Best Tuition Agencies in Singapore: 9 Compared, Real Rates (2026)
Published 21 August 2026
Every home tuition agency in Singapore tells parents the same thing: our service is free for you. It is one of those claims that is technically true and practically misleading. The industry standard is that the agency takes 50% of the first month’s fees — and on most of these sites, you are the one instructed to transfer that money to the agency, before you start paying the tutor at all.
This comparison is built from the published rate cards, FAQs and terms and conditions of nine agencies, read in August 2026, including the tutor-facing pages where the commission is usually disclosed and the parent-facing pages where it usually isn’t. We haven’t engaged any of them. Four of the nine never publish their commission anywhere. One has a page titled “Payment Details & Commission Policy” that manages not to state the commission while making you liable for it.
And before any of that: almost none of this industry is regulated the way parents assume.
What tuition actually costs
Agency rate cards are guidelines — every agency says tutors set their own rates — but they converge tightly enough to be useful. Per hour:
| Level | Part-time (undergrad) | Full-time tutor | Ex/current MOE teacher |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-school | $20–35 | $30–50 | $50–70 |
| Lower primary | $25–40 | $35–50 | $50–80 |
| Upper primary | $30–40 | $40–60 | $50–90 |
| Lower secondary | $30–50 | $40–60 | $60–100 |
| Upper secondary | $35–50 | $45–65 | $60–105 |
| JC / A-level | $40–65 | $60–90 | $90–150 |
| IB Diploma | $40–70 | $55–100 | $90–150 |
The pattern worth noticing: an ex-MOE teacher costs roughly twice a part-time undergraduate at every level. That single choice moves your bill more than which agency you pick.
Now the number that should anchor all of this. According to the Department of Statistics’ Household Expenditure Survey, the average Singapore household spent $104.80 a month on private tuition in 2023 — up from $88.40 in 2017/18. Households in the bottom fifth by income spent $36.30; the top fifth spent $162.60. So the typical family is buying roughly one hour a week of a mid-market part-time tutor. The $150-an-hour figures that dominate parenting forums are the visible tail, not the norm — and if you’re comparing yourself against them, you’re comparing against the wrong thing.
Who actually pays the agency
Here is the model, stated plainly, because almost no agency states it on the page a parent reads.
The agency takes 50% of the first month’s tuition fees — usually described as “the first two weeks of lessons” or “50% of the first four lessons.” From week three onward, the tutor receives the full rate and the agency takes nothing further.
Work it through on a normal engagement. Upper primary, a full-time tutor at $50 an hour, two 1.5-hour lessons a week:
| Amount | |
|---|---|
| What you pay in month one | ~$600 |
| What the agency keeps | ~$300 |
| What the tutor receives for 12 hours’ teaching | ~$300 |
| The tutor’s effective rate, month one | ~$25/h |
Nothing extra has been added to your bill — that part of the claim is true. But the tutor works the first fortnight for nothing, and on SmileTutor, FamilyTutor and Nanyang Academics you are explicitly told to send that money to the agency rather than the tutor. Over a year-long engagement the agency’s cut works out around 8% of what you spend. In month one it is half.
SmileTutor’s site says both things. Its rate page: “Our services are completely free for parents and students. There are no agency fees except for government-imposed GST.” Its FAQ: “you are required to cooperate with us by transferring the allocated agency commission (usually 50% of the 1st month fees) + GST directly to SmileTutor.” Both pages were live as we published. Their worked example also still charges 7% GST — the rate has been 9% since January 2024.
