Agencies take 25 to 40% of every lesson you teach. TutorLab takes 0% commission.
Set your rate and keep it: a flat card processing fee from 3.4% only if you take card payments, never a cut of the lesson. Reading and replying to a parent enquiry is free in every account state, and nothing in the ranking can be bought. 14-day free trial.
Not just a directory, and not just admin software like TutorCruncher or TutorBird. TutorLab is both: a public profile parents can search, and the students, sessions, invoicing and tax records behind it in the same account.
14-day free trial. Cancel anytime, nothing charged until day 14.
33 enquiries sent to tutors in the last 30 days.
Every pound stays yours
Most tutoring agencies take a slice of every single lesson, for as long as you teach that student, and the slice never stops. TutorLab never takes a cut of your rate: not on your own students, and not on the families we introduce to you. You set your rate and you keep all of it. Here is what you walk away with on a £40 lesson:
One weekly student at £40 a lesson is roughly £1600 a year. An agency taking 40% of it keeps £640 of that. With TutorLab you keep all of it, for a flat monthly fee, never a slice of each lesson.
Card payments carry a processing fee from 3.4%, never a commission. Agency cuts shown are the 25 to 40% range TutorLab publishes across the site, not a figure for any one named platform.
7 objections, answered honestly
These are the complaints tutors publish about tutoring platforms, in roughly the order they come up. Where TutorLab answers one, the mechanism is named so you can check it. Where it only partly answers one, the gap is written down rather than skipped.
“A cut of every lesson, for as long as you teach the student”
The most common thing tutors say about marketplaces. TutorLab takes 0% lesson commission on your own students: you pay a flat subscription and the disclosed processing fee only if a parent pays by card. TutorLab's current introduced-family platform fee is also 0%. Agencies typically take 25 to 40%, for as long as you teach that student.
“Paying before you are allowed to speak to anyone”
Reading a parent enquiry and replying to it is free on TutorLab in every account state, including when you are not subscribed. There is no pass to buy and nothing to purchase before you can answer someone.
The narrow truth: your profile must be published for parents to reach you, and taking an introduced family on as a student needs a paid plan and Stripe payment setup. Direct contact details stay masked until that family's first card payment through TutorLab.
“Paying for better placement that brings nothing”
Nothing in TutorLab's live matching order can be bought. Parent matches are ordered by location fit, whether you are accepting students, whether you have reconfirmed you are ready to reply, your actual record of replying, whether you offer a free intro call, ID verification and profile completeness. Your plan is not a factor: paid tiers buy software and lower own-student card fees, not ranking or lead access.
“The platform owns the client, the rate and the reviews”
A parent who enquires becomes a student record inside your own account. You set the rate and keep the relationship. Card payments use your connected Stripe account and follow Stripe's payout schedule. Your transactions and tax summary export to CSV whenever you want them.
Being straight about it: your public profile, your reviews and your enquiry history are hosted here, and there is no one-click export of those yet.
“A recurring charge nobody remembers agreeing to”
14-day free trial. £0 today; cancel any time before your first charge. Cancel before day 14 and you pay nothing. Parents do not buy a contact pass; any invoice or card-payment agreement is shown before they choose it.
“Fees introduced or raised on terms you joined under”
The price you join on never rises while you stay subscribed. A new price applies to new joiners, not to existing ones, and that is enforced in code by the price generation your subscription was created on rather than by a promise on a page.
Prices for new joiners do change, and one is scheduled for 31 August 2026. If you are already subscribed it does not touch you.
“Support that never replies”
This is the complaint TutorLab does not fix. There is no phone line and no support team. It is one person, Harry, answering every email to harry@trytutorlab.uk himself, usually within one working day.
Promising a response time a one-person company cannot keep is exactly the sort of claim this page argues against, so there is not one here.
Everything your tutoring business needs
A public profile parents can search
Your TutorLab profile is a fully public page, open to search engines rather than hidden behind a login. Parents contact you directly, dealing with the tutor directly marking up your rate.
Availability display
Show exactly when you are free. Parents see your weekly slots on your profile without needing to send a message first, so the first email is not about diaries.
AI lesson plan generator
Enter subject, level and topic. Get a structured 60-minute lesson plan in the retrieval-practice framework, with worked examples, timings, and differentiation suggestions, in about 30 seconds.
Parent report writer
Three bullet points about your student's progress. One click. A warm, professional parent update in British English, ready to send straight from your phone or laptop.
Invoice generator
Create a professional tutoring invoice in under a minute. Includes your name, the student, session dates, hours and total. Download as a PDF. No spreadsheets, no manual calculations.
Rate calculator
See the going rate for your subject, level and city, estimated from publicly advertised UK rates in 2026, with a recommended range for your experience and qualifications. Know your worth before the first enquiry.
AI chat assistant
Ask anything about your tutoring business: how to handle a difficult parent message, what to include in a scheme of work, how to structure a first session. Available 24/7, built for tutors.
What tutors say
Written by real UK tutors using TutorLab. They carry no score: nobody was asked to rate anything, so there is no star rating and no average on this page.
“TutorLab saves me around 3 hours a week on lesson planning alone. I genuinely can't believe I used to do all of this by hand.”
“Got my first parent enquiry through my profile within 48 hours of signing up. Wasn't expecting that bit at all.”
“My parents say how professional my updates look now. They have no idea each one takes me about 30 seconds.”
