Comparison of Tutoring Websites

A survey to help you choose the tutoring site that best fits your needs (as student or teacher)

By Tutoring Site or Tutoring Website we mean a website that facilitates the connection between students and teachers for private, one-on-one lessons either online or in person. There are hundreds of tutoring sites, and new ones are created every year, so it may be difficult for a student or teacher to choose the one that best fits one's needs.

This article is a survey where many tutoring sites in English and other languages are analysed and compared on various distinguishing features; the resulting grids provide essential facts to orient students who are looking for tutors, and teacher who are looking for students or employers and allow them to take informed decisions.

The most important distinguishing features of tutoring sites are described in the following table.

Feature	Possible types
Location of tutoring sessions	Online only In person only Online and in person
Tutor directory and possibility to choose a tutor directly	Students can choose tutors from a public directory using selection criteria No tutor directory is available, tutors are chosen by the site's staff or automatically
Relationship between tutors and company who owns the web site	Tutors are employees or affiliates of the site's company, who verifies and guarantees their qualifications Tutors are independent of the site's company and may also run (and advertise) their own business
Tutoring requests	Students can post tutoring requests to the public (anonymously) and be contacted by interested tutors Students cannot post tutoring requests to the public

The above features are evaluated in the relevant columns of the grids shown below.
Tutors-Live Features

• TL covers both online and in person tutoring (a tutor can offer online, in person or both types of service). Many tutoring websites provide only one mode.
• TL is the only site which offers in person tutoring in all countries worldwide (the combination of country + postal code can be used as selection parameter).
• TL allows students to post tutoring requests for particular needs and gives them the possibility to be contacted by independent tutors. In most tutoring sites only the student or the site's staff can take the contact initiative.
• TL is the only site where a user can register as both tutor and student.
• TL is the only site where both students and tutors can post their profile and contact each other as in a social network.
• TL is the only multilingual site as regards the languages used for tutoring (all the languages of the world) and the site user-interface (5 languages).
• The basic services of TL are free for students and tutors. No commissions are taken from the tutoring fees. In order to send an initial contact message to a Tutors-Live user, you must have a Premium subscription. Premium users can contact up to 10 users per day and have priority in search results. (see Becoming a Premium User)
• TL has the richest set of selection criteria for finding tutors and tutoring requests.
• TL is the only tutoring website where students can be listed (if they want) and found by tutors or by other students.
• TL is the only site that allows students to get in touch with other students. This can be useful to form study groups.
• TL allows students browsing for tutors or other students. Most tutoring sites don't.
• TL allows students to rate their tutors and post related comments. Most tutoring websites do not offer this service.
• TL covers academic as well as non-academic subjects. Most tutoring websites cover only academic subjects.