How much is a private lesson in 2026? A pricing guide for tutors

The short answer: there is no single price for a private lesson. The price depends on the subject, the grade, your experience, the city and whether the lesson is in person or online. Consumer guides published in Israel show ranges of roughly NIS 70 to 230 for a lesson of 45-50 minutes, but the right rate for you is worked out from your costs, your free hours and your monthly target. This guide shows how.

The guide is written mainly for private tutors. Parents looking for a tutor will find here an explanation of why prices differ so much from one another.

What makes up the price of a private lesson

The price a parent pays is not just "an hour of work". It includes:

• The time in the lesson itself - 45, 50 or 60 minutes.
• The time around it - preparing material, checking work, messages to parents, rescheduling.
• Travel - if you go to the student's home, the time and the fuel are part of the cost.
• Dead hours - a gap of an hour between two students is an hour nobody pays for.
• Cancellations - a lesson cancelled at the last minute and not charged is income that vanished.
• Taxes and mandatory payments - income tax, National Insurance, and sometimes VAT.

A tutor who prices only by "what others charge" finds at the end of the month that they work more and earn less than they thought.

The factors that set the price

Subject and grade

Subjects with a significant matriculation exam, such as maths, English and physics, tend to be more expensive, especially at the higher levels. Psychometric prep is also an area with its own pricing. A homework help lesson for primary school is usually cheaper. We have a separate guide on maths in detail: private maths lesson prices.

Experience and training

A qualified teacher with years of experience, or someone who teaches at a school and knows the curriculum from the inside, usually charges more than a student. A narrow specialisation (for example learning disabilities, or 5-unit maths only) also justifies a higher price.

What matters here is that the client understands the difference. "A maths tutor" says little. "A maths tutor for 4 and 5 units, 8 years of teaching in high school" tells the parent why your price is what it is. If you are just starting out, that is not a reason to charge half price. It is a reason to build experience and results, and to update the price when they arrive.

Location

The consumer guides we checked show a clear gap between cities: in the centre, and above all in Tel Aviv, prices are higher than in the periphery. That makes sense: both the cost of living and the demand differ.

Online or in person

In an online lesson you save travel, so you can fit in more lessons a day. Some tutors charge less for online, and some charge the same because the lesson itself is the same. There is no rule. What matters is that you decide in advance and write it down.

An example (the numbers are for illustration only): a tutor who goes to students' homes spends 20 minutes travelling between lessons, and fits in 4 lessons in an evening. Online, with no travel, they fit in 5 lessons in the same hours. Even if they charge 10% less for online, the income from the evening goes up. And the other way round: a tutor who goes to the student's home can justify a supplement for the travel, especially when the student lives far away.

When you decide, ask two questions: how much time do you save, and is the lesson really equivalent for the student. For a young child, for example, an in-person lesson can be more effective, while for a high school student preparing for a matriculation exam online works very well.

Lesson length

45, 50 and 60 minutes are not the same product. When comparing prices, always check how many minutes the price refers to.

What was published about price ranges in Israel

No official body publishes a price list for private lessons. What exists are consumer guides and tutor directories, which collect prices from adverts and from registered tutors. Treat them as a point of reference, not as the "right" price.

Two things come out of the table: the ranges are very wide, and the city makes a big difference. On the exam period the sources are not consistent: the old Maariv article describes a rise in prices before matriculation exams, while the Hon website writes that demand rises before exams but prices stay fixed. What is certain is that demand goes up.

Important: do not copy the top end of a range just because it exists, and do not price at the bottom end only to "get into the market". The price has to sustain you over a whole year.

How to work out your rate

Here is a simple method in four steps. All the numbers here are for illustration only.

Step 1: how much you need to earn per month

Say your target is NIS 8,000 a month from lessons, before tax.

Step 2: what the monthly costs are

For example:

• Travel: NIS 600
• Teaching materials and printing: NIS 150
• Software and apps: NIS 60

Total: NIS 810. Taxes and mandatory payments depend on your personal situation, and that is best checked with an accountant.

Step 3: how many lessons you will really be paid for

Say you teach 18 lessons a week. A month has about 4.3 weeks, that is about 77 lessons. But there are holidays, illness and cancellations. If you take off 10%, you are left with about 70 lessons that are really paid.

Step 4: divide

(8,000 + 810) ÷ 70 = about NIS 126 a lesson. Rounded: NIS 130.

Now compare with the table above. If the number you got is much lower than the going rate in your area, you may be pricing too low. If it is much higher, ask what you give that justifies it, or increase the number of lessons.

And what about VAT?

• An exempt dealer does not charge customers VAT (Kol Zchut, as of October 2026).
• An authorised dealer adds VAT to the price. The VAT rate in Israel has been 18% since 1 January 2025 (Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce; Bizportal notes that the 2026 budget is built on 18%).

So an authorised dealer who wants to keep NIS 130 a lesson needs to charge the parent about NIS 153 (130 × 1.18). Which type of business to open and what your reporting duties are is a question for an accountant.

Four common mistakes in the calculation

1. Counting all hours as if all of them are paid. A real month has holidays, breaks, exams at the student's school and illness. Someone who calculates on 100% of the weeks finds a gap in the first month.
2. Forgetting the time around the lesson. If every one-hour lesson has another 15 minutes of preparation and messages, you are in fact working 75 minutes. The price has to cover that.
3. Ignoring seasonality. Demand for private lessons is not even across the year. In the months before exams the diary fills up, and in the summer holiday it empties. The rate has to hold up in the weak months too.
4. Giving a discount "just for now". A discount given with no end date becomes that student's permanent price. If you give a discount, write down until when.