TutorLab vs marketplaces vs admin software
Marketplaces and agencies put you in front of parents but take a commission on every lesson and own the parent. Admin tools like TutorCruncher and TutorBird charge a monthly fee, and no parent ever sees you there. TutorLab is both: a public profile parents can search and the business behind it, with no commission on your own students, just an optional card fee from 3.4% if you take card payments. Every row below is a mechanism you can check, not a claim about how many students you will get.
| Feature | TutorLab | Marketplaces and agencies | Admin softwareTutorCruncher, TutorBird |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parents can find and contact youAdmin tools run the students you already have; no parent ever sees you there | – | ||
| Commission on every lesson you teachAgencies typically take 25 to 40%, for as long as you teach that student | – | – | |
| Nothing to buy before you reply to a parentTutors report paying for a monthly pass or per contact before a marketplace lets them answer anyone | – | – | |
| Placement you can pay to improveTutorLab's live matching order excludes plan and payment status | – | – | |
| You keep the client and set your own rateAgencies set the band and own the parent | – | ||
| Payments use your connected accountStripe processes card payments for the tutor's connected account and pays out on its normal schedule | – |
Frequently asked questions from tutors
Does TutorLab take commission on my lessons?
TutorLab takes 0% lesson commission on your own students. Bank-transfer invoicing has no TutorLab transaction fee; optional card collection has the disclosed all-in fee for your plan. TutorLab's current introduced-family platform fee is also 0%. Agencies typically take 25 to 40% of every lesson, for as long as you teach that student.
Do I have to pay before I can reply to a parent?
No. Reading a parent enquiry and replying to it is free in every account state, including when you are not subscribed. There is nothing to buy before you can answer someone. Two things are honest to say plainly: your profile has to be published for parents to reach you at all, and taking an introduced family on as a student inside TutorLab needs a paid plan and Stripe payment setup, because that is where the software and the payment rail begin. Direct contact details stay masked until that family's first card payment through TutorLab.
Can I pay to rank higher in the parent matches?
No. Matches are ordered by location fit, whether you are accepting students, whether you have reconfirmed you are ready to reply, your actual record of replying, whether you offer a free intro call, ID verification and profile completeness. Your plan is not a factor. Paid tiers buy software and lower own-student card fees, not ranking or lead access.
How much does TutorLab cost for tutors?
Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial, £0 today. After that, Core is £12/month, Pro is £24/month and Pro Max is £49/month. You set your own rate and pay a flat monthly fee, never a slice of a session. The price you join on never rises while you stay subscribed: a new price applies to new joiners, not to you.
What exactly happens with the free trial and my card?
14-day free trial. £0 today; cancel any time before your first charge. Nothing is taken in the first 14 days, and if you cancel before day 14 you pay nothing at all. There is no parent-side pass, no bundle of lessons sold up front, and nothing that renews on a parent without them choosing it.
If I leave TutorLab, what do I lose?
Your students, your rates and your client relationships are yours: a parent who enquires becomes a student record in your own account, and card payments run through your own Stripe account, so TutorLab is never the merchant and never holds your money. You can export your transactions and your tax summary to CSV at any time. The honest gap: your public profile, your reviews and your enquiry history are hosted here, and there is no one-click export of those yet.
Can parents pay me by card through TutorLab?
Yes. Parents can pay you by card and the money lands in your bank. On your own students you keep your full rate minus a flat card processing fee, from 4.4% on the no-card state and Core, dropping to 3.4% on Pro Max, never a commission. On families TutorLab introduces to you, we take no cut of your rate either. You keep 100% of what you charge, on every student. You are the merchant of record: payments go straight to your own account and TutorLab never holds your funds. You can also save a parent's card once so every logged session charges itself.
Will my TutorLab profile show up on Google?
Your profile is a fully public page inside a directory of 56,000+ subject and location pages, and it is open to search engines rather than hidden behind a login. TutorLab pages show in 93,000 tutoring searches a month and climbing (Google Search Console impressions). What we will not tell you is how many enquiries that will produce for you: search results depend on your subject, your area and your competition, and any platform quoting you a number is guessing.
What happens if I email you and need help?
This is the complaint TutorLab does not fix. There is no phone line and no support team. It is one person, Harry, and I answer every email to harry@trytutorlab.uk myself, usually within one working day. I would rather say that than promise a response time I cannot keep.
How is TutorLab different from software like TutorCruncher or TutorBird?
Tools like TutorCruncher and TutorBird are back-office software: they help you run the students you already have, but no parent ever sees you there. Marketplaces and agencies put you in front of parents but take a commission on every lesson and keep the client. TutorLab does both: a public searchable profile plus scheduling, AI lesson notes, parent reports and invoicing, with 0% commission on your own students and only an optional card fee from 3.4% if you take card payments.
Do I need a teaching qualification to join TutorLab?
No formal teaching qualification is required to be a private tutor in the UK or to join TutorLab. Parents care most about your subject knowledge and results. A DBS check is strongly recommended. TutorLab does not vet subject competence before you publish, and does not claim to.
Is 14 days long enough to try TutorLab?
You do not spend two weeks setting up before you see anything: log one session and a parent report drafts itself in 30 seconds, or generate a full lesson plan in 30 seconds, and your profile is live from day one. Bringing your existing students over from a spreadsheet, TutorBird, Teachworks or TutorCruncher is a CSV upload: AI matches the columns and you review every row before anything saves. Prefer not to touch it yourself? Email a screenshot of your list to harry@trytutorlab.uk and I will move it over for you.
More resources for tutors
Hi, I'm Harry.
Founder, TutorLab
I built TutorLab because agencies take 25 to 40%of a tutor's fee for as long as they teach the student, and I thought tutors deserved the opposite: keep your students, keep your rate, and get the admin off your plate. It is a real, UK-built product. There is no support team behind me, so what I will promise is this: every email you send reaches me, and I answer it myself, usually within one working day.
Stop paying agency commission
Publish a profile parents can search, and keep 100% of what you charge your own students: 0% commission, just a card processing fee from 3.4% if you take card payments. 14-day free trial. Cancel anytime, nothing charged until day 14.
Start your 14-day free trial