Tutoring Income Calculator

Enter your hourly rate and how many paid hours a week you teach, and pick whether a platform finds your students or you do. You get the full waterfall down to what a month of tutoring nets, plus the number that actually answers the question: what an hour of your time earns once prep and admin are counted.

A platform finds my students and takes a cut I find my own students and keep everything

Your hourly rate ($) (general academic work runs about $25 to $80; SAT prep averages around $70; specialist test prep is quoted $80 to $150)

Paid hours a week (hours you actually sit with a student, not hours you are available)

Platform (the platform that finds your students and takes a cut of every lesson)

Commission if you picked "another platform" (%) (the share the platform keeps, not the share you keep)

Prep hours per paid hour (our editorial default is 0.5; the band is 0.25 for reused material to 1.0 for a brand new subject)

Unpaid hours per paid hour, working independently (finding, scheduling, invoicing; our editorial default is 0.35, about 20 minutes per taught hour)

Marketing ($ a month) (optional; only counts in the independent comparison, since the platform is your marketing)

Materials and software ($ a month) (optional; workbooks, practice tests, a whiteboard or scheduling subscription)

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Data reviewed: August 2026. Figures here come from published sources and change over time. How we verify

How the tutoring income calculator works

Tutoring is one of the better side hustles anybody can start this month. There is no car to wear out, no inventory to buy, and the ceiling on your rate is set by what you know rather than by an algorithm. So this page is not here to talk you out of it. It is here to answer the two questions that the hourly rate on your profile cannot: what a month of it actually deposits, and what an hour of your life earns once you count the hours nobody pays you for.

Enter your rate and your paid hours a week, then make the one choice that changes the answer more than any other: does a platform find your students, or do you? A platform takes a percentage of every lesson forever. Working independently you keep all of it, and you pay instead in unpaid hours spent hunting, scheduling, and invoicing. Neither is obviously right. The calculator prices both, shows the waterfall for the one you picked, and then computes the line between them: the exact commission at which the platform's cut costs you the same as the unpaid hours of replacing it. Your results will vary, because filling a calendar depends on your subject, your market, your reviews, and the time of year.

The formula

paid hours a month = paid hours a week × 4.33
billed = rate × paid hours a month
platform's cut = billed × commission (0 if you are independent)
profit = billed - cut - marketing - materials
self-employment tax = 15.3% × 92.35% × annual profit (once net earnings reach $400)
net = profit - self-employment tax
hours you actually work = paid hours + prep hours + unpaid admin hours
true hourly = net ÷ hours you actually work
crossover commission = 1 - [materials + (1 + prep) ÷ (1 + prep + unpaid) × (billed - independent costs)] ÷ billed

The 4.33 is the honest number of weeks in an average month (52 divided by 12), and using 4 instead quietly undercounts you by about 8 percent. The commission comes from the platform you pick: Wyzant's own fee page puts it at a flat 25 percent, Preply's puts new tutors at 33 percent falling to 18 percent at the top tier, and italki is community-reported at 21 percent. Self-employment tax is the statutory 15.3 percent applied to 92.35 percent of net profit, the same arithmetic our quarterly tax calculator uses. The crossover formula looks fussier than it is: self-employment tax is a flat proportion of profit on both sides, so it cancels out entirely and the line lands exactly where the hours and the cut balance.

Worked example

A high school math tutor charging $50 an hour for 8 paid hours a week, with half an hour of prep behind every paid hour and no materials or marketing spend.

The calendar: 8 × 4.33 = 34.7 paid hours a month, which at $50 is $1,733.33 of billed lessons.

On Wyzant at 25 percent: the cut is $433.33 a month, leaving $1,300.00. Over a year that is $15,600.00 of profit, self-employment tax of $2,204.21, and a net of $13,395.79 a year, or $1,116.32 a month. Now count the hours: 34.7 paid plus 17.3 of prep is 52.0 hours a month, so the true hourly is $21.47. Your rate says $50. Your life says $21.47, which is 43 percent of it.

Independent, same student load, with our editorial 0.35 unpaid hours per paid hour: nothing is taken, so the year's profit is $20,800.00, self-employment tax is $2,938.95, and the net is $17,861.05 a year, or $1,488.42 a month. The hours are 34.7 paid plus 17.3 of prep plus 12.1 of finding and scheduling students, so 64.1 in all, and the true hourly is $23.21.

