Tuition Centre vs Private Tutor vs Marketplace: Which Should You Choose? (2026)

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5. Tuition Centre vs Private Tutor vs Marketplace

Choosing between a tuition centre, an independent private tutor and an online tutoring marketplace comes down to three genuinely different things: cost structure, how tutors are vetted, and how much the sessions can be tailored to your child. A tuition centre such as Explore Learning charges a fixed monthly membership (typically £124-£280) for group or small-group sessions delivered by centrally employed, Enhanced-DBS-checked staff. An independent private tutor found directly or through a specialist agency charges £30-£100+ an hour for fully bespoke one-to-one teaching, but the vetting is your responsibility unless an agency handles it for you. An online marketplace lists independent tutors and adds its own commission or service fee on top - anywhere from an 18% platform fee to a 40% commission, depending which platform you use - while DBS enforcement varies just as widely between platforms. This guide compares all three honestly, with sourced figures for each, because - as far as we can tell from reviewing the pages that currently rank for this question - every existing comparison online is published by a company that sells one of the three models it is "comparing."

What's the Difference Between a Tuition Centre, a Private Tutor and an Online Marketplace?

The three models differ on four practical dimensions that matter far more to most families than the marketing copy suggests: who employs and vets the tutor, how sessions are priced, how much the teaching is tailored to one child, and who is accountable if something goes wrong.

Tuition centres (Explore Learning, Kumon, and smaller local chains) operate from a fixed branch, employ their own tutors directly, and deliver a structured curriculum to small groups - typically two to four children per tutor, sometimes one-to-one for an extra fee. Because the centre is the employer, vetting is centralised: Explore Learning states on its own site that its tutors "are employed, interviewed, recruited, DBS checked and trained by us" and that "they all have enhanced DBS checks, regular safeguarding training." Pricing is a monthly membership rather than an hourly rate, which bundles in materials, progress reports and manager oversight but makes direct £/hour comparison awkward.

Independent private tutors are self-employed individuals engaged directly by a family, either found through word of mouth, a local advert, or a specialist tutoring agency such as Leading Tuition. Sessions are one-to-one and can be built entirely around one child's target school, exam board and current gaps - the model with the most flexibility for exam-specific work. The trade-off is that vetting, references and contract terms sit with the parent unless an agency handles them centrally; our companion guide, How to Vet a Tutor, covers exactly what to check and why a DBS certificate alone is not enough.

Online marketplaces (MyTutor, Tutorful, Tutor Hunt, Superprof and similar platforms) sit structurally between the two: tutors are independent and set their own subject rate, but the platform lists them, handles payment, and takes a cut of every transaction - a commission, a service fee, or a subscription, depending on the platform. Marketplaces are the newest of the three models and the one competitors write about least honestly, because most marketplace-operated blogs simply do not disclose their own fee structure to readers researching "how much does a tutor cost." We cover exactly what each major platform charges, and how tutors are vetted on each one, later in this guide.

How Much Does Each Option Cost Per Hour? (UK Comparison Table)

Hourly rate comparisons across the three models are genuinely difficult, because only one of them - the independent private tutor - is actually priced by the hour. The table below uses each model's own published pricing structure rather than forcing an artificial hourly conversion, with sources so you can check the figures yourself.

Explore Learning's published pricing page and Tailored Tutors' own cost guidance (quoted here for attribution, not as our own figures) broadly corroborate these bands. Online tuition typically costs 10-20% less than in-person tuition for equivalent quality across all three models, mainly reflecting the tutor's reduced travel time and overheads rather than a difference in teaching quality - our companion guide, Online vs In-Person Tutoring: Which Is Better?, covers the format decision separately from the model decision this page addresses. For a full breakdown of what drives 11+ tutoring costs specifically, including materials and session frequency, see How Much Does 11+ Tutoring Cost?.

How Are Tutors Vetted in Each Model? DBS, QTS and Safeguarding Compared

Vetting is where the three models diverge most sharply, and it is the dimension parents most often assume is uniform when it genuinely is not. None of the three models is automatically the "safest" - each has a different vetting mechanism, and within the marketplace model specifically, standards vary enormously from platform to platform.

