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What tutors in Canada post as their hourly rate
The rates we found on tutors' own price pages
The quote in your inbox probably arrived with no context at all. One number, one hour, and a warm note about getting started. So here's the context, from seven businesses that publish their prices where anyone can read them.
British Columbia's cards run from $47.25 to $72, and the spread has nothing to do with your child's grade. It moves with who teaches the hour and where the hour happens. Quebec sits lower. Posted school-tutoring rates there start at $39 and stop at $48 before any package discount. One Edmonton business charges $60 with its tutoring team, or $80 if one of its two senior educators takes the session. The single Ontario agency we found with a public price posts a starting figure only, $45, and says the final rate depends on the tutor.
If your quote sits well outside that band, the reason should be something a person can name out loud.
Posted tutoring rates we could find, by provider
| Provider and where | Posted rate for one student | What's attached to the price |
|---|---|---|
| Teachers' Tutoring Service, Metro Vancouver, BC (non-profit) | $57 an hour | Pay per session, no contract; at least 24 hours' notice or the hour is charged; no GST charged |
| The Tutoring Teachers, BC (online anywhere in BC, in person in the Fraser Valley and nearby cities it lists) | $57.75 online and $68.25 in person with a BC certified teacher; $47.25 online and $57.75 in person with a non-teacher tutor | Five hours paid up front, described as refundable; card payments carry fees |
| Tutoring With a Twist, Vancouver Island, BC | $57 online; $63.50 at a library or public place; $72 in your home | One-time $250 planning meeting; invoiced monthly with a one-month commitment |
| Alberta Tutoring, Edmonton, AB | $60 an hour with its tutoring team; $80 with its two senior educators | Online sessions; a Semester Pass for weekly bookings |
| The Tutoring Expert, Richmond Hill, ON | From $45 an hour | Final rate depends on the tutor's experience, specialization and certification |
| TutorAide, Montreal and Laval, QC | $39 an hour pay-as-you-go ($43 for CEGEP and university); $36 on an 8-hour monthly plan ($288); $33 on 24 hours over three months ($792) | No registration fee; free cancellation with 24 hours' notice; travel fees on in-person pay-as-you-go |
| Tutorat Pro, Quebec | $42 online and $48 at home; $36.75 and $42 on a 40-hour package; $90 with an orthopédagogue (learning specialist) | $30 registration fee per family, waived with a prepaid package booked by phone; says its services are GST and QST exempt; package hours have no time limit |
These are the providers we found posting a price in four provinces, a benchmark rather than a national average.
Why the numbers you find online don't match
Search this question and you'll meet three kinds of number. Only one of them is a price.
The first is no number at all. TutorBright's Toronto page runs close to 5,000 words without a single dollar figure, and offers a free in-depth consultation instead. We went looking for the price and came away with a form. Wanting a phone call before quoting is fair enough. Just get the hourly rate for your child's grade and your preferred format in writing before that call ends.
The second is a wage wearing a price tag. Job Bank files tutors under NOC 43109, a federal occupation group that also takes in driving-school instructors and driver's licence examiners. Its wage data puts the group's national median at $20.00 an hour. That's what an employed tutor is paid. It isn't what a family pays, but Connect Education quotes a PayScale figure as though it were a family price. Part of the gap is the agency's own work: Tutoring With a Twist's price buys matching, a different tutor if the fit is wrong, and monthly progress reports.
The third is ours. We hold 890 cost profiles for math tutors near you, with an average of $144 and a fair range of $114 to $206. Our panel doesn't define the unit, so don't compare those figures with hourly rates.
Four things that move the hourly number
What a certified teacher adds to the hourly rate
Five of the eight pages ranking for tutoring costs sell you a certified teacher. Exactly one business we found prices the same hour both ways.
The Tutoring Teachers in BC charges $57.75 an hour online with a BC certified teacher and $47.25 with a tutor who isn't one. In person, it's $68.25 against $57.75. The premium is $10.50 either way. Tutorat Pro's own reference ranges agree: experienced student tutors at $35 to $50 an hour, certified teachers at $55 and up. Biller, which writes for tutors rather than for parents, tells them a teaching degree is worth "roughly $20 to $40 per hour", with nothing behind the figure.
Here's where we'd spend it. For a teen grinding through a provincial course with tests attached, someone who has taught that exact curriculum and marked that exact kind of test is worth the extra ten dollars an hour, every week of the term. For reading practice with a Grade 3 child, a patient student tutor often does the same job.
Online, at the library, or at your kitchen table
Format moves the price more reliably than qualifications do.
Tutoring With a Twist charges $57 online, $63.50 at a library or another public place, and $72 in your home. The Tutoring Teachers adds $10.50 to come in person. Tutorat Pro adds $6. TutorAide charges the same rate either way, then adds travel fees to in-person sessions booked pay-as-you-go.
At Tutoring With a Twist, the library hour is the quiet bargain. It costs less than your kitchen table, it saves you the tidying, and it gives a distractible kid a room with nothing in it but the work.