So the comparison in one line: Wyzant's cut costs $433.33 a month, and replacing it costs about 12.1 unpaid hours a month. Divide one into the other and each of those unpaid hours buys back $30.67 after tax, which is more than the $21.47 an hour the teaching itself pays on the platform. And the crossover, the commission at which the two paths pay exactly the same per hour worked, lands at 18.9 percent. Wyzant takes 25. Preply starts at 33. Both sit above the line.

Platform against independent, and the line between them

Every argument about whether tutoring platforms are worth it is really an argument about one number, and almost nobody states it. A platform is not selling you software. It is selling you demand: a parent typing "algebra tutor" into a search box and landing on your profile instead of nobody's. The honest question is not whether 25 percent is a lot. It is whether finding that same parent yourself would cost you more than 25 percent of your rate in unpaid time.

The calculator answers it directly. With half an hour of prep and about 20 minutes of admin per taught hour, the crossover sits near 18.9 percent. Below that line a platform is genuinely cheap and you should stay on it. Above it, and Wyzant's 25 percent, italki's reported 21, and Preply's opening 33 all sit above it, the arithmetic says your own students pay better per hour of your life. Preply's top tier of 18 percent is the interesting case: it sits just under the line, which means the reward for grinding out hundreds of hours on that platform is, roughly, the point at which staying finally becomes rational.

One caveat the arithmetic cannot supply, and it matters more than the arithmetic: an independent calendar with nobody on it beats no platform only in theory. The crossover prices the demand a platform buys you; it does not price your ability to go find it. The version of this that actually works for most people is neither purity: start on a platform, learn what your market pays, then move the students who already trust you off it. Wyzant even builds a door for that, and it is worth knowing about. Its own fee page says a brand new student you refer to the platform yourself earns you 100 percent of your rate with no fee deducted. Read your platform's terms before you act on any of this, because most of them forbid taking existing clients off-platform, and getting suspended costs more than the cut ever did.

The true effective hourly, and why experienced tutors reuse everything

Here is the number that gets left out of every tutoring rate guide ever written. A $60 rate with an hour of prep behind it is a $30 job. Not roughly. Exactly, before the platform takes anything and before the IRS takes anything. Prep time is the largest single deduction from a tutor's real wage, and it is entirely invisible, because it happens on a Sunday afternoon with a coffee and it does not appear on any statement.

Our editorial band for prep is 15 minutes to a full hour per paid hour, and where you sit in it is not a personality trait, it is a stage of career. New tutors and brand new material live at the top. Then, slowly, a library appears: the worksheet you built for one kid works for the next eleven, the diagnostic you wrote in September gets used every September after that, the explanation you fumbled the first time comes out clean the fortieth. Every hour of prep you convert into reusable material is a permanent raise on every future lesson. That is the whole reason a veteran tutor charging the same rate as a beginner takes home nearly twice as much per hour of their life.

It is also the honest reason to be careful about taking on a new subject for one student. That first month is where prep runs at 1.0 and your true hourly quietly halves. It can still be worth doing, especially if the subject leads somewhere. Just do it with the number in front of you rather than behind you.

Setting your rate, and the underpricing every new tutor does

Almost every new tutor picks a rate by asking what feels comfortable to say out loud, which reliably produces a number below the market. Start from what the subject commands instead. Published 2026 guides put general academic tutoring at roughly $25 to $80 an hour, private one-to-one work at $40 to $120, high school level at $30 to $100, SAT prep averaging about $70 with a $45 to $100 band, and specialist test prep for the SAT, ACT, and LSAT quoted from $80 to $150. Advanced STEM and test prep pay a premium for a plain reason: the outcome is measurable, the deadline is real, and the family is buying a score, not a subject.

Then remember what the rate has to cover, which the waterfall above makes visible: the platform's cut, your unbilled prep, your materials, and 15.3 percent of self-employment tax. Raising a $40 rate to $50 is a 25 percent raise on all of those lines at once, and in the worked example above the same eight hours a week would move from about $893 a month to $1,116 on the platform. Lowering your rate to fill a calendar is a defensible strategy when you have no reviews yet, exactly as it is for a new pet sitter or a new seller. Just price it deliberately and put an end date on it, rather than discovering three years later that the rate you nervously picked in your first week has become your ceiling.