Tuition centres vet centrally as a condition of employment, before a tutor ever works with a child. Explore Learning states that its tutors "are employed, interviewed, recruited, DBS checked and trained by us" and confirms "they all have enhanced DBS checks, regular safeguarding training and work with knowledgeable managers" - the check happens once, at hiring, and is backed by ongoing training rather than left to the parent to verify.

Independent private tutors are, by default, vetted by whoever hires them - which in a direct arrangement means the parent. As our companion guide How to Vet a Tutor sets out in full, there is no single law requiring a self-employed tutor to hold a DBS certificate, and no regulator inspects individual tutors. What changed on 21 January 2026 is that self-employed tutors can now apply for an Enhanced DBS check, including the barred list check, directly through a registered umbrella body without needing an employer to sponsor the application - removing a practical barrier that previously pushed some tutors toward a weaker Basic check simply because Enhanced wasn't accessible to them directly. Reputable agencies (Leading Tuition included) require an Enhanced DBS check as company policy, which is functionally closer to the tuition-centre model of central vetting - one reason families who want centre-level assurance with tutor-level flexibility often choose an agency-sourced private tutor rather than a fully independent one.

Online marketplaces are the least consistent of the three, and this is the part most comparison content skips entirely. Tutor Hunt mandates an Enhanced DBS check including the children's barred list check for every tutor as a condition of listing: the platform states plainly that "the possession of an Enhanced DBS including the children's barred list check is mandatory," manages the application centrally through an umbrella body at a total cost of £42 (£38 DBS fee plus £4 to the umbrella body), and will not make a tutor's profile searchable until the certificate is uploaded and verified - a process Tutor Hunt says typically takes one to two weeks. Superprof describes a different, less centrally-verified approach: its own published guidance says the platform "has a layered vetting system and expects tutors to have a DBS check," language that stops short of stating every certificate is independently confirmed before a tutor is listed. Neither approach is necessarily wrong, but they are not the same thing, and a "DBS checked" badge on a marketplace profile can mean two different levels of assurance depending which platform you are looking at. The practical takeaway: ask any marketplace directly whether DBS status is centrally verified before listing or simply self-declared by the tutor, and ask to see the certificate details regardless of what the platform claims.

One point that holds across all three models and is worth restating plainly: Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) is not required for private tutoring in any of the three models, and it is not a reliable proxy for one-to-one teaching quality - it certifies classroom training for maintained schools, a different skill set from diagnosing and fixing one child's specific gap. Our vetting guide covers this distinction, along with what to ask a tutor's references and what a written tutoring agreement should cover, in full.

What Do Online Marketplaces Actually Charge - and Who Pays the Fee?

This is the single most under-reported number in the entire tuition-model comparison space: how much a marketplace platform actually takes out of the transaction, and whether that cost falls on the tutor's pay or the parent's bill. Reviewing the pages currently ranking for tuition-model comparisons, none discloses this - which is unsurprising, since most of them are published by companies operating one of these very platforms. The breakdown below is compiled from each platform's own published fee documentation and from independent analysis of the sector published by PMT Education, cited individually so the figures can be checked directly.

Two things are worth drawing out from this table. First, the fee structures are genuinely not comparable at face value - a "40% commission" and a "35% service fee" sound similar but land on opposite sides of the transaction: MyTutor's commission comes out of the tutor's pay (so the parent's advertised price is closer to the true cost), while Tutorful's own support pages confirm its service fee is added on top of the tutor's quoted rate (so the parent pays more than the tutor's listed price, but the tutor keeps their full rate). Second, none of this is prominently advertised on any platform's homepage - you generally only find it in a support article or a tutor-facing payment page, which is exactly why so few parent-facing comparison pages mention it at all. Before booking through any marketplace, it is worth asking directly: what is the final price I will pay, and how much of that reaches the tutor?

Which Option Is Right for Your Situation? A Decision Framework

Rather than a single "best" answer, the right model depends on what your child actually needs right now. The three situations below cover most families' real starting points.

