at the cheapest published price.

We suggest skipping it, or looking hard first, if:

• You want to pay month by month. The best prices come with prepaid packages that expire.
• Your child is older and bores easily. Some older children in our sample call the content babyish or childish.
• You're aiming at the new HSK. Check the levels against the new word lists first.
• You can't face sales calls. Expect follow-up after the trial.

The best alternatives for each goal

No one option suits every child. If LingoAce isn't the right fit, here's what we'd look at for each goal, with our pick for each:

Sources: our guides to online Chinese tutors, October 2026, and to the YCT, November 2026; SayMei's own pages.

Three reviews we read compare LingoAce with WuKong, another live school for children. We couldn't read WuKong's prices, so we haven't ranked it. For marketplaces, our italki vs Preply comparison covers trials and refunds on both.

Where SayMei fits, and where it doesn't

SayMei doesn't teach children live, and it has no course built for them. What we make for families is printable: kids' workbooks by age, from first words to stories and handwriting, with pinyin and English for the grown-up.

They're free with a SayMei account, and the account should be yours. SayMei doesn't knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, as its privacy policy says.

We also make practice books for YCT 1, YCT 2 and both YCT speaking tests. They're practice in the test's format, written by SayMei, not official papers. For listening at home, there are ten audio units for children.

SayMei's main product, speaking lessons with Mei Lin, its AI tutor, isn't designed for children, so it plays no part here. Nothing we make replaces a live teacher who knows your child. SayMei isn't affiliated with or endorsed by LingoAce, by CTI, which runs the YCT and HSK, or by the College Board, which runs AP.

What to do next

• Book the trial with your eyes open. Use it to judge the teacher, and expect a sales call afterwards.
• Get the terms in writing. Ask for the price per class, the class length, the paid and bonus classes, and the expiry date.
• Buy the smallest package that works. Pay in one go, so a refund stays possible.
• Stay close for the first weeks. Sit in, keep recordings on, and ask to switch teachers if your child isn't comfortable.
• Keep Chinese going between classes. A few minutes of listening or a picture talk at home keeps the words alive.

If a test is your goal, start with our YCT guide for parents.