One condition before you book at home: Tutoring With a Twist requires an adult in the house whenever the student is under 18. Ask whether your provider wants the same.
Paying for hours before you use them
Buying in bulk works in tutoring the way it works anywhere else, and it carries the same risk.
TutorAide's ladder is the clearest we found. Pay as you go and the hour is $39. Take the eight-hour monthly plan at $288 and it's $36. Take 24 hours over three months at $792 and it's $33. That's about a sixth off the sticker price for committing to a term. Tutorat Pro drops online tutoring from $42 to $36.75 on a 40-hour package, and says those hours carry no time limit.
Now the counterweight. A package only saves money if your child uses it, and the hours you buy in a burst of September optimism can still be sitting there untouched in June, long after the tests they were bought for have come and gone. Ask what happens to unused hours before you pay, and get the answer in an email. It's also worth knowing what your province's rules say about prepaid lessons, because the protection you have depends on where you live.
Sharing the hour with a sibling or a friend
Two students, one hour, one bill. It's the biggest discount on any card we opened.
Teachers' Tutoring Service charges $67 an hour for two students against $57 for one, which works out to $33.50 each. The Tutoring Teachers' online rate with a certified teacher falls to $36.75 each for two students and $31.50 each for three, down from $57.75 alone.
Sharing has an honest limit. It works when both students sit in the same course at roughly the same level. It stops working the week one of them falls behind, because the tutor then has to pick a child to teach. Teachers' Tutoring Service says as much on its own rate page, asking that the two students be a similar grade and tutored at the same time.
What the hourly rate leaves out
Planning meetings, deposits and hours paid up front
This is where two quotes that look identical stop being identical.
Tutoring With a Twist charges $57 an hour online, which is the middle of the BC pack. It also asks for a one-time Academic Team Meeting, and it's blunt about the price: "The investment for this meeting is $250." Spread that across your first ten online hours and each one really costs $82. Stay for thirty hours and it settles at $65.33. Same business, same rate card, nearly $17 an hour between the two outcomes.
The Tutoring Teachers asks for five hours up front, which it describes as "possibly negotiable and definitely refundable". TutorAide says flatly that there's no registration fee.
So the rule runs against instinct. A low hourly rate with a big up-front charge is the expensive choice for a family that stops after a month. It's the cheap one for a family that stays the year.
What an hour costs once the extras are in
| Scenario | The arithmetic | Cost per hour of tutoring |
|---|---|---|
| Tutoring With a Twist: $250 planning meeting plus the first 10 online hours at $57 | ($250 + $570) ÷ 10 | $82.00 |
| The same, spread over 30 online hours | ($250 + $1,710) ÷ 30 | $65.33 |
| TutorAide, 8 hours in a month at the pay-as-you-go rate | 8 × $39 = $312 | $39.00 |
| TutorAide, the same 8 hours on its monthly plan | $288 ÷ 8 | $36.00 |
| Teachers' Tutoring Service, two siblings sharing one hour | $67 ÷ 2 | $33.50 each |
| Tutorat Pro online, 40 hours at the single rate against a prepaid package booked by phone | ($30 + 40 × $42) = $1,710; 40 × $36.75 = $1,470 | $240 less on the package |
Cancellations, travel and card fees
The small print is where the last few dollars hide, and each rule on its own looks trivial.
Teachers' Tutoring Service charges the full hour if you cancel with less than 24 hours' notice. TutorAide gives you the same 24 hours and charges nothing to cancel or move a session. Its in-person sessions booked pay-as-you-go carry travel fees, so the tutor's drive lands on your bill. The Tutoring Teachers adds a fee when you pay by credit card, and none for e-transfer or a cheque.
Miss two sessions in a term at one provider, pay by card at another, and two quotes that looked close on paper end up further apart in your bank account.
When there shouldn't be GST or HST on the bill
The federal rule turns on what the tutoring covers. The Excise Tax Act exempts tutoring an individual in "a course that is approved for credit by, or that follows a curriculum designated by, a school authority". Grade 10 math is that kind of course. Test preparation and enrichment with no clear tie to a school course don't qualify for that exemption. So HST on an invoice for help with a regular school subject is worth a polite question, and two of the seven businesses with posted rates answer it before you ask. Teachers' Tutoring Service meets "Do you charge GST?" with "No, we don't", and Tutorat Pro calls its services exempt from GST and QST.
The income-tax side is much narrower. The Canada Revenue Agency may count tutoring as a medical expense when it adds to a person's primary education because of a learning disability or an impairment in mental functions. A medical practitioner must certify in writing that it's needed, and the tutor must be in that business and unrelated to the student. Whether your province pays any of it back is a separate question.
How to check what you're paying extra for
Look up a certified teacher in two minutes
The certified-teacher premium is easy to sell and sounds impossible to check. It isn't. Four provinces run a free public register, and a search takes about as long as boiling a kettle.
Ask the tutor for two things first. Their full legal name, spelled the way it appears on the certificate, and the province that certified them. Then search that province's register.
