Short answer
Take-home depends on three numbers: the rate you set, the platform commission, and how much of your available time is actually booked. A tutor charging 25 USD an hour on a platform taking 30% keeps 17.50 USD per taught hour - and if only 60% of their offered hours are booked, the effective rate against time worked is closer to 10.50 USD.
The advertised hourly rate on a tutoring profile is almost never what the tutor earns per hour of their life. Three numbers sit between the two.
The three numbers
1. Your rate. What the student pays for an hour.
2. Commission. What the platform keeps. Between 15% and 33% on the large marketplaces, sometimes on a sliding scale that starts at the top.
3. Utilisation. The share of the hours you make available that actually get booked. This is the one tutors forget, and it moves take-home more than the other two combined.
Worked example
A tutor charging 25 USD an hour, offering 20 hours a week:
Swipe table sideways to see all columns →
| Platform at 30% | TutorBoost Pro at 10% | |
|---|---|---|
| Per taught hour | 17.50 USD | 22.50 USD |
| At 100% utilisation (20h) | 350 USD/wk | 450.00 USD/wk |
| At 60% utilisation (12h) | 210 USD/wk | 270.00 USD/wk |
| Per hour *available*, at 60% | 10.50 USD | 13.50 USD |
That last row is the honest one. It is what you earn per hour you set aside, which is the hour you actually cannot spend on anything else.
The unpaid hours nobody quotes
Beyond utilisation there is work that is never billed at all:
- Lesson preparation, heaviest for new students and for exam work.
- Unpaid trials, where the platform charges full commission on introductory lessons. On a platform that does this, every new student costs you a free hour.
- Messaging, scheduling, and rescheduling.
- Late cancellations, depending on how the policy treats them.
A tutor teaching 12 paid hours a week can easily be working 16.
What actually moves the number
In rough order of leverage:
- Utilisation. Going from 50% to 75% booked is a 50% pay rise and costs nothing per lesson. It comes from availability that matches your students' time zones, fast replies, and retention.
- Retention. A student who stays six months is worth many times one who takes a trial and leaves - and costs no acquisition effort after the first lesson.
- Commission. Straightforward. Moving from 30% to 10% on Pro is a 29% increase in take-home on the same lesson at the same price.
- Your rate. The obvious lever and usually the last one worth pulling, because raising it lowers utilisation until your reviews support it.
A note on comparing platforms
Do the arithmetic on your own numbers before switching. A better commission on a platform with no students is worth less than a worse one with a full calendar. The question to ask a new platform is not what they charge but how many students searched for your subject last month.
Last reviewed .