Who discloses, and who doesn’t
| Agency | Commission | Published where? |
|---|---|---|
| MindFlex | 50% of first month; 25% short-term, capped | Both parent and tutor FAQs |
| FamilyTutor | “50% to 62.5% of the first 4 weeks” | 50% on the rate page; 62.5% only in T&Cs |
| TutorNow | 50% of first month, worked example | Tutor FAQ only |
| SmileTutor | 50% of first month + GST | FAQ — contradicted by its own rate page |
| Superprof | 10% from tutors, or $195/yr for 0% | Fully public, both sides |
| Nanyang Academics | Not stated | A “Commission Policy” page with no figure |
| Genius Mind | Not stated | Only a blog line about what others charge |
| Tutor City | Not stated | “No agency fee to parents”, nothing further |
| ChampionTutor | Not stated | Site unreachable — expired security certificate |
Rank 1:MindFlex(external site)
Price: Part-time $25–55/h · Full-time $40–90/h · Ex-MOE $55–130/h
MindFlex is the only agency here that publishes its commission to both sides and in full: 50% of the first month for long-term assignments, 25% for short-term work capped at two to four lessons’ worth depending on length, and — unlike SmileTutor — the correct 9% GST. Its rate card covers ten level bands across three tutor tiers, and it says openly that the rates are the market’s rather than its own, derived from its assignment volume. Two details in its favour: trial lessons exist but are paid, and it says so rather than advertising a free trial; and if a client terminates inside the first month, the tutor still gets 50% of what they taught. Replacement tutors are arranged at no extra cost, though you pay for lessons the first tutor already delivered.
Verdict: Best disclosure in the market — the only agency publishing its full commission schedule to both sides.
Rank 2:FamilyTutor(external site)
Price: Part-time $25–70/h · Full-time $35–100/h · NIE-trained $65–150/h
The most granular rate card published by anyone — twelve level bands including separate IB and IGCSE tiers — and, unusually, the commission appears on the same page as the rates: 50% of the first four weeks, paid to FamilyTutor directly. That’s more honest placement than any competitor manages. Two things sit in the terms and conditions rather than the rate page, and you should read them before committing. The commission is actually “50% to 62.5% of the first 4 weeks” — the upper bound appears nowhere a parent would look. And where no tuition period is specified, the T&Cs say all parties “should be prepared to commit for at least three (3) months.” Their rates run highest in the market for MOE-teacher tiers. The “Google Verified” badge on the site refers to a business listing, not any accreditation.
Verdict: The only one putting commission on the same page as the rates — read the T&Cs for the rest of it.
Rank 3:TutorNow(external site)
Price: Tutor-set; agency takes 50% of the first month
TutorNow states the number more plainly than anyone: “Our agency’s commission is 50% of your first month’s tuition fee” — followed by the arithmetic, worked all the way through on a $480 month producing a $240 commission. It also spells out what happens when things end early, in both directions: a tutor who quits owes the agency the equivalent commission, and a parent who terminates has the referral fee recalculated on lessons actually completed. The catch is where all that lives. It’s on the tutor page. The page a parent lands on says the service is “free-of-charge for parents and students,” and the level-by-level rate grid sits on yet another page. Everything you need is published; nothing is published together.
Verdict: Clearest single statement of what the agency takes, with the arithmetic worked out.
Rank 4:SmileTutor(external site)
Price: Part-time $25–70/h · Full-time $35–120/h · Teachers $50–130/h
The largest agency here by some distance — around 1,100 Google reviews at 4.7 stars — with the broadest rate card in the comparison, running from pre-school through IB, IGCSE, polytechnic and adult language courses. The mechanics are all disclosed somewhere: 50% of the first month for long-term assignments, 25% for short-term, and the payment article is refreshingly direct that “tutors will not be paid for the first 2 weeks of lessons as these are the commission fees.” What costs it three places is that its own rate page tells parents there are no agency fees, while its FAQ instructs those same parents to wire the agency half of month one. A prospective customer reading only the page they landed on would be misinformed. The stale 7% GST across its worked examples suggests those pages haven’t been reviewed in over two years.
Verdict: The biggest, with a full rate card — and a site that contradicts itself on whether it charges you.
Rank 5:Superprof(external site)
Price: S$33/month access fee, paid by you; lessons billed separately
Superprof is not an agency at all — it’s a marketplace, and it’s included because it inverts the model. You pay a visible, recurring S$33 a month simply for the ability to contact tutors, and lesson fees are entirely separate and paid to the tutor. Tutors either pay 10% commission on platform payments or S$195 a year to keep everything. Nobody is pretending the service is free. The trade-off is real though: that $33 buys access, not matching — you search, vet, and arrange everything yourself, and the subscription auto-renews monthly until you cancel. Worth it if you’d rather pay a small transparent fee than a large opaque one, and you have the time to do the work an agency would otherwise do.
Verdict: Honest about who pays, because you pay visibly — but you do the matching yourself.
