What To Charge For Online Tutoring
Tuition cost advice for tutors from a tutor
How much should I charge for online tutoring? This is a common question that tutors ask when starting out as a tutor or transitioning from face-to-face to online. Deciding how much to charge can be tricky to get right and you may feel awkward asking other tutors how much they charge. Fear not! Read on to find out what you should be charging and how to avoid the biggest mistake with online tutoring fees.
More...
Let's get straight to the numbers - how much do you charge for online tutoring?
2016 data from over 2000 independent private tutors in the UK shows that on average, tutors charged between £29 ($35 USD) and £30.50 ($37 USD) for academic tuition up to the age of 14. For 15-16 year olds, this rises to about £32.50 ($40 USD) and for students studying for A-Levels (17-18 year olds), the average was approximately £36 ($44 USD). At the top end of the scale, university-level tuition fees were on average, around the £41 ($50 USD) mark.
As an EFL tutor, I was interested to see that the average private tutor rates for EFL in the UK were about £30 ($38) per hour.
Here's a list of the average private tuition rates for a range of different subjects offered in the UK with these prices adjusted for inflation to the 2022-2023 academic year:
Subject | Rate - GBP (USD) |
|---|---|
Higher education (18+) | £47 ($57) |
Professional (e.g. Law) | £45 ($55) |
A-Level (16-17 year olds) | £41 ($55) |
GCSE (15-16 year olds) | £37 ($45) |
Music and Singing | £37 ($42) |
KS3 (11-14 year olds) | £34.5 ($39) |
English as a foreign language (EFL) | £34.5 ($39) |
Foreign languages | £34 ($38) |
KS2 (7-11 year olds) | £34 ($38) |
KS1 (5-7 year olds) | £34 ($38) |
Please note that these prices are the results of only one survey and are adjusted for inflation to the 2022-2023 academic year. There is a lot of difference in online tuition charges depending on a the experience and qualifications of the tutor.
Tip for students finding a tutor
Before agreeing to a price with a tutor - online or offline - always make sure you check out a tutor’s background and qualifications, how much experience they have as a private tutor, their reviews, and what other tutors charge for lessons in the same subjects - if there is a big difference, you should consider why this is.
Finding a tutor via an agency may have more cost attached, but it will offer more security. You have to remember that the price will include the tutor's individual rate agency commission; costs of teaching resources, digital resources, VAT, health insurance and other taxes will be factored in as well. Many of the cheap online tutors tutor rates you may see advertised on social media channels may not include all those elements, and the tutor may not have much experience or access to the same bank of resources that agency tutors will often share between themselves.
The Profs tutors are a very reputable agency that offers a bespoke tutor matching service, you can see their online tutoring prices to get an idea of the cost of an online tutor. The company offer both tutors online and also in person in London. Spires Online Tutors is a marketplace platform where private tutors set their own online tutoring rates, and here's a typical example of their online tutoring prices to get an idea of the cost of an online tutor. With both companies, you can find 100s of online physics tutors, online English tutors, maths classes, science tutors, tutors for all KS, GCSE, IB, A-level and any other secondary curriculum, plus online tuition in pretty much all subjects at all levels of primary and secondary school. University level scholars can find tutor support in all their subjects, and adult learners can find support for professional qualifications.
The big tutoring question
“Should I charge less for an online lesson?”
The short answer is no. In fact, the same survey shows that many tutors charge the same rate for face-to-face tutoring as they do for online tutoring. My tutor experience lhas ed me to agree with that. Sure, as an online tutor, I don't have to travel to my students so I'm saving time and money. But the student is still getting a high-quality lesson from a professional tutor that uses their experience to plan and prepare, just like a face-to-face lesson. In fact, for many subjects, the tutor may use additional tools to add an extra dimension to some lessons that would not be available offline. There are many benefits of tutoring online for tutors as well as students so I don't believe reduced rates are necessary.
Read on to find out the biggest online teaching mistake
Were you surprised by any of those numbers from the survey on tuition fees? Do you currently charge or were you planning on charging less than the average for your subject? One of the biggest mistakes when setting your tuition rates is to go too low. You might be thinking that there are lots of other tutors out there and the only way to stand out from the crowd is to offer lower rates than everyone else. This might get you some low paying students but it's not a good strategy and will cause you and your tutoring business problems in the long term. Here are some key reasons why you shouldn't have much lower rates than other tutors:
- When you get students paying low rates, you need to do more teaching to get the same amount of money. More teaching = longer hours and more lesson planning, which can lead to lower quality lessons and tutor exhaustion.
- To get a higher number of students, you have to spend more time marketing your services. More marketing = less time for tutoring and lower earning potential (unless you do longer hours).
- Potential students can actually be put off by low tutor prices. Think about it. When you see a product or service that is much cheaper than everything around it, what is your initial reaction? Maybe suspicion or concern that the low price tag means poor quality or lower value. If you undervalue yourself, your students are more likely to assume your tutoring is lower quality.
