You are in Tbilisi, or about to be, and you have decided to learn Georgian in Tbilisi properly this time. The first thing almost everyone does is search for a school. It is a reasonable instinct, and a school is a perfectly good second step. As a first step it is slow and expensive, and I know because I took it.
This is the map of what the city actually offers, with prices, plus the sequence that gets you speaking fastest and spends your money where it does the most.
The three ways to learn Georgian in Tbilisi
Every option in the city falls into one of three buckets, and the trick is not choosing one, it is ordering them.
Self-study with structured audio. Daily, alone, at your own pace, for a fraction of the cost of any lesson. This is where the foundation gets built, and it is the bucket most people skip straight past on the way to a classroom.
A private tutor, in person or online. The most flexible option and, once you have a foundation, the most valuable hour you can buy. Before you have one, mostly an hour of English.
A language school, group or one-to-one. Structure, a timetable, other people, sometimes a certificate. Good for the learner who needs a room to show up to and good for the social side. Slower per hour than a tutor, more expensive per hour than self-study.
| option | typical cost | best for |
|---|---|---|
| structured audio course (self-study) | about $1.60 a lesson | the first two months, and daily practice after |
| private tutor, in person | 35 to 40 GEL an hour, often more | month three onward, conversation and correction |
| private tutor, online | $10 to $35 an hour | the same, from anywhere |
| language school, group | around 260 euros a week intensive | structure, people, a fixed timetable |
| language school, one-to-one | 80 to 600 euros a week by hours | intensive immersion with a budget |
Language schools in Tbilisi
Three schools come up consistently, and they are different animals. None of them has any relationship with EasyGeorgian, and I have not studied at any of them, so what follows is what each says about itself.
NovaMova runs intensive courses out of a school on Shio Chitadze Street. Its group program is twenty 45-minute lessons a week for around 260 euros a week with a two-week minimum, and one-to-one is priced by hours per week, from 300 euros for ten lessons up to 600 for twenty. It wraps the language in the culture, with singing, calligraphy, cooking and excursions, and offers homestays. If you want to arrive in the city and be swept into Georgian from morning to night for a fortnight, this is the shape of that.
Georgian Courses, the school behind georgiancourses.com, has been teaching Georgian to foreigners since 2010 from an office on Vazha-Pshavela Avenue. It runs groups and one-to-one, and booking listings put its one-to-one packages between 80 and 300 euros a week depending on how many lessons you take. The longer-established option, with a more conventional lesson feel.
The TSU language center at Tbilisi State University teaches Georgian to foreigners at several levels. It is the formal, university-paced choice, the one to pick if you want a term-length structure or a piece of paper at the end. Check the center’s own page for the current terms and fees, which I could not confirm at the time of writing.
A booking aggregator will show you a few more, and the roundup of Georgian language courses on this blog covers the online ones. Whichever school you consider, visit two. The teacher in the room matters more than the brochure, and the section on what to ask, below, is written for that visit.
Private tutors, in person and online
An in-person tutor in Tbilisi typically charges 35 to 40 GEL an hour, and the good ones more. Online, on iTalki or Preply, Georgian tutors run from about $10 to $35 an hour, and you can filter for ones who teach in Georgian rather than about it. The full comparison, including when each makes sense, is in the post on tutor or app.
The thing to understand about a tutor is not the price. It is what an hour with one is worth at different points in your learning, because it changes enormously.
What I got wrong with teachers, and what I got right later
Before EasyGeorgian existed, I tried three teachers here. I was looking for one who would not make me write Georgian letters by hand in a notebook, or grind through grammar charts, because I had learned Russian and Spanish with modern audio-first tools and knew how fast a language could go in. The lessons were mostly in English. The teachers over-explained things I had already absorbed and pushed grammar my brain was not ready to hook anywhere. After ten lessons I was still at survival phrases and starting to wonder where the money had gone. I gave up on teachers.
What I did next was build the course I had wanted, and the learning finally started, alone, with daily audio. And then something I did not expect: a teacher became valuable. Once I had a foundation, a lesson could stay in Georgian for most of the hour. A teacher could catch the wrong pattern my mouth had started producing, advance the grammar I had already half-absorbed, and answer the question I actually had that day. Same profession, entirely different value, because I arrived with something to correct.
So the teachers were never the problem. The order was. A teacher in week one is mostly a wasted fee. A teacher at month three is worth every lari.
The sequence that works
Here is what I would do arriving in Tbilisi today, and it is the general plan in how to learn Georgian with the city’s options slotted in.
Day one: the alphabet, in an afternoon. Free, on your own. The 56-minute alphabet video in the app or the free alphabet tool on this site. Rough recognition is the goal. You will be reading shop signs by dinner and getting them mostly right.
Months one and two: a daily structured audio lesson. Thirty minutes, headphones, full attention. Speak Georgian in 50 Days is fifty lessons that make you produce Georgian from the first one, with native speakers carrying the dialogue. This is the foundation, and the whole course costs less than three hours with a tutor. Do it alone. Then go outside and use it, badly, on the person selling you bread.
Month three: add a teacher, or a school. Now the hour is worth buying. A tutor twice a week, in Georgian, correcting what you actually say. Or a school if you want the room and the people. Either works, and both work far better than they would have in week one. Keep the daily self-study going alongside, because the lesson is where you get corrected and the daily practice is where the corrections settle.
Month three onward, in parallel: volume listening. The podcast course, Georgian radio in the taxi, whatever you can find. This is the phase where the language starts arriving on its own, and Tbilisi is generous with it.
What to ask a school or tutor before you pay
Four questions, and the answers tell you almost everything.
How much of the lesson is in Georgian? For a beginner the honest answer is “some”. For a month-three learner it should be “most”. If a teacher cannot describe how that ratio changes as you improve, they teach one way to everyone.
Will I be writing by hand? Some will want you to. For most adult learners it is a slow detour. Say so upfront and see how they react.
How do you handle a student who already has a foundation? Many teachers have a fixed beginner curriculum. You want one who will place you and skip.
What do you do when I make a mistake mid-sentence? The good answer is “let you finish, then note it”. The bad answer is “correct it immediately”. Constant interruption kills the conversation that is the whole point of the hour.
The part you do on your own
Everything above is what you can pay for. The part nobody sells is the city itself, and it is the part most people never use.
Tbilisi will let you survive on English and a little Russian indefinitely, and the majority of foreigners who live here do exactly that for years. The guide to living in Tbilisi explains how easy it is. But the moment you take a marshrutka out of the city, to Kakheti, to the mountains, to a village, English falls away, and the people you meet there mostly speak Georgian and not much else. Being able to talk to them is where the country opens up, and it is a pleasure no lesson can sell you.
Use the city. Order in Georgian before you are ready. Ask the taxi driver where he is from. Use the free Language Exchange to get matched with a Georgian who wants to practice their English while you practice your Georgian, which is the cheapest tutor in town. And if you would rather do the whole thing without a classroom at all, the post on how to learn Georgian without a teacher lays out that path, which is the one I ended up on.
A school is a fine place to learn Georgian in Tbilisi. Just do not make it the first place. Arrive with two months of daily audio behind you and the classroom, the tutor, and the city all start working at once.
