The commission bill

Nobody will tell you what they take. So work out what it costs you.

We checked what the four biggest UK tutoring marketplaces publish about their own fees on 11 August 2026. Every one of them confirms it takes a cut. Not one publishes the number. Their exact words, and the pages they appear on, are at the bottom of this page.

Your hourly rate

Lessons a week

What your platform takes

30%of every lesson, every year you stay

Set this to your own number. Your platform does not publish it, but your payslip does: it is the gap between what the parent pays and what reaches your account.

Commission over one year

£4,200

On £14,000 of teaching: 10 lessons a week at £35 an hour, over 40 term-time weeks.

Same teaching on TutorLab

£616

0% commission. That is the card fee at 4.4%, and only if you choose to collect by card.

The difference

£3,584

A year. The same students, the same lessons, the same you.

A year means 40 term-time weeks. TutorLab charges no commission on your own students at any tier. The figure shown for TutorLab is the card fee on the Core plan at 4.4%, which applies only if you choose to collect payment by card, and is separate from the plan subscription.

What they actually publish

Four platforms, four confirmations of a fee, zero percentages

This is quoted rather than summarised, so you can check every line against the source yourself.

MyTutor

Percentage not published

Marketplace. The fee is deducted before the tutor is paid.

“we take a fee to help cover the cost of finding you parents and students to work with, running and improving the website, and creating more opportunities for our tutors”

The page confirms a fee is deducted and that VAT is charged on it. It does not state the percentage.

Tutorful

Percentage not published

Marketplace. A service fee is added on top of the rate the tutor sets.

“by applying a percentage increase to the Tutor Fee”

The terms describe the fee as a percentage increase. The percentage itself is not published.

Tutor Hunt

Percentage not published

Marketplace. The fee is folded into the rate parents see.

“Their displayed rates include our fees and there are no other charges”

Because the fee sits inside the displayed rate, a tutor cannot read their own cut off the page.

Sherpa

Percentage not published

Marketplace. Positions itself on charging less than the rest.

“We charge the lowest platform fees out of the leading platforms”

A comparative claim with no number attached, so there is nothing to compare it against.

The one published number

“traditional tuition agencies and existing platforms charge up to 50% platform fees”

That is Sherpa, on its own tutor recruitment page, describing the market rather than any one platform. It is the only percentage anybody in this comparison puts in writing, which is why the slider above stops where it does. It is not a claim about any named platform, including the ones quoted above.

What TutorLab charges, in full

A flat monthly subscription for the software, and a card fee from 3.4% if you collect payment by card. No commission on your own students, on any plan. Your students are yours: you set the rate, you hold the relationship, and you can export your data whenever you want.

14-day free trial How switching works

Sources

[1] MyTutor, https://www.mytutor.co.uk/tutors/tutor-payment-details/. Accessed 11 August 2026.
[2] Tutorful, https://tutorful.co.uk/terms. Accessed 11 August 2026.
[3] Tutor Hunt, https://www.tutorhunt.com/about.asp. Accessed 11 August 2026.
[4] Sherpa, https://www.sherpa-online.com/becomeatutor. Accessed 11 August 2026.
[5] Sherpa, on its own tutor recruitment page, https://www.sherpa-online.com/becomeatutor. Accessed 11 August 2026.

Fees change. These quotes were accurate on 11 August 2026 and we re-verify them before repeating any of it. If you believe a line here is out of date, tell us and we will check it and correct the page.