- Cheaper lessons are more likely to result in no shows, cancellations or a lack of commitment. Higher pricing results in a greater investment from the student and they are more likely to show up, get the most out of the lesson and improve quicker. You're actually doing your student a favour by getting them to invest more money in their education. In my experience, the most committed students turn into your most loyal customers because they really benefit from your lessons.
I'm not saying your prices should be sky high. Setting unrealistic tutor rates that are triple the average is unlikely to get you many students, unless your niche is very specialised or there is a particularly high demand for your subject. However, they should reflect the value you can offer your students. If you can provide a high-quality tuition service that benefits the students, you should price your fees accordingly.
What's the magic number? How to calculate the cost of resources
To calculate how much to charge for your online tutoring, you can use this formula as a guide:
Start with your desired annual income. For example, your goal might be to earn £35,000 from online tutoring in a year.
£35,000
Annual Income Goal
Estimate your annual expenses. These are very important considerations and ones that most tutors underestimate. Typical operating costs will include a suitable computer, online whiteboard and video conferencing software, subscriptions for resource materials, website design and hosting, training, broadband internet, tutoring insurance, and fixed banking, accounting, or online payment processing fees.
Often overlooked are the expenses of actually getting students, but we will consider that in a later part of our calculation. For now, let's say our fixed annual expenses come to £3,500
Add your expenses to your income goal. £35,000 + £3,500 = £38,500
Decide on the number of hours you want to work each week (part time or full time). If you work Monday to Friday from 8.30am to 5.30pm with an hour lunch break, that's 9 hours per day or 45 hours per week. Deduct 5 hours for lunches and that works out as 40 hours per week.
Breaks are important so as well as lunch, deduct the number of weeks holiday you want to take from the total number of weeks in a year (You can add an extra week for national holidays or unexpected emergency days off). For example, 52 – 5 weeks = 47 weeks working.
47 weeks x 40 hours per week = 1,880 hours per year of potential tutoring time
We need to take into account non-billable time such as lesson planning, marketing, answering emails etc. Allocating a generous 40% of your day for these tasks will give you 60% of actual private tutor hours. 0.6 x 1880 = 1128 hours of tutoring time per year.
Salary goal (plus expenses) = £38,500 / 1128 (total hours of tutoring) =
£34.13 per hour
So that means you need to be charging prices of at least £35 per hour and tutoring for 24 hours per week to have a salary of £35,000 (before tax).
How do I fill at least 24 hours per week of teaching time?
Where will you get enough students to fill your available tutor schedule each week?
Unless you have an exceptionally strong network that can provide you with multiple students in your subject all year-round, then this is your major challenge.
If you decide to find your own students then you need to make sure you have a budget to cover all your marketing and advertising costs. These may include, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and the many other online advertising platforms, direct marketing to students, subscriptions, tools, materials and any training you may need should also be accounted for in these costs. A good rule of thumb is to multiple your target income figure by 1.5 and then you’ll have your selling price and enough budget to ensure you have customers too.
I read I should be flexible with my rates, do you agree?
Some students or parents will ask for a discount so an element of flexibility in your rates can be beneficial for making sales. By adding a 'discount buffer' into your rates, this won't negatively impact on your income goal.
For example, if you want to offer discounts for lesson packages or to new students, then you need to raise your single lesson rate of £35 per hour to more like £39 per hour to absorb these discounts. Therefore if you offer a 10% discount for new students or for those who buy 10 lessons at a time, you will still earn at least £35 per hour and hit your annual income goal, without having to increase your tutoring hours.
So, to cover marketing costs and training, plus have a discount scheme you need to charge £39 x 1.51 = £59 per hour
If you decide that you would rather work with a tutoring agency, or agencies, to find students, then you will avoid all the costs associated with finding students yourself. You generally pay an agreed percentage of what you charge clients to the agency for their work to find you students. Of course, each agency will charge varying rates depending on a number of factors, and how things go with the students are down to you.
In order to absorb the typical agency fees you should charge £60 per hour and can offer sliding scale reductions to your clients. Not much difference to going it alone, but without the workload and with considerably less risk.
Agencies also offer varying client profiles, modes of working and success rates at finding you students. You may find the agencies with lower rates have lower paying clients and agencies with higher paying clients also cost more, but those ones often have more student demand also.
Many tutors make the mistake of thinking of the agency route as sharing what they earn, when in actual fact they are paying for a service and to free up more of their time to teach. The ideal situation for many tutors is that they have more than their minimum weekly hours filled via an agency, or agencies, and have none of the associated work to find students, a win-win.
At the end of the day, it's your private online tutoring business, so you're in control. If you want to take more holiday or change your tutoring hours, you can do it. Perhaps you may want to charge more for maths (or less!), charge by level, minimum fee, maximum fee or whatever scheme you like - the choice is yours! Your tutoring rate or schedule doesn't have to be set in stone. You can change it when you want. Test out what works for you and your students and make adjustments where needed.
