The single most-Googled question by anyone starting out as a private tutor in the UK is “how much should I charge?”. Most articles answer it with a range so wide (£15 to £100) that it's useless. This one won't.
Here is what UK tutors are actually charging in 2026, broken down by subject, level, location, experience, and delivery format. The numbers below are pulled from live listings on First Tutors, Tutorful and Superprof, cross-checked against what tutors privately report in the r/ukpersonalfinance and Facebook UK tutor groups.
The short answer
If you are a brand-new tutor with a good degree and no classroom experience, in 2026 you should be charging £25 to £35 per hour for KS3 / GCSE, and £30 to £40for A-Level. Charge less and you'll attract parents who don't value the work and won't refer you on. Charge more without the experience to back it up and you'll lose enquiries before the first session.
An experienced tutor with a track record (qualified teacher, or three plus years of tutoring with real results) is charging £45 to £70 for GCSE and £60 to £90 for A-Level. In central London, add roughly 30%.
Rates by level
Primary / KS1-KS2
Rate range: £20 to £35 per hour. Primary rates are lower because the bar to entry is lower — a confident A-Level student can legitimately help a Year 4 with reading and times tables. Parents also compare your price against after-school club pricing, which is usually under £15 an hour.
If you have an actual primary teaching qualification (QTS plus classroom experience), you can push to £40-50 and still get enquiries. Without that, £25 is the realistic floor for good demand.
11+ / independent school entry
Rate range: £35 to £90 per hour. 11+ prep is one of the highest-paying niches in UK tutoring because parents in this market have decided to pay, the question is only who. A tutor with documented results (“I've placed 8 students into Kent grammar schools in the last 3 years”) can charge £70-90 in the home counties and north London. A generalist without results should start at £40-45 and let outcomes drive the rate up over time.
KS3 / Years 7-9
Rate range: £25 to £45 per hour. Lower urgency than GCSE (no exam imminent) means parents shop harder on price. Good territory for new tutors building a base — convert KS3 students into GCSE students when they move up and you raise your rate then without losing the family.
GCSE
Rate range: £30 to £70 per hour. This is the single biggest segment of the UK tutoring market. A new tutor with a good STEM degree and no teaching background should be at £30-35. An experienced subject specialist should be at £50-60. Anything above £65 needs a genuine unique angle — former examiner, published author, exceptional results record, specific school reputation.
A-Level
Rate range: £35 to £90 per hour. Stakes are higher (university places on the line), parents pay more. A-Level Maths and Further Maths specifically command a premium because demand massively outstrips supply. If you have a first-class maths degree from a strong university, £60-75 is the 2026 market rate for online A-Level Maths tuition.
Undergraduate / professional
Rate range: £50 to £150 per hour. Very niche. You need a specific postgraduate qualification or industry experience. Pricing is not really the constraint here — finding the students is.
By location
London and the south east charge more than the rest of the UK. As a rough rule, starting from a baseline of “national average”:
- Central London (Zones 1-2): add 30-40%
- Outer London, Surrey, Berkshire, Bucks, Hertfordshire: add 15-25%
- Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Brighton, Edinburgh: add 10-15%
- Rest of England and Wales: baseline
- Northern Ireland, Scottish Highlands, rural areas: subtract 10-15%
This is for in-person tuition. For online tuition, location matters much less — online rates are driven by subject, level and your experience, not the tutor's postcode. This is good news if you're based in a low-wage area: go online, charge London rates.
Online vs in-person
Online rates in 2026 have caught up with in-person almost completely. The early-COVID discount (“online is 20% cheaper”) has effectively disappeared for experienced tutors. A solid online A-Level Maths tutor is charging the same £60-75 they'd charge for in-person sessions.
The one exception is 11+. Some parents still insist on in-person because the child will be taking the actual exam under in-person conditions and they want the prep to mirror that. In-person 11+ in the home counties can command a 20-30% premium over online at the same tutor experience level.
Experience multipliers
The cleanest way to think about your rate is to start from your subject / level base, then apply multipliers for your credentials.
- First-class or 2:1 from a top-20 university: start at the middle of the range, not the bottom.
- QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) with 2+ years classroom experience: upper third of the range, minimum.
- Former examiner for the relevant board:top of the range. “I mark AQA GCSE Maths Paper 2” is the single highest-value line you can put in a bio.
- PhD in the subject:adds 10-15% at A-Level, adds nothing at GCSE (parents don't value it for GCSE).
- Published textbook, exam board author, Oxbridge degree: niche-dependent premium, often 30%+.
How to raise your rates over time
Most tutors are too slow to raise rates and end up tutoring the same families for the same £30 for five years. Here's how to do it without losing students:
Raise the rate for new enquiries first, not existing students.When someone new contacts you, quote 15-20% above your current rate. If they book, you now have proof the market will bear it. Your existing students stay at their old rate for now — they're already locked in and happy.
Put existing students up once a year, in August or January.Send one line: “From September my hourly rate moves to £X. This reflects the time I invest outside sessions on planning, reports, and past paper work. Happy to answer any questions.” No apology, no long justification. 9 in 10 parents accept it without comment.
Never raise a rate in the middle of a GCSE or A-Level year. Wait until September or immediately after exams in July. Raising mid-term is the one reliable way to lose a family.
What not to do
Don't undercut the market to “get started”. Tutors who charge £15 an hour attract parents who want £15 of effort. You'll burn out faster, get fewer referrals, and have a harder time raising rates later because your existing students will anchor on the cheap price.
Don't price by what you think you're worth. Price by what the market pays for someone with your credentials in your subject. Your opinion of your own value is the least useful data point on this page.
Don't offer first-session-free. It attracts parents who want a free session, not long-term clients. A paid trial at your normal rate filters for serious buyers. If you want to reduce risk, offer a 30-minute paid consultation at a reduced rate — it signals quality, not desperation.
The minimum sustainable rate
If you're tutoring full-time as your only income, do this maths. You can realistically deliver about 20-25 tutoring hours per week (any more and you burn out because every hour of tutoring needs 30-45 minutes of prep). That's roughly 900-1,100 paid hours per year after holidays.
To clear £40,000 before tax (roughly £32k take-home as self-employed), you need an effective rate of £40 per hour. To clear £60,000 you need £58 per hour. Anything under £35 per hour as a full-time tutor is a job that pays below teacher salaries while giving you none of the pension, holiday pay, or employment protection.
Once your rates are set
The other side of charging properly is getting paid properly. Professional invoicing, clean session records and prompt parent reports make parents far more comfortable paying premium rates.
TutorLab's free invoice generator sorts the invoicing side in about two minutes — no signup, PDF export, UK-formatted. For full session tracking, lesson plans and parent reports in one place, the free plan covers 3 students and 10 AI credits per week.
And if you're building out the business side, our guide on how to find new tutoring students and our end-of-term checklist are the next things to read.