Guide for parents · September 2026
Private Tutor Cost Support Built Around Your Child
What makes one tutor cost more than another, the charges that sit outside the hourly rate, and how to compare quotes when no price list exists.
Why this page has no numbers in it
There is no national price for tutoring in the UK. It is an unregulated market of individuals, agencies and platforms, and what one family pays bears very little relation to what another pays two counties away for an apparently identical hour.
Quoting a range here would be a guess dressed as information, and it would age badly. What is stable, and genuinely useful, is the structure underneath the number: which factors push a rate up, which charges sit outside the rate entirely, and what question to ask so that two quotes can be compared at all.
The things that move the price
| Factor | Which direction it pushes | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Where you live | Up in London and the South East | Local demand and the tutor's own costs |
| Qualification and experience | Up | A qualified, experienced teacher's time competes with a salary |
| Subject and level | Up for GCSE and A level sciences | Fewer people can teach them |
| In person or online | Usually up in person | Travel time is unpaid working time |
| Direct or through an agency | Up through an agency | Vetting, matching and admin are real costs |
| One to one or a small group | Down in a group | The hour is shared |
| Frequency and commitment | Down for a block | Predictability is worth something to the tutor |
The travel row is the one parents most often miss. A tutor who drives half an hour each way has given ninety minutes to your hour, and the rate reflects it whether or not it is itemised. This is a large part of why online rates and in-person rates differ for the same person.
The charges that are not in the hourly rate
Ask about all of these before the first session, because each one has surprised somebody.
Whether there is a minimum block or a term's commitment. What the cancellation notice is, and whether a missed session is billed. Whether preparation, marking of work between sessions or a written report is included or extra. Whether resources, past papers or a platform subscription are charged separately. Whether the first session is an assessment, whether it is paid, and whether it is at a different rate. And, for agencies, whether there is a registration fee or a charge for changing tutor.
None of these makes a tutor bad. Not knowing about them makes a budget wrong.
The unit that actually matters
An hour is not the unit. The unit is the number of minutes in that hour spent on the thing that is actually wrong.
An expensive hour aimed precisely at a missing skill is better value than three cheap hours spent supervising whatever homework arrived that week. This reframing is more useful than any rate comparison, because it is the one part of the transaction you control. You cannot change the market rate. You can change how much of the hour is wasted on discovery.
Which means the cheapest lever available to a parent is knowing, before the first session, what the gap is.
Reducing what you need to buy
Pobbi's maths learning check costs nothing, asks for no card and takes about twelve minutes. It is twenty questions drawn from a bank of eighteen skills, aimed at Year 5 to Year 9, and it is designed to find the earlier skill under the current failure rather than to grade this week's topic.
A wrong answer sends it backwards. Fail to solve a two-step equation and it checks simplifying an expression and substituting a value, because those are what solving one rests on. Each skill comes back marked secure at eighty per cent or above, practising between fifty and seventy-nine, or still being learned below fifty.
Handing a tutor that list in the first five minutes is not a trick to pay less per hour. It is a way to stop paying a teaching rate for diagnosis, and to stop the first month going on something you could have established for free.
How to compare two tutors when neither publishes a price
Ask both the same five questions and compare the answers rather than the rates.
What would you do in the first three sessions with a child who has this gap. How will I know whether it is working, and when. Do you teach the topic they are on now, or the thing underneath it. What do you expect us to do between sessions. And what would make you tell us to stop.
A tutor who answers the last question honestly is usually worth more than one who does not.
What cheap and expensive both get wrong
The cheapest option is frequently a student with subject knowledge and no experience of why a child is stuck. They can explain the topic, which is not the same as diagnosing the gap, and you may pay for months of competent explanation aimed at the wrong place.
The most expensive is sometimes an experienced specialist doing work that did not need a specialist. Paying senior rates for times tables practice is a poor trade even when the person is excellent.
Questions about paying for tutoring
Is a package cheaper than paying per session?
Usually a little, and it also commits you before you know whether the match works. A short trial first, then a block, costs slightly more and risks much less.
Should I use an agency or find someone directly?
An agency charges for vetting, matching and a replacement if it goes wrong, and for a family with no local network that can be worth it. Direct is cheaper and the checking is yours to do.
Is online always cheaper?
Often, because travel disappears, but not always: online opens up specialists whose rates are higher than anyone available locally.
When is a tutor worth the money regardless?
When your child has stopped trying and needs an adult who is not you, when there is a diagnosed need, and when an exam is close and technique rather than knowledge is the gap. Those hours are worth paying for at almost any rate you can manage.