What First Tutors taught every UK tutor
Twenty years of trading. Then a notice on the homepage.
First Tutors was one of the longest-running tutor directories in the country. It closed permanently in May 2026. Every tutor who had built a profile, a review history and a book of clients on it found out the same way everybody else did.
“After more than 20 years of trading, First Tutors has made the difficult decision to close.”
The part that matters is not that it closed
Companies close. That is ordinary. What is worth your attention is what could not leave with the tutors.
The reviews
Years of them, written by real families about real teaching, attached to an account on a website that no longer exists.
The profile
The ranking, the history, the search position built up over a decade of good work. It did not transfer anywhere.
The route to the client
Where the platform held the contact details and the messaging, the relationship went wherever the platform went.
The site does point former users at a data privacy portal, and if you had an account there it is worth using. But a privacy enquiry form is not the same thing as taking your working life with you, and no tutoring platform owes you the second one unless it was built to give it to you.
The question to ask any platform you are on
Not “what do you charge?” That one you can work out. Ask: if you disappeared tomorrow, what would I still have? Here is our answer, and you can hold us to it while you are a customer and on the day you leave.
Who holds the client relationship?
You do. Parents contact you, and your students are your students. We never sit between the two of you as the counterparty to the lesson.
Who is paid by the parent?
You are. Card payments run as direct charges to your own Stripe account, so you are the merchant of record on your own money and it never sits in a TutorLab balance. We take an application fee from 3.4%, and no commission on your own students at all.
Can you get your data out?
Yes, and without asking us. Bring your book in by CSV, and take your payment records and tax summary out whenever you want. Export is a feature, not a favour we grant on the way out.
What happens if TutorLab closes?
You keep the students, because they were always yours and you always had their contact details. You keep the payment history, because it is in your Stripe account and your own exports. That is the whole point of building it this way.
If you taught on First Tutors, we cannot bring your reviews back. Nobody can, and you should be wary of anyone who says otherwise. What we can do is help you rebuild somewhere the same thing cannot happen to you twice.
Sources
- [1] First Tutors closure notice, https://www.firsttutors.com/uk/. Accessed 11 August 2026.
- [2] First Tutors data privacy portal, linked from the same notice, https://privacy.firsttutors.com/portal. Accessed 11 August 2026.
We have not published a reason for the closure because none has been made public, and we are not going to speculate about one. If you have information that corrects anything on this page, tell us and we will check it and correct it.