Rank 6:Tutor City(external site)
Price: Part-time $30–60/h · Full-time $45–90/h · Ex-teachers $50–150/h
Tutor City has been running since 2010, publishes a clean seven-band rate card including music and adult language, and states plainly that tutors are freelance and set their own rates. There are no contracts and you can stop at any time. What’s entirely absent is any account of how the business makes money: the rate page says “No agency fee to parents” and the site offers no commission figure, no tutor-facing fee schedule, and no explanation anywhere. That’s not evidence of anything improper — the industry norm is well established and they almost certainly follow it — but after fifteen years in business it’s a strange thing to leave unsaid, and it means you cannot check what your tutor is actually being paid.
Verdict: Fifteen years in business and a clear rate card, with no explanation of how it earns anything.
What MOE regulates — and what it doesn’t
This is the part most parents have backwards, and it comes straight from MOE’s own answer in Parliament.
Tuition centres are registered. Under the Education Act, “centres offering tuition or enrichment programmes to 10 or more students must be registered with MOE.” Registered centres must meet fire and building requirements, have a school management committee, and display their certificate. Crucially, “Tutors at these centres must also be registered with MOE. During registration, they must declare whether they have been convicted of any offence punishable with imprisonment.” MOE will not register anyone convicted of serious offences, including sexual offences.
Private home tutors and the agencies that supply them are not. MOE’s wording is unambiguous:
“These regulations do not cover freelance tutors who offer private tuition outside of centres, for example, in homes, or agencies that provide matching services between private tutors and student.”
So the tutor an agency sends into your home is under no registration requirement, no MOE screening, and no criminal-conviction declaration — the safeguard that applies at a registered centre does not follow the tutor to your dining table. And no agency in this comparison is, or can be, MOE-registered as an agency. To their credit, none of them claims to be.
What they do all advertise is an “Ex/Current MOE Teacher” tier. Read that for what it is: a claim about where an individual tutor used to work, not a statement that the agency has been vetted, licensed or supervised by anyone. A rate card headed “MOE Teachers — $90–130/h” is describing a credential, not an endorsement.
Two more things worth knowing:
- Even registration isn’t a quality mark, and MOE says so itself on its own lookup page: “MOE’s registration does not in any way represent an endorsement or accreditation of the quality of the courses offered.”
- You cannot criminal-record check a tutor, despite advice to the contrary circulating online. The Police’s Certificate of Clearance is “for overseas-related usage only” and “is not used for local purposes, e.g. local employment.” There is no consumer-accessible background check in Singapore. What you can do is meet the tutor yourself, insist the first lessons happen somewhere you’re present, and treat “the agency screened them” as a sales line rather than a safeguard.
Does tuition actually work?
Worth asking before spending $1,200 a year, and the honest answer is that the evidence is thin and mixed — in both directions.
The largest recent study, covering 55 countries in PISA 2022, found that of several forms of private tutoring, only asynchronous video-based instruction was associated with better maths performance; the face-to-face forms trended negative, which the authors themselves suggest reflects weaker students seeking help rather than tutoring causing harm. That interpretive problem — tuition is bought because a child is struggling — undermines almost every simple comparison in this field.
Closer to home, the only rigorous Singapore study we could find is from 2005, and it concluded that having a private tutor “may be counter-productive,” with gains in a tutored subject sometimes coming at the expense of others through sheer time displacement. A 2015 Straits Times survey found that only 30% of parents who paid for tuition felt it significantly improved their child’s grades. And a 2024 study of a selective schooling system found something that should give PSLE-focused parents pause: children tutored over an admissions threshold were more likely to struggle afterwards than equally-capable children who arrived without tutoring.
MOE’s own position, from a 2019 parliamentary reply, is more direct than anything an agency will tell you:
“if a child is generally coping well academically and understands the fundamentals, tuition may not be necessary and can even be detrimental. Excessive reliance on tuition can diminish the ability for independent learning.”
None of that means tuition never helps. It means the honest framing is a targeted intervention for a specific, diagnosed gap — not an insurance policy bought because everyone else is buying one.
The cheaper options nobody advertises
Because nobody earns a commission mentioning them:
- The Collaborative Tuition Programme — subsidised tuition run by the Self-Help Groups (CDAC, the Eurasian Association, SINDA and Yayasan MENDAKI), held in schools and community centres and open across races. MOE points to it directly when asked about affordability.
