Tutoring jobs in the UK — set your rates, keep 95%

How tutoring jobs work on TheTutorLink

The model is simple. You list a profile, set your hourly rate, choose your subjects and exam boards, and pick the hours you want to work. Parents and students browse profiles, book a free 30-minute trial, and — if it goes well — pay for paid lessons through the platform. We hold the parent’s payment in escrow until the lesson is delivered, then pay you out weekly to a UK bank account. The 5% platform fee comes out of your payout. There is no parent-side subscription, no first-lesson tax, no membership fee for tutors.

That 5% number is the differentiator. Most established UK platforms take a much larger cut. Tutorful charges around 25% on first paid hours and 20% on repeat lessons. SuperProf layers an annual subscription on top of lesson fees that the parent pays separately. MyTutor pays tutors a fraction of what they charge parents — roughly £15–£24/hr while billing parents £30–£45/hr. On a single lesson the gap looks small. Across a year of weekly tutoring, the difference is the cost of a holiday.

You aren’t an employee. You are a self-employed tutor using the platform to find work, run video lessons, take payment, and keep records — exactly the things that are tedious to do alone. We handle the discoverability, the payments, the safeguarding paper trail, and the dispute route if something goes wrong. You handle the teaching.

Types of tutoring jobs available

Demand on the platform breaks down into four overlapping types of tutoring work, and most tutors do at least two of them.

Online one-to-one is the largest category. Roughly three-quarters of secondary tutoring on the platform now runs through a video room — Zoom, our built-in room, or whatever the tutor prefers. Online suits maths, sciences, languages and essay subjects from Year 7 upwards. It also opens up your whole-UK reach: a tutor in Manchester can teach a student in Bristol with no commute.

In-person still has a clear place. Year 6 and below benefit from a tutor at the kitchen table. 11+ candidates often do better in person, and so do students with significant attention or sensory needs. Tutors who offer in-person work in commuter-belt postcodes (London zones 2–4, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh) tend to fill up fastest because parents in those areas have higher disposable income and more demand than supply.

Group tutoring is a smaller but well-paid niche. Two-to-one and three-to-one sessions for a friendship group sitting the same exam earn the tutor more per hour while costing each parent less. The platform supports group bookings explicitly. They work best for revision blocks in Year 11 and Year 13.

Exam-board specific work — AQA GCSE Maths, Edexcel A-Level Biology, OCR Computer Science, CIE IGCSE — is the highest-converting kind of profile you can run. Parents searching specifically for “AQA GCSE Chemistry tutor” convert at multiples of the rate of generic “chemistry tutor” searches. If you have taught a specific specification recently, name it on your profile.

How to apply (step-by-step)

The application process takes about 25 minutes and runs entirely online. There is no paid sign-up, no referral fee, no minimum hours.

Step 1. Head to /become-a-tutor/ and start the tutor sign-up. You’ll need a UK bank account, photo ID, and either a degree certificate or proof of A-Level results in the subject you want to teach. If you have an enhanced DBS check, upload it — parents booking under-18s filter for it. If you don’t, you can apply for one through us during sign-up.

Step 2. Build your profile. Subjects, exam boards, hourly rate, availability, a clear photo, and a 150–250 word introduction that says what you have actually taught and to whom. Avoid generic “passionate about helping students reach their potential” openings. Parents skim. Specifics win bookings.

Step 3. Verification. We check your ID, your qualifications, and the bank account. This typically takes 1–3 working days. Once verified, your profile goes live and is visible to parents searching for your subject.

Step 4. First booking. Most tutors get their first trial enquiry within 7–14 days of going live. Reply to enquiries fast — within an hour during the daytime if you can. The platform’s ranking favours tutors with quick response times because parents booking a trial are usually deciding between two or three options the same evening.

Full step-by-step on /become-a-tutor/ with a checklist of everything you need to hand before you start.

What qualifications do you need

The honest answer is less than most platforms suggest, and more than nothing. The minimum bar is recent, demonstrable subject competence — usually a strong A-Level grade (A or A*) within the last five to seven years, or an undergraduate degree in the subject. For A-Level tutoring, a relevant degree is the practical floor; tutoring AQA A-Level Physics with only an A-Level in Physics yourself is hard work even if you got the A*.

Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) is welcome but not required. Many of our highest-earning tutors don’t have QTS — they are subject specialists, ex-examiners, or PhD researchers who tutor alongside academic work. QTS matters most if you’re tutoring primary children and parents are paying for someone with classroom experience.

For specialist work — 11+ entry to selective grammar schools, Oxbridge admissions tests (PAT, NSAA, MAT, TMUA), medical school interviews, US college applications — parents expect you to either have done that exam yourself recently or have taught it directly. Specialist work pays £40–£70/hr because the bar is genuinely higher.

An enhanced DBS check is required for in-person work with under-18s and strongly recommended for online. Most parents booking online lessons for a child under 18 filter for tutors with DBS on file, even though physically the lesson is over Zoom. If you don’t have one, you can apply during onboarding for around £45.

How much can you earn

UK private tutoring rates in 2026 break down cleanly by stage. These are the rates parents are paying — not what the tutor takes home after a 25% platform cut.

• KS2 (Years 3–6, including 11+ foundation): £18–£25/hr
• KS3 (Years 7–9): £20–£30/hr
• GCSE (Years 10–11): £25–£35/hr
• A-Level (Years 12–13): £30–£45/hr
• 11+ specialist (selective grammar / independent entrance): £40–£60/hr
• Oxbridge / specialist (PAT, NSAA, MAT, TMUA, medical interview): £40–£70/hr

London adds £5–£10/hr at every stage. Online tutors with a London track record often charge London-adjacent rates regardless of where they live. Recent graduates and undergraduates sit at the lower end of each band; QTS teachers, ex-examiners and named-school admissions specialists at the upper end.

What this looks like in practice. A second-year university student tutoring 6 hours a week of GCSE Maths at £28/hr earns roughly £168 a week, or around £8,500 a year tutoring during term time. After the 5% platform fee that’s £7,975 in the bank. The same tutor on a 25% platform would clear closer to £6,300. A career changer running 15 hours a week of A-Level work at £40/hr is earning £600 a week pre-fee — meaningful part-time income on flexible hours.

One realistic note. Earning the upper end of any band requires reviews, repeat bookings, and a profile that signals you can deliver. Most tutors start mid-band, build five to ten reviews over their first term, then raise rates. See /pricing/ for the full fee breakdown and worked examples.

Why tutors are switching to TheTutorLink

Most tutors who join us were already on Tutorful, SuperProf or MyTutor and got tired of watching a quarter of their hourly rate disappear into a platform fee. The pitch is straightforward: same parent pool, same booking flow, same payment escrow, 5% commission instead of 20–25%. We can afford the lower fee because we don’t spend our margin on TV ads or paid student-acquisition campaigns — we grow through tutor word of mouth and search.

If you’re comparing platforms, two things to check before you commit. First, the fee structure on first lessons — Tutorful charges 25% on every lesson with a new student, which means a tutor who builds long-term relationships still pays the higher rate every time someone new comes through. Second, what happens when a student stops booking — on subscription-fee platforms, the parent pays an annual fee whether they book or not, which discourages return visits to your profile. Our model is purely transactional: parents pay only when a lesson runs, and you’re paid weekly out of escrow.

Read /how-it-works/ for the full mechanics — booking flow, escrow, cancellation rules, dispute route. The system is built to remove every reason a tutor or parent might want to take payment off-platform, because off-platform payment is the single biggest cause of bad outcomes for both sides.