Tutoring has a season, and the season is not summer

This page deliberately does not model seasonality, because pretending to know your particular calendar would be false precision. But you should plan around it, because it is the sharpest edge in this work. Academic tutoring tracks the school year: it builds through September and October, peaks before finals in December and again in April and May, and then falls off a cliff in June. A tutor who budgets from a strong November and forgets that July exists will have a bad July. Test prep runs on a different and partly opposing clock, spiking in the weeks before each SAT and ACT administration, which is one more reason a test prep line in your offering smooths the year as well as raising your rate. Summer is when the enrichment and catch-up families appear, at lower volume and often at lower urgency. Treat the annual figures on this page as an average across a lumpy year, not as twelve equal months.

The 1099, and the tax nobody withholds

Tutoring income is self-employment income whether a platform sends you a form or not. The calculator computes the part that is statutory and knowable: self-employment tax at 15.3 percent applied to 92.35 percent of your net profit, owed once your net self-employment earnings for the year reach $400. In the worked example that is $2,204.21 a year on the platform and $2,938.95 independent, and nobody withholds a cent of it. Income tax comes on top, depends on your entire household return, and is why this page names it rather than guessing at it.

Two practical things follow. First, set the money aside as it arrives instead of at filing time, and if the numbers get real, send quarterly estimated payments; our quarterly tax calculator takes it from here with your actual figures. Second, keep your deductions, because they are the one lever that reduces this line honestly: workbooks, practice tests, software subscriptions, the business share of your home internet, and every business mile if you drive to a student's home. Independent tutors in particular tend to under-deduct, having never been handed a form that reminds them to.

Sources

Where the numbers on this page come from. We go to the body that publishes the figure, not to another calculator. Figures on this page were checked against these sources in August 2026. See how we verify.

What is the fee structure for tutors listed on Wyzant?, Wyzant Support. The primary source for the 25 percent figure, read August 3, 2026: "All tutors will retain 75% of their posted hourly rate for lessons with students, minus any applicable taxes, and Wyzant will retain a 25% Platform Fee." The same page carries the one exception: a student you refer to the platform yourself earns you 100 percent of your rate with no fee deducted.
What is the service fee?, Wyzant Support. The student side of the same transaction, verified August 3, 2026: Wyzant charges the student "a small service fee for each lesson. This service fee is 9% of the total lesson cost." That fee sits on top of your rate, which is why the whole ticket costs the family more than the 25 percent cut alone suggests.
Preply commission model, Preply Help Center. Preply's own commission page, read August 3, 2026. It confirms in text that the rate falls as hours taught rise, that new tutors start at 33 percent, that the floor is 18 percent, and that "The commission for every trial lesson with a new student is 100%." IMPORTANT LIMITATION, and the reason this page only encodes the two ends: the tier table itself is published as an IMAGE, not as text, and three third-party write-ups reproduce three different sets of middle tiers (one prints 50/200/400 hour bands, one prints 20/50/200/400, one prints 50/200/500). We refuse to pick a winner among them and encode only the two figures every source agrees on.
Why Did italki Increase Its Commission From 15% to 21%?, Supatutor (June 24, 2026). SECONDARY ONLY, and labeled as such on the page. italki's own commission article returns 403 to automated readers and its Teacher Policy page states fees vary by lesson type without printing a percentage. Community reporting as of June 2026 puts the single-lesson commission at 21 percent, up from a long-standing 15 percent, with package lessons charged less. Treat the 21 as reported, not confirmed, and check your own italki dashboard.
Average Tutoring Rates Per Hour, Brighterly (2026). The rate bands quoted in this page's hints and content: a $25 to $80 an hour national range, $40 to $120 for private one-to-one work, and a level ladder of roughly $23 to $75 elementary, $25 to $88 middle school, $30 to $100 high school. Published measurements of what tutors charge, not an earnings promise.
2026 Average SAT Tutor Cost, Tutors.com. The test-prep premium, which is the single most reliable way to move your own rate: SAT tutoring averages about $70 an hour with a typical $45 to $100 band, and specialist test prep for the SAT, ACT, and LSAT is widely quoted from $80 to $150. The gap between that and the general academic average is the whole argument for specializing.
Self-employment tax (Social Security and Medicare taxes), Internal Revenue Service. The statutory formula this page computes rather than estimates: 15.3 percent on 92.35 percent of net self-employment profit, owed once net earnings reach $400 for the year, with nothing withheld by anybody. The same arithmetic our rideshare, Rover, and quarterly tax pages use.

