How much should you charge for tutoring in Australia? (2026 guide)

There is no official Australian tutoring rate. The ATO doesn’t set one, the ABS doesn’t survey it, and nearly every number you find online comes from a tutoring business with something to sell. What you can do is triangulate the ranges those sources agree on, then work out where you sit inside them. That’s this post: the honest ranges, the factors that put you at the top of one, what the numbers mean across a year, and how to raise your rate without losing the families you already teach.

One thing before the numbers. Underpricing feels safe and costs you quietly. A tutor charging $55 an hour in a market that supports $70 gives up $9,000 a year on a 15-hour week across 40 teaching weeks. That’s more than most of us spend on every business expense combined.

What tutors actually charge in 2026

All figures are AUD per hour for one-on-one tutoring unless I say otherwise. Two recent guides put numbers on the market. LearnMate’s 2025 platform averages: primary around $39, Years 7–10 around $57, Years 11–12 around $66, with the broader one-on-one market spanning $55 to $130. KIS Academics’ 2025 guide frames the whole market at $30 to $150-plus, with primary and Years 7–10 private tutors at $40 to $70 and Years 11–12 HSC/VCE exam specialists at $90 to $150 and up.

Treat both as indicative rather than official. LearnMate and KIS are themselves tutoring businesses, and platform averages skew toward whoever lists there. But the bands are consistent across sources: primary in the $40s and $50s, junior secondary in the $50s and $60s, senior secondary from $65 with no real ceiling for exam specialists.

University-level tutoring is the gap in the data — nobody publishes a dedicated range for it. The closest proxy is LearnMate’s qualified-teacher band at $85 to $160. If you tutor uni students, price against that band rather than against school-level averages.

Subjects move rates less than you’d expect

Tutor Finder’s advertised averages (no collection date published, so read them as indicative) cluster the academic subjects tightly: maths $58, chemistry $58, physics $58, English $60, essay writing $61, biology $54. LearnMate’s 2025 subject averages tell the same story: English $58.50, maths $62.50, science $70.50 across all ages.

Two surprises in the data. Music sits above the academic cluster — violin averages $67 and piano $63 on Tutor Finder. And the “coding premium” everyone assumes doesn’t show up anywhere: programming averages $48 and web development $42, below maths. If you tutor code, your rate case rests on your experience and your students’ results, not on the subject.

What earns the top of a range

Qualifications

The Australian Tutoring Association puts teacher-trained tutors at $55 to $180 an hour, with secondary-trained typically charging more than primary-trained, and notes that non-teacher tutors can sit as low as minimum wage. LearnMate’s bands by tutor type run the same direction: university students and early-career tutors $45 to $85, high-ATAR (97+) tutors $65 to $95, qualified teachers $85 to $160, and VCE/HSC/IB/UCAT exam specialists $95 to $160 and beyond. On those bands, a teaching qualification is the single biggest rate lever there is.

Results you can point to

Parents at the senior end aren’t buying hours, they’re buying certainty in an exam year. The tutors charging $120-plus can show a track record: grade movement, band jumps, written feedback from families (kept with permission). Start keeping those records now, before you need them. The question a parent asks at $60 an hour is “what do you cover?” The question at $120 is “what results do you get?” You want to be ready for the second one.

Online vs in-person

In-person commands more on paper: LearnMate puts online at $55 to $95 and in-person at $75 to $130, but that in-person figure bakes in a $12 to $25 metro travel surcharge. KIS’s comparison runs $50 to $90 online against $70 to $120 for its platform-based senior tutoring in person. Two practical takes. Don’t discount your online rate by the full gap, because much of the in-person premium is travel compensation rather than teaching value. And if you do travel across a metro area, charge for it explicitly instead of absorbing it. On location more broadly, the only verified claim is directional: both the ATA and LearnMate say urban rates run higher than regional. If you’re regional, expect your local market to sit lower in each band — and remember that teaching online lets you charge into metro demand from anywhere.

Group vs one-on-one

Group rates are lower per student and higher per hour. KIS puts group tutoring at $30 to $70 per student, and the ATA notes large classes of 15 to 20 can run at $10 to $15 a head. The arithmetic is the point: four students at $40 each is $160 an hour against a $90 one-on-one rate, and every family pays less than they would for private lessons. The catch is admin. Group invoicing, attendance, and makeup lessons when one student misses are exactly the work that outgrows a spreadsheet.