If the name doesn't come up, don't leap. Manitoba's registry page lists the ordinary reasons a search comes back empty: a misspelled name, a name that isn't the person's legal one, or a teacher whose application is still in progress. It also lists the reason that matters, which is that the person holds no certificate at all. So ask, and ask kindly.
Where to check a teaching certificate
| Province | Public register | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Ontario | Ontario College of Teachers, Find a Teacher | When the teacher was certified in Ontario, their degrees and additional qualifications, the grades and subjects they're qualified to teach, and any disciplinary notations |
| British Columbia | Teacher Regulation Branch online registry | The type of certificate, whether it's valid, changes to its status over time, and any disciplinary action |
| Alberta | Teacher and Teacher Leader Registry | Certificate type and status for anyone who holds or held a certificate back to 1954, plus suspension and cancellation decisions from 1990 on |
| Manitoba | Registry of Certified Teachers and School Clinicians | Certificate status, any suspension or cancellation, and any current limitations or conditions |
Other provinces certify their teachers too. If yours isn't listed, ask the tutor which body certified them and look it up there.
Get these in writing before the first session
Ask for five things in an email you can keep.
- The hourly rate for your child's grade and the format you want: online, at a library, or at home
- Every one-time charge: assessment, planning meeting, registration, materials or travel
- How many hours you have to pay for up front, and what happens to the ones you don't use
- The cancellation rule: how much notice, and whether a late cancellation costs the whole hour
- If you're paying for a certified teacher, their full legal name and the province that certified them
Three things that should slow you down
- A large block of hours to prepay before your child has had a single session
- A "certified teacher" whose name you can't find on the register, with no explanation
- GST or HST on an invoice for help with a regular school course, with no reason given
None of that makes a business dishonest. It does mean the next hour of your evening belongs to free help rather than to a deposit.
Free tutoring to try before you pay
Before you pay anyone, spend two weeks on the help that's already yours.
Ontario students in Grades 4 to 12 get free one-to-one math help from Ontario Certified Teachers through TVO Learn Mathify, launched in 2007 and first built by the Ontario Ministry of Education. There's nothing to book. A student signs in during tutoring hours with an Ontario Education Number and talks to a teacher by voice or chat. Quebec has Alloprof, free to students and their parents since 1996, by phone, text and chat. In Alberta, a free Calgary Public Library card opens brainfuse HelpNow, with live tutors in Alberta curriculum subjects from Kindergarten to Grade 12 and a writing lab that runs around the clock.
Those are the three we confirmed, so ask your own school board and your own library what they run. If the person who needs help is an adult and the subject is English itself, start with free English classes for newcomers, then compare ESL schools and English tutors, which price on a different logic from school-subject tutoring.
Try the free option first. If the gap turns out to be bigger than homework help can close, you'll know exactly what you're paying a tutor to fix.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a tutor cost per hour in Ontario?
Ontario posts fewer prices than you'd hope. The Tutoring Expert in Richmond Hill starts at $45 an hour, TutorBright's Toronto page shows no price at all, and TVO Learn Mathify costs nothing for students in Grades 4 to 12. Our cost profiles for math tutors in Toronto list an average and range without a time unit. Hold an Ontario hourly quote against the posted hourly rates from other provinces.
What is a reasonable rate for tutoring?
On the rate cards we could open, $39 to $80 for a pay-as-you-go hour with one tutor. Tutorat Pro's orthopédagogue, a learning specialist, sits above that at $90. Add about $10 an hour for a certified teacher at the one BC provider that prices both ways. A quote well above $80 should come with a reason you can check.
Do tutors charge more for high school students?
Not on the three posted rate cards we checked. Tutoring With a Twist charges one rate from Grade 1 English to university-level science. TutorAide charges $39 for elementary and high school alike, and $43 only for CEGEP and university. Tutorat Pro's rate covers elementary through CEGEP. The price moves with who's teaching and with college-level work, not with the grade.
Is online tutoring cheaper than in-person tutoring?
Usually, by $6 to $15 an hour on the cards we found. Tutorat Pro charges $42 online against $48 at home, The Tutoring Teachers $57.75 against $68.25, and Tutoring With a Twist $57 against $72. TutorAide is the exception, charging the same either way, though it adds travel fees to in-person sessions booked pay-as-you-go.
Is a certified teacher worth the higher rate?
For a provincial course with tests attached, usually yes. The one rate card we found that prices both ways puts the premium at $10.50 an hour, online or in person, which is less than most pages imply. Confirm what you're buying before you pay for it. Ask for the teacher's full legal name and the province that certified them, then search that province's public register.
Are tutoring packages cheaper than paying per session?
Per hour, yes. TutorAide drops from $39 to $33 on 24 hours bought over three months, and Tutorat Pro from $42 to $36.75 online on a 40-hour package. The catch is that a package only pays if your child uses the hours. Ask what happens to unused ones before you hand over the money.
Is there free tutoring in Ontario?
Yes, for math. TVO Learn Mathify connects students in Grades 4 to 12 with Ontario Certified Teachers online, free, and all it needs is an Ontario Education Number. There's no appointment to book. For other subjects, ask your child's school what homework help it runs and ask your public library what a card opens.