If you've landed here, you've probably just typed "what happened to First Tutors" into a search bar after finding the site offline — or after a years-old bookmark suddenly stopped working. You're not alone. After more than two decades, First Tutors has closed, and it did so quietly, leaving thousands of tutors and families with the same questions.
This article lays out what we actually know: what First Tutors was, who owned it, what happened, and — most importantly — what you can do now if you were a tutor or a parent who relied on it.
What was First Tutors?
First Tutors launched in 2005 as one of the very first online tutoring marketplaces in the UK. The idea was genuinely ahead of its time. Instead of going through a traditional agency that took a large cut of every lesson, families could search a public directory, browse tutor profiles, read reviews, and contact a tutor directly.
The business model was simple and, for its era, refreshingly fair:
- Anyone could search, browse, and message tutors for free.
- When a tutor and a student agreed to work together, First Tutors charged a one-time introduction fee (typically in the £5–£25 range).
- After that, the relationship belonged to the tutor and the family. No ongoing per-lesson commission.
The stated mission was to make tuition "more open and merit-based" — letting anyone find a good tutor without paying steep agency fees. Over time the platform grew well beyond the UK, operating in countries including Canada and Australia, and at its peak it listed a very large pool of tutors ranked by student feedback and qualifications.
For a whole generation of UK tutors, a First Tutors profile — and the years of five-star reviews attached to it — was a genuine professional asset.
Who owned First Tutors?
This is where it gets a little tangled, and worth getting right.
First Tutors was operated under the trade name of EduNation Limited (Companies House number 06071367, incorporated 29 January 2007), based in Preston. Edunation Holdings Limited is listed as a person with significant control.
In 2017, First Tutors was acquired by Varsity Tutors, a large US-based live-learning company, in what Varsity described at the time as the acquisition of "the largest tutoring marketplace in Europe." Varsity Tutors itself later became part of Nerdy Inc., a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker: NRDY).
So by the end, a British tutoring directory founded in 2005 sat several layers down inside a publicly traded American education group. That corporate distance matters — it's part of why the closure felt so abrupt and impersonal to the people who used the site every day.
So what actually happened?
Here is the honest answer: no official reason for the closure has been published.
A closure notice appeared on the First Tutors homepage and was visible by early-to-mid May 2026. It thanked customers and tutors for more than twenty years of support and pointed people to contact addresses (info@firsttutors.co.uk and dpo@firsttutors.co.uk) for outstanding queries — while warning that responses would likely be delayed. The searchable directory itself is gone.
What the notice did not do was explain why.
In the absence of an official statement, plenty of theories have circulated on Reddit and tutor forums — a cyberattack, a data breach, a quiet commercial decision by the parent company to shut a non-core asset, insolvency. None of these is confirmed by any credible source. We'd encourage you to treat all of them as speculation until First Tutors or its parent says otherwise. Notably, the operating company, EduNation Limited, remained listed as active on Companies House at the time of the closure — which tends to argue against a simple insolvency story, though it doesn't prove anything either way.
The most likely reality, reading between the lines, is the least dramatic one: a long-standing British brand became a small line item inside a much larger US-listed business, and was switched off. That's cold comfort if you're a tutor who just lost 200 reviews — but it's the most defensible interpretation of the facts we have.
If you were a First Tutors tutor: what to do now
This closure hits tutors hardest. Your profile, your message history, and — painfully — your reviews were the proof of years of good work. Here's a practical checklist.
1. Recover your data while you still can.
Under UK GDPR you have a statutory right to your personal data. You can make a Subject Access Request (SAR) to recover your account information, message history, and reviews. Email the data protection contact (dpo@firsttutors.co.uk) in writing, state clearly that you are making a SAR, and ask specifically for your review content and message history. Keep a copy of everything you send.
2. Screenshot everything you can still reach. Cached pages, old emails containing review notifications, your own records of past students. Reviews are your reputation — back them up now, before more of the site disappears from search engine caches.
3. Don't let your reputation reset to zero. This is the part most tutors get wrong. They start again from scratch on a new platform with a blank profile, as though the last decade never happened. It did — and you can carry the proof with you. On iTutorOnline, our review-import tool lets you bring your old First Tutors reviews onto your new profile, so the five-star feedback you earned over the years follows you instead of disappearing with the site. (More on that below.)
If you were a parent or student
Your tutoring relationship doesn't have to end just because the directory did:
- If you already have a tutor's contact details, nothing stops you from continuing directly. The introduction was always the point; the lessons were always yours.
- If you only ever messaged through the platform and have lost touch, you'll need to find a new way to connect — ideally somewhere your new tutor's track record is visible and verified, so you're not starting your search blind.
A genuinely soft landing — from us
We didn't write this article to dance on anyone's grave. First Tutors did something quietly important for twenty years: it made good tutoring easier to find. Losing it is a real loss for families and tutors alike.
But if you're reading this, you probably need somewhere to land — so here's our honest offer.
iTutorOnline is an online tutoring platform built across Europe on the same fair principle First Tutors started with in 2005: families and tutors connect directly, and tutors keep ownership of the relationships they build. And because we know how much a closure like this costs you, we built the one thing displaced tutors need most.
If you were a First Tutors tutor, you can bring your reviews with you. When you create a tutor profile, our review-import tool lets you submit the reviews you earned elsewhere — including First Tutors — so your years of five-star feedback don't vanish with the site. You don't restart at zero. You pick up where you left off.
- Tutors: Create your profile and import your reviews → (you can request a review import right from your reviews dashboard)
- Parents & students: Find a verified tutor → — browse, message, and book a free first session, no commitment until you know it's the right fit.
The end of First Tutors doesn't have to mean the end of the tutor you trusted, or the reputation you spent years building. Bring it with you.