The $75,000 line

A fact that surprises most tutors: private tutoring is not GST-free. The education exemption covers recognised courses delivered by the course provider — schools, unis, accredited training — and an independent tutor isn’t that provider. ATO ruling GSTR 2000/30 spells it out with a private music teacher as the worked example: if the teacher is registered for GST, the lessons are a taxable supply, whether they happen in a school building or not.

In practice: if your turnover (revenue, not profit) is under $75,000 a year, you don’t have to register for GST, and unregistered means you don’t charge it. Once you know you’ll cross $75,000, you must register within 21 days. From then on it’s 10% on your fees and a proper tax invoice for any sale over $82.50. One detail worth knowing either way: if you’re not registered, your invoices must not say “tax invoice” — that label is reserved. (And no, working through a school doesn’t change what you charge: a registered tutor invoices the school with GST, and an unregistered tutor charges none regardless.)

What the rates mean across a year

Hourly rates flatter you. The honest way to evaluate one is to multiply it across a realistic year, and a realistic Australian tutoring year is about 40 teaching weeks — four school terms plus an exam-season tail, minus the holidays you actually take and the weeks that evaporate around Christmas.

• $50/hr at 10 hours a week is $20,000 a year. A solid income alongside study or another job.
• $65/hr at 15 hours a week is $39,000. Full-time-ish money on part-time contact hours — but remember the prep, marking and messages that sit behind every paid hour.
• $80/hr at 20 hours a week is $64,000. This is a genuine full-time practice; 20 contact hours plus the unpaid work around them is a full week.
• $100/hr at 20 hours a week is $80,000 — past the GST threshold, so registration and a 10% line on every invoice come with it. So does $80/hr at 24 hours a week.

Those are revenue figures, not a salary. Before comparing them to an employed teaching wage, subtract software, insurance, resources, the super you pay yourself, and the sick leave and holiday pay you don’t get. The gap between headline rate and effective rate is real, and it’s the best argument for charging nearer the top of your band than the bottom.

Raising rates with existing families

New students are easy: quote the new rate and nobody blinks, because there’s nothing to compare it to. Existing families are where tutors get stuck, sometimes for years. What works:

• Raise once a year, modestly, at a natural boundary. Start of the school year or start of a term. A $5 rise on $60 is about 8% — and worth $3,000 a year on a 15-hour week. Small annual steps beat a panicked $15 jump after three frozen years.
• Give a full term’s notice, in writing. Families organise their budgets by term. Notice is the difference between a rate rise and a surprise.
• Don’t apologise or over-justify. Two sentences: “From Term 1, my rate will be $70 an hour (currently $65). Thank you for your continued trust — I’m looking forward to a big year with Maya.” A paragraph of justification invites a negotiation; a calm notice doesn’t.
• Move new enrolments to the new rate first. When existing families follow at the next boundary, you’re never asking anyone to pay above your current market rate.
• Grandfather deliberately, not by drift. If one family genuinely can’t wear the rise and you want to keep teaching their kid, hold their rate on purpose. The point is choosing, not avoiding the conversation.

Two things that might help

First, the calculator. We built a free hourly-rate worksheet — you give it a target income and the hours you can actually teach, and it works backwards to the rate floor that covers tax, super, the $75,000 GST threshold and the weeks you won’t be teaching. AU and NZ, no account, no email gate. Run your numbers here.

Second, lessonu. It’s ours, so apply the obvious discount to this paragraph. It’s admin software for tutors: GST-itemised AUD invoices, an automated payment-reminder ladder, a public booking page, group lessons with makeup credits, at A$29 a month for a solo tutor plus 1% on card payments only — bank transfer and cash settle for $0. In the spirit of this post, one honest gap: we launched recently enough that we have no reviews to show you. The 14-day trial needs no card, which is the fairest way to find out whether it earns its keep. If you want the full landscape first, I compared the main platforms in an earlier post.

Whatever you land on, write it down and revisit it every January. The ranges above are wide because the market genuinely is. The expensive mistake isn’t picking the wrong number — it’s picking one in 2024 and still charging it in 2027.