I used to be sure that tutoring platforms were robbing tutors. I tutored on one, watched the commission come off every lesson, and assumed it was paying for a server and not much else. Then I built one, and the real bill turned out to be marketing and student acquisition, with the infrastructure almost an afterthought. I was confidently wrong about that.
I still think commissions across this industry are too high, which is why ours sits where it does. But if you have landed here looking up what Superprof takes, let me say the useful thing first: the percentage is the number everyone searches for, and it is not the number that decides what you walk away with.
Quick answer: Superprof charges students a recurring Student Pass, around €39 a month, purely for the ability to contact tutors, and charges tutors roughly 10% on lessons paid through the platform. iTutorOnline has no pass at all. The tutor sets their rate, we add €5 per hour, and that total is the price you already see on their card.
Does Superprof charge tutors commission?
Yes, but only sometimes, and that is the interesting part.
Superprof runs a two-track fee. When a lesson is paid through their own payment system, the tutor is charged a service fee of roughly 10%. When the tutor and the student settle up between themselves, by transfer or cash or anything else off the platform, Superprof takes nothing at all.
So "is Superprof free for tutors" has an honest answer, and it is: it can be. Plenty of tutors on there pay 0%, because the money never touches the platform. Hold that thought, because it comes back later.
What Superprof charges students: the Student Pass
The money mostly comes from the other side of the table.
To message a tutor you have found, a student buys a Student Pass, around €39 a month. It is a recurring subscription, it renews on its own, and it does not pay for a single minute of teaching. It buys the ability to start a conversation.
Two of the most common things people ask about that pass are whether it is binding and how to stop it renewing, which tells you something about how it lands. If you go that route, read the cancellation terms before you pay. Pricing can differ by country, so check their own page for yours.
How Superprof payment works
The order of operations catches people out, so here it is plainly.
- You search and find a tutor you like the look of.
- You buy the Student Pass. Nothing has been taught yet.
- You message the tutor and agree a time and a price.
- You pay for the lesson, either through Superprof's system, which costs the tutor about 10%, or directly to the tutor, which costs them nothing.
The pass sits outside all of that. It is charged whether you end up booking ten lessons or none.
What iTutorOnline charges
Two numbers, and they are the whole structure.
Tutors keep 85% of their rate. We take 15%, on every lesson, with the same rules for everybody.
Students pay one number, and it is the one already on the screen. The tutor sets their rate, we add €5 per hour on top, and that total is what shows on their card. Nothing else appears at checkout, so the price you compare is the price you pay.
There is no pass, no membership and nothing to cancel. Browsing, messaging and booking cost nothing, and if you never book, you never pay us anything.
Our commission is higher than theirs, on paper
15% is more than 10%. I am not going to dress that up.
The difference is that ours has no second track. There is no version of this platform where a tutor pays nothing because the payment went around us, so there is also no version where one tutor is quietly on better terms than the tutor next to them. One rate, every lesson, whether you teach an hour a month or twenty a week.
Whether that trade is worth it comes down to what you think the 0% option actually costs.
The 0% option is where tutors get burned
Let me put my interest on the table first, because it is real: we earn nothing when a lesson leaves the platform, so I am not a neutral party in this. With that said, it is the thing I warn tutors about most, and I would say it either way.
Going off-platform is the opening move of nearly every tutoring scam I have come across. The pattern barely varies. Someone moves you to WhatsApp or email early, and then it goes one of two ways: the lessons happen and the payment never does, or you get offered a "closely related job" with easy money attached, which walks straight into credential theft, fake cheques and identity fraud.
When payment runs through a platform, an unpaid lesson is the platform's problem to sort out. When it runs through your own bank details, it is yours. A 0% commission on a lesson nobody ever paid you for is not a saving.
That is also why we block contact details in chat, and I know exactly how that reads from the outside. It does protect our commission. It also stops the single most reliable way tutors get defrauded, and both of those things are true at once.
Fees at a glance
| iTutorOnline | Superprof | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to contact tutors | Free | Student Pass, around €39 a month, recurring |
| Tutor commission | Flat 15%, every lesson | ~10% paid via platform, 0% paid directly |
| What the student pays | The price shown, €5 per hour already included | The lesson price, on top of the pass |
| Subscription | None | Recurring, renews automatically |
| Where lessons happen | On-platform, video room and whiteboard | Arranged between tutor and student |
| Payments | Handled on-platform | Often settled directly |
| Tutor verification | ID and age, diploma optional | ID, qualifications, contact details |
Superprof alternatives, sorted by how they charge
If the pass is what sent you looking, compare the fee structures rather than the headline hourly rates. A low hourly rate with an access fee bolted on is not cheap, and neither is a cheap-looking commission that only applies half the time. Broadly there are three models:
- Pay to make contact. Little or no commission, and a recurring pass on the student side. Superprof is the big one here.
- Packages and subscriptions. You commit to a block of lessons or a monthly plan up front, usually at an agency rather than a marketplace.
- Free to browse, commission per lesson. No access fee, no commitment, and the platform earns only when a lesson actually happens. That is where we sit.
We have written the same fee breakdown for Preply, GoStudent and Tutorful. If the commitment question is the one you are really chewing on, pay per lesson versus a tutoring subscription works through it properly, and why tutoring prices vary covers what actually moves a tutor's rate.
Which one fits you
Superprof is the better answer when you want breadth. The directory is genuinely enormous, it runs well past school subjects into music and sport and hobbies, and if you need a bassoon teacher in a small town they will probably have one and we will not. That scale is real and I am not going to talk it down.
We are the better answer if you would rather not pay before you have said hello, you want every tutor on the same commission terms, and you want the lesson, the whiteboard and the money sitting in one place.
One more thing, and it costs me a booking to say it. If your child is five or six, I would look for someone local who can sit in the room with them, on any platform or none. Very young children usually focus better with an adult physically present. Online tutoring gets good from roughly secondary school upward, and pretending otherwise would not do your child any favours.
FAQ
Does Superprof charge tutors commission? Only on lessons paid through Superprof itself. When a lesson is paid through their payment system, the tutor is charged a service fee of roughly 10%. When the student pays the tutor directly, off the platform, Superprof takes nothing. On iTutorOnline every lesson carries the same flat 15%, because every lesson is booked and paid on the platform.
How much does Superprof take from tutors? Around 10% of the lesson price when the payment runs through Superprof, and 0% when it does not. There is no separate listing fee for tutors. The other side of the model is the Student Pass, which students buy in order to make contact.
Do you have to pay to contact tutors on Superprof? Yes. Students buy a Student Pass, around €39 a month, before they can message a tutor. It is a recurring subscription that renews on its own and it does not cover any lesson time. iTutorOnline has no access fee: browsing, messaging and booking are free.
Is Superprof free for tutors? It can be. A tutor who is always paid directly by the student pays Superprof nothing. That 0% carries a risk though, because the platform is not standing behind a payment it never handled, and moving off-platform is the opening move of most tutoring scams.
How does Superprof payment work? A student finds a tutor, buys the Student Pass, and messages them. The lesson itself is then settled either through Superprof's payment system, which charges the tutor about 10%, or directly between the two people. The pass is charged separately from lesson money either way.
What are the alternatives to Superprof? The alternatives split by how they charge rather than by who they list. Some charge students an access pass and take little or no commission, some sell lesson packages or subscriptions up front, and some are free to browse and take a commission on each lesson. iTutorOnline is the third kind: no pass, a flat 15% from the tutor, and a €5 per hour service fee that is already included in the price the student sees.
Have a look at what the rates actually are before you decide anything. Find a tutor, check our pricing, or read what tutoring costs across the market.