Frequently asked questions

How much do tutors make an hour?

Published 2026 rate guides put general academic tutoring at roughly $25 to $80 an hour, with private one-to-one work at $40 to $120, SAT prep averaging about $70, and specialist test prep quoted from $80 to $150. But the rate is not the wage. A $50 rate on a platform that takes 25 percent, with half an hour of prep behind every paid hour, works out to about $21 an hour of your actual time after tax. That second number is the one this calculator exists to show you.

What percentage does Wyzant take from tutors?

25 percent, flat, in Wyzant's own words: tutors retain 75 percent of their posted hourly rate and Wyzant retains a 25 percent platform fee. It has been flat since 2019, so unlike Preply there is no ladder to climb. There is one real exception worth knowing: if you bring a brand new student to the platform yourself, Wyzant takes nothing from that referral and you keep 100 percent of your rate. Separately, the student pays a 9 percent service fee on top of your rate, so the family's bill is bigger than your listing suggests.

Is tutoring worth it as a side hustle?

On the money, yes, and by a wider margin than most gig work: there is no car to wear out, the marginal cost of an extra hour is close to nothing, and the rate ceiling is set by your expertise rather than by an algorithm. In this page's worked example, 8 hours a week at $50 nets about $1,116 a month on a platform or about $1,488 independent. The honest catch is the hours you do not bill. Count prep and student-finding time and that same work pays around $21 to $23 an hour, which is respectable but nothing like $50.

Is it better to tutor on a platform or find my own students?

It depends on one number, and this calculator computes it for you: the commission at which the platform's cut costs exactly as much as the unpaid hours of replacing it. With half an hour of prep per paid hour and about 20 minutes of admin, that crossover lands near 19 percent. Below it the platform is genuinely cheap and you should stay. Above it, and Wyzant's 25 percent and Preply's opening 33 percent both sit above it, the arithmetic says find your own students if you can actually find them. That last clause is doing a lot of work: an empty independent calendar beats nothing.

How much commission does Preply take?

Preply's own help page confirms the two ends: new tutors start at 33 percent and the rate falls to 18 percent for the most experienced tutors, dropping as your total hours taught rise. The middle tiers we deliberately do not encode, because Preply publishes that table as an image rather than text and three third-party guides reproduce three different sets of bands. One rule everyone agrees on and every new tutor should price: Preply keeps 100 percent of your first lesson with each new student, so a trial lesson is unpaid marketing.

Do I have to pay taxes on tutoring income?

Yes, and nobody withholds it for you. Tutoring is self-employment, so both halves of Social Security and Medicare land on you: 15.3 percent applied to 92.35 percent of your net profit, owed once your net self-employment earnings reach $400 for the year. Income tax comes on top and depends on your whole return. Platforms generally issue a 1099 once you cross their reporting threshold, but the tax is owed whether a form arrives or not. Deduct your materials, your software, and the business share of your home internet.

How much prep time should I count per hour of tutoring?

Our editorial band is 15 minutes to a full hour of prep per paid hour, with half an hour as the default here. New tutors and brand new material sit at the top of that band, and the difference is enormous: at a $50 rate, an hour of prep per paid hour halves your true wage, while 15 minutes barely dents it. This is exactly why experienced tutors build a library and reuse it. The lesson plan you write once and teach thirty times is the single biggest raise available in this job.

How should I set my tutoring rate?

Start from what your subject commands rather than from what you feel comfortable asking, because new tutors underprice almost universally. Test prep and advanced STEM carry a real premium: SAT work averages about $70 an hour against a $25 to $80 general band, and specialist prep is quoted from $80 to $150. Then remember what the rate has to cover, which the waterfall above makes visible: the platform's cut, your unbilled prep, your materials, and 15.3 percent of self-employment tax. Raising a $40 rate to $50 is a 25 percent raise on every one of those lines at once.