- Free in-school support: the Learning Support Programme for English in P1–P2 runs in groups under ten, five times a week; Learning Support for Mathematics now extends to P3–P4, alongside reading and dyslexia remediation. If your child qualifies, this is trained, free, and already coordinated with their teacher.
Ask the form teacher before you ask an agency. They know the gap, and the school’s support costs nothing.
Red flags
- “Free for parents.” True in the sense that nothing is added to your bill; false in the sense that you are the one funding the agency’s cut. Ask what the commission is and when you pay it.
- A commission you can’t find. Four agencies here publish no figure. One makes the parent liable for a commission it declines to state, and warns of legal costs if you pay the tutor directly to avoid it.
- Terms that live only in the T&Cs. One agency’s rate page says 50% while its T&Cs say up to 62.5%, and buries a three-month minimum commitment where no parent will see it.
- Credential claims you can’t verify. Tutors on forums report agencies asking them to present as full-time or current teachers when they aren’t. There is no register you can check. Ask to see the actual employment record, or treat the tier as unproven.
- An expired security certificate. One agency on this list can’t be reached at all — browsers block it with a full-page warning. It handles parents’ payment instructions.
- Advertising that sells fear. The Education Minister criticised centres touting outside primary schools in 2025, noting there are no exams in P1 and that flyers exist “to create this fear of missing out.” MOE was still reviewing an advertising code a year later.
Questions to ask before you sign
- What is your commission, exactly — what percentage, of which period, and do I pay it to you or to the tutor?
- Is the rate you quoted me the rate the tutor receives from month two? What are they paid in month one?
- What is the minimum commitment, and is it in the terms and conditions rather than on the page you showed me?
- How did you verify this tutor’s qualifications and employment, and can I see the evidence rather than the claim?
- If I’m unhappy after two lessons, what do I owe — and is a replacement free?
- Before you answer any of that: has my child’s form teacher been asked what the actual gap is, and whether school support covers it?
How we picked
Nine agencies, compared on their own published rate cards, FAQs and terms and conditions — including tutor-facing pages — read in August 2026. No enquiries submitted, no sponsors, no affiliate links. Ranking favoured disclosure over price: whether the commission is published, where, and whether the parent-facing page agrees with the rest of the site. Where an agency publishes nothing, the table says so. Rate bands are consolidated across agencies and are guidelines, not quotes — every agency states that tutors set their own rates. Household spending figures are from the Department of Statistics’ Household Expenditure Survey 2023, and the regulatory position is quoted from MOE and the Singapore Police Force directly.
Frequently asked questions
How much do tuition agencies charge parents in Singapore?
Agencies advertise their matching service as free, and nothing is added to your hourly rate. But the industry standard is that the agency keeps 50% of the first month’s fees — usually the first two weeks of lessons — and on several sites the parent is instructed to transfer that amount to the agency directly. From week three the tutor receives the full rate.
What are typical home tuition rates in Singapore?
Roughly $25–40 an hour for a part-time undergraduate tutor at primary level, $35–60 for a full-time tutor, and $50–90 for an ex or current MOE teacher. JC rates run higher, at about $40–65, $60–90 and $90–150 respectively. An MOE-trained tutor costs around twice a part-time one at every level.
Are tuition agencies registered with MOE?
No, and they cannot be. MOE requires registration for centres teaching 10 or more students, and tutors at those centres must register and declare criminal convictions. MOE states that these regulations "do not cover freelance tutors who offer private tuition outside of centres... or agencies that provide matching services". An "Ex-MOE teacher" tier describes the tutor’s past employer, not agency accreditation.
Can I do a background check on a private tutor in Singapore?
Not through any official channel. The Singapore Police Force’s Certificate of Clearance is "for overseas-related usage only" and "not used for local purposes". There is no public register of private tutors either. Meet the tutor yourself, be present for early lessons, and treat any agency claim to have screened them as marketing rather than a safeguard.
How much does the average Singapore family spend on tuition?
About $104.80 a month, according to the Household Expenditure Survey 2023 — up from $88.40 in 2017/18. Households in the lowest income fifth spent $36.30 a month and the highest fifth $162.60. That average buys roughly one weekly hour with a mid-market part-time tutor, well below the figures usually quoted in parenting forums.