Tutor Island

For tutors

Switching from another platform?

If you already tutor through First Tutors, MyTutor, Superprof or somewhere similar, you know how the model usually works. Here is what changes when you list on Tutor Island, including the one part that is genuinely more work.

You keep your full rate

Listing on Tutor Island is free, and we take no commission on lessons. Not on the first lesson, not on the hundredth. You set your hourly rate, the student pays you directly, and what you charge is what you keep.

The platform earns from one thing only. When a student or parent has messaged you and you have accepted their request, they pay a one-off £9.99 to connect and unlock your contact details. That is the whole business model. There is no subscription, no lead credit, no featured-listing fee, and no percentage taken from lessons you teach.

When you move across, the practical difference is that your rate stops being a number you work backwards from. You can quote what your time is worth rather than what survives a commission.

Background checked, by a person

Every tutor on Tutor Island holds a current background check for the UK nation they work in, and a real person reviews it before the profile goes live. There is no route onto the platform that skips this, and no unverified tier sitting alongside the verified one.

That means an Enhanced DBS certificate in England and Wales, confirmation of PVG scheme membership in Scotland, or an AccessNI Enhanced Disclosure Certificate in Northern Ireland. You upload it during signup and the founder reviews it personally before your profile goes live. If you are in England or Wales and on the DBS Update Service, say so, as it makes the check simpler for both of us.

The reason this matters to you commercially, rather than just ethically, is that it changes who you are standing next to. Families arriving here have already been told that everyone listed has been checked, so the conversation starts past the point where you have to prove you are safe to let into the house.

What the move actually involves

Signing up takes a few minutes: your details, your background check, and the subjects and levels you teach with a price for each. You can list as many combinations as you want, online, in person, or both.

While your check is under review you can finish your profile, write your bio, and generate your recommendation links, so that the day you are verified your profile is not an empty shell. Sending your first invites to past students before you go live means your reputation is already waiting on your profile when it appears.

You do not have to leave anywhere else to try this. Listing here costs nothing, so you can keep your existing profiles, run both for a while, and see which one sends you students worth having.

Your reviews do not come with you, and that is deliberate

This is the honest part. We do not copy reviews across from other platforms. Not from First Tutors, not from MyTutor, not from anywhere. If you arrive with fifty five-star reviews elsewhere, your Tutor Island profile still starts empty.

We could let tutors paste in their old testimonials. Every platform that does this ends up with reviews nobody can check, written by people nobody can trace, which is exactly why review counts stopped meaning very much across the industry.

Instead, after you sign up you send single-use recommendation links to the students and families you have actually taught. Each link works once. The person writes their recommendation directly to us, including how they found you, the subject, and roughly how long you worked together. Every one is read by the founder before it appears on your profile.

It takes longer than pasting. What you get for that is a profile where each recommendation came from a real person who was invited by you and checked by us, and a family reading it knows that. Your reputation arrives verified rather than transferred.

Get started

If you want the longer version of how the platform works for tutors first, read how it works for tutors, or the detail behind our safeguarding and background checks.

Create your tutor profile →How it works for tutors