How much to charge for tutoring: private, platform or agency

“How much do you earn giving private lessons?” is the question anyone asks before starting, and it is also the one that is hardest to answer honestly. The figures you read online change from one city to another, from one level to another, from one advert to another, and almost always they are the gross rate of a lesson, not what is left to the person giving it.

Here you won’t find a magic figure. You’ll find a way of reasoning, which works whatever the final number: what really matters when you assess how much to charge, and what changes in the three ways you can work. Our rates and nobody else’s are not on this page, by choice: figures go out of date quickly and a number written here would be wrong in a few months. What stays valid is the method.

First of all: the gross hourly rate is not your earnings

A lesson lasts an hour, but the work behind that hour is longer. Count it honestly:

• Preparation: rereading the topic, choosing the exercises, preparing alternative explanations. With a new student it can be almost as long as the lesson itself; with one you know well it shrinks.
• Communication: messages to move a time, answers to a question between one lesson and the next, reminders.
• After the lesson: sending the whiteboard PDF, writing two lines of recap, assigning the exercises.
• The unexpected: the lesson cancelled at the last minute, the student who disappears.
• Taxes and contributions, if they apply in your case (more on that below).

If you want a single reference figure, calculate your earnings per overall hour of work: what you take in over a week, divided by the total hours (lessons plus everything else). That number is almost always lower than the declared hourly rate, and it is the one you should compare other opportunities with, inside or outside teaching.

What pushes the market rate up or down

Without inventing figures, the factors that move a price are fairly stable:

• The level. Helping a middle school student and preparing a university exam are not the same job, either in the skill required or in preparation time. In almost every context the price rises with the level.
• The subject. Where demand is high and competent tutors are few, the price tends to rise; where demand is low or supply abundant, it falls.
• The urgency. Someone looking for help for a test in five days or an exam in two weeks accepts a higher price more readily than someone who wants steady support.
• Demonstrable experience. A tutor who can describe concretely what a lesson looks like and which students they have worked with is chosen more easily, even at the same price. How to build it if you are starting from zero we explain in getting chosen as a tutor without a portfolio.
• The format. Online or in person, single lesson or course: a package of several lessons often has a lower hourly price than the single lesson, because the student commits for longer and you have continuity.

To know where the market stands in your area and your subject there is no shortcut: look at what the adverts posted by tutors at a level similar to yours ask for, and ask people who have already taught. Be wary of a single figure with no context.

How pricing works in the three models

Privately

You set the price and communicate it to the family. You collect everything, but you are responsible for finding students (how to do it, here), for managing payments and delays, for changing times when needed.

A concrete risk: starting with a price that is too low “to get known”. Raising it later with the same student is awkward, and whoever arrives at a low price tends to look for the tutor at the lowest price, not the best one. Better a consistent price from the start, and an explicit, temporary discount for the first lesson, if you want.

On a platform

Usually you pay to be visible, in one of these ways: a percentage on each lesson, a subscription, a cost per contact. Some platforms keep a share that changes with the number of hours already taught; others set a single percentage. There is no rule valid for all, so before signing up always check, on the platform’s website:

1. How much it keeps and on what amount (on the whole lesson, on your fee?).
2. When and how it pays you (per lesson, at the end of the month, after a check?).
3. What happens if a student chooses to work with you outside the platform: many terms forbid it, or provide for a penalty.
4. Who decides the price: you, the platform, or a recommended range.

The advantage is visibility and part of the administrative work already handled. The disadvantage is that you are one profile among many, and that the price you see published is not what reaches your pocket.

With an agency or a service that assigns you students

In this model the service takes care of finding families, agreeing the price with them and collecting payment, and pays you a rate for the hours taught. Two things change for you: you don’t decide the price, but you also don’t have to look for clients or chase payments. How the share or rate works varies from one service to another: always ask how it works before starting.

How it works with us, concretely, is on become a tutor: the hourly rate depends on the level (primary school, middle school, high school, university), it is agreed in writing before starting and payment is monthly, based on the hours taught. We don’t publish the figures online: you find them in the proposal you receive with your approval, so you know before starting exactly what you will receive.

Whichever agency you choose, always ask the same things: how the rate is calculated, when it is paid, whether it is in writing, and what constraints there are (exclusivity, minimum hours, a ban on working in parallel with others). If an answer is vague, it is the most useful signal you can get.

A note on taxes and contributions

What you take in for tutoring has a tax and social-security treatment that depends on your case: how much you work, whether you do it occasionally or continuously, whether you already have other income. They are not questions that can be settled with a general rule. INPS (the Italian social security institute) publishes an information sheet on contributions for occasional self-employed workers (in Italian) that is a good starting point to understand how it works. Before starting, check with an accountant how to classify your situation.

A four-step method to decide

1. Write down how many hours a week you really want to give to lessons, taking preparation and the unexpected into account.
2. Write down how much you want to earn per month, net of everything.
3. Look at what the market asks for your level and your subject, without fixating on a single figure.
4. Choose the model (private, platform, agency) that leaves you more hours of teaching and fewer hours of everything else, that is the one in which your time is worth the most.

This last point is the one most often overlooked. A model with a higher hourly price but with many hours spent looking for clients can earn you less than one with a lower rate but hours all filled with lessons.

And now

If you want to understand whether the agency model is for you, read the become a tutor page: it has the steps of the application and the answers to the questions we are asked most often. If you haven’t yet decided where to start, how to start giving tutoring lessons online puts the first choices in order.