If your family's situation is exam-specific but you are not sure where to start looking for the right tutor, our guides How to Find a Good Private Tutor and, for 11+ specifically, How to Find the Right Private Tutor for 11+ walk through the search process in detail once you've decided the private-tutor route is the right fit.

Continuity, Flexibility and Accountability: The Trade-Offs

Beyond cost and vetting, three further practical differences are worth weighing before committing to any one model.

Continuity: a tuition centre can usually guarantee a replacement tutor within its own staff roster if your regular tutor is unavailable, since the centre - not one individual - is the point of continuity. An independent private tutor offers no built-in backup; if they are ill or unavailable, sessions simply do not happen unless you have a second tutor lined up, which is one reason some families choose an agency (which typically can offer a substitute) over a fully independent arrangement. Marketplaces sit in between - some offer a "find a replacement" search function, but continuity with the same tutor and teaching approach is not guaranteed by the platform itself.

Flexibility: independent tutors and marketplace-sourced tutors both typically offer more scheduling flexibility than a tuition centre, which runs to fixed branch opening hours and session slots. Marketplaces additionally make it straightforward to compare and switch between several tutors quickly, which suits short-term or trial arrangements better than a centre membership or a settled agency relationship.

Accountability if something goes wrong: with a tuition centre, there is a company with a complaints process, a manager, and (per Explore Learning's own published policy) ongoing safeguarding training behind every tutor. With an agency-sourced private tutor, the agency is the point of accountability - Leading Tuition, for example, is directly answerable for every tutor it places. With a fully independent, self-found private tutor, accountability sits entirely with the parent's own vetting and the written agreement in place (see How to Vet a Tutor for what that agreement should cover). With a marketplace, accountability is split between the platform's terms of service and the individual tutor - and, as the vetting comparison above shows, how seriously each platform takes that responsibility varies considerably.

It is also worth weighing the broader cost-benefit question independently of which model you choose - our guide Is Private Tuition Worth It? A Cost-Benefit Analysis of 1:1 Learning looks at outcomes data across the wider market, regardless of which of the three models a family used.

How Common Is Private Tutoring, and Does the Model Matter to the Outcome?

Private tutoring in England has grown substantially over the past two decades and is now genuinely mainstream rather than a niche choice. According to the Sutton Trust's 2026 research, 29% of pupils had received private tutoring at some point by 2026, up from 18% in 2006. Uptake is far from even across the country: 45% of pupils in London had private tutoring, compared with 27% in the rest of England and 24% in Wales, and usage is higher in urban areas (33%) than rural ones (19%). By year group, Year 11 pupils were the most likely to have a tutor, at 25%, reflecting the concentration of tutoring around GCSE exam years. There is also a persistent income gap: 23% of pupils from the worst-off households had private tutoring, compared with 30% from the best-off households - a gap the Sutton Trust's research links partly to which of the three models (typically the cheaper group or centre options) lower-income families can access.

None of this data tells you which of the three delivery models produces better results, because the Sutton Trust's research (like most tutoring research) tracks tutoring uptake generally rather than breaking outcomes down by tuition centre versus private tutor versus marketplace specifically - which is itself a reasonable caution against any comparison page (including this one) claiming one model is objectively "best" in the abstract. The decision genuinely depends on your child's specific situation, which is why the framework above is organised by use case rather than by a single ranked verdict.

How Leading Tuition Compares

Leading Tuition operates as a specialist tutoring agency, which places us in the independent-private-tutor category with one important addition: every tutor we place undergoes the same centralised vetting a tuition centre applies to its own staff. That means an Enhanced DBS check verified by our team before matching, identity verification, and a reference check completed directly by us rather than left for parents to chase - combined with fully bespoke, one-to-one teaching built around your child's target school and exam board, and no marketplace commission structure sitting between what you pay and what the tutor receives. Our specialist tutors most commonly charge £45-£70/hour, in line with the experienced-specialist band across the wider private-tutor market, and our students have achieved a 95%+ offer rate across selective school entry. We are rated 4.8/5 on Trustpilot.

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