An example: the same tutor, two situations

Again, the numbers are for illustration only. A tutor teaches 18 lessons a week.

The difference between the two situations is not the price, but how many lessons were lost: cancellations that were not charged, lessons that were not recorded, and debts that were forgotten. Sometimes the fastest way to earn more is not to raise the price, but to stop losing lessons.

Private versus group: two rates, not one

A common mistake is to think of "my price" as one number. In practice most tutors need two:

• Private rate - one student in the lesson.
• Group rate - a price for each student, when there are two or more in the same lesson.

For example: private NIS 150, group NIS 100 per student. Two students in the same hour bring in NIS 200, three bring in NIS 300. The parent pays less, and you earn more per hour.

What do you do when one of the pair does not turn up? And when is it worth opening a group at all? We expanded on this in private or group lessons - which is better and how to price them.

First lesson, discounts and sibling prices

A few small decisions that are worth making in advance, so you do not improvise with every parent:

• First lesson. Some tutors offer a short free introductory call and a first lesson at full price, and some offer a discounted first lesson. Either is legitimate. What is not worth doing is deciding anew each time.
• Siblings. Two siblings in the same lesson are a group lesson for all purposes. Two siblings in separate lessons are two private lessons. If you want to give a sibling discount, it is better to set it as a fixed amount and to write it down.
• Long-standing students. A student who has been with you for three years is worth a lot, but that does not mean they should stay on the price from three years ago. How to raise a price fairly comes later.
• Double lesson. A 90 minute lesson before an exam can cost one and a half times the usual lesson, or a special price. Again: decide once and write it down.

Cancellations: the part that protects your rate

A cancellation policy is part of the price. If a lesson cancelled an hour before is not charged, your real rate is lower than what is written. A few principles:

• Set how far in advance cancelling is allowed with no charge - for example 24 hours. The time is your decision.
• Write it down and send it to parents before the first lesson, not after the first cancellation.
• Decide what happens when you cancel - usually there is no charge, and if it was paid in advance the amount is kept as credit.

How to present the price to parents

• One clear price for each type of lesson, with the length of the lesson: "Private lesson, 50 minutes: NIS 130". No "it depends".
• What is included and what is not - whether there is practice over WhatsApp between lessons, and whether materials are included.
• When and how to pay - at the end of each lesson, in advance, or once a month.
• Cancellation policy - one line.

Parents haggle less when the price is presented clearly and confidently. And when the price is written down, it is also easier for you to stand behind it.

For parents: how to compare prices between tutors

If you came here as a parent, here are a few things to check before comparing only the number:

• How many minutes the price refers to - 45 minutes and 60 minutes are not the same.
• Who goes to whom - a tutor who comes to your home invests time and travel.
• Whether the tutor knows the curriculum for the grade and for the relevant matriculation level.
• What the cancellation policy is - so there are no surprises.

A low price is not always a saving, and a high price is not always quality. A short conversation with the tutor before the first lesson says more than any price list.

Lesson package, paying in advance and paying at the end of the month

The price is only half the story. The other half is when the money arrives.

A lesson package lets you give a small discount for paying in advance, without lowering the base price. How to build one without chaos is in the guide to lesson packages.

If you work with payment at the end of the month, the most important thing is to know at every moment who owes how much. More in the guide to collecting payment for private lessons.

How to keep your rate in practice

Many tutors set a good price and lose it along the way: a lesson that was not recorded, a discount that was given once and became permanent, a debt of three lessons that nobody remembers. Three habits help:

1. Record every lesson on the day it happened - date, time, who took part.
2. Mark exceptions explicitly - if you gave a special price for a certain lesson, let it be written next to the lesson, and not in memory.
3. Collect from a list - a message to the parent with the list of unpaid lessons and the amount, and not "I think you owe about...".

How it works in Teaching

Teaching is an app for private tutors, for managing lessons, debts and collection. For pricing it does several things for you:

• At sign-up you set two rates: a rate for a private lesson and a rate for a group lesson. You can change them later in settings.
• The lesson type is set by the number of participants: when you record a lesson and mark one student, it is a private lesson at the private rate. Two or more is a group lesson, and each student is charged the group rate. You do not type a price at every lesson.
• A manual price for exceptions: in the history screen there is "edit price" for a single lesson. A price that was edited by hand overrides the regular rate.
• A debt is the sum of the unpaid lessons: in the collection screen you see a card for each student with a debt, and pressing "WhatsApp" opens a ready message to the parent with the list of lessons and the amount. You send the message yourself.
• Changing a rate does not confuse the past: when you change a rate in settings, the system asks whether to apply it to lessons that are not yet paid as well, or leave them at the old rate. Lessons that were paid, and lessons whose price was edited by hand, do not change. We wrote about raising a price without losing students in the guide to raising private lesson prices.

And if you want new students to find you, you can open a public profile and appear in student searches in your area. Details on the page for teachers.

In summary

• The market price is very wide and depends on the city, the subject and the time of year.
• You work out your rate from your monthly target, your costs and the lessons that are really paid.
• Set two rates: private, and group per student.
• Protect your rate by recording every lesson and collecting from a list.

Written by the Teaching team. Updated on 14.10.2026. The prices from the external sources were checked on that date and may change. The tax information is general and is not tax advice.