What happens to the money when someone books your lesson

Most tutors find out how a platform's payments work after they have already taught on it. The commission is somewhere in the terms, the payout schedule is somewhere in a help article, and the currency conversion is nowhere at all until the money lands short.

Here is the whole thing in one place.

Commission is the number that matters, and it is often not one number

Some platforms charge a flat percentage. Some start high on your first lesson with a new student and drop as you teach more of them. Some take a different cut on group classes than on one-to-one. A few take a percentage and then charge a withdrawal fee on top, so the headline rate is not what you take home.

Sliding rates are the ones worth reading carefully. A rate that falls as you accumulate hours with one student sounds generous, but it also means the platform takes the most from you at the exact moment a student is deciding whether to come back — the point where you have done the most work for the least certainty.

Parlora takes 13%. One rate, on everything. One-to-one lessons and conversation groups, first lesson and hundredth, every language. You keep 87%.

That third line is worth pausing on. Card processing costs money — roughly 3% on an international card, plus tax in some jurisdictions. On some platforms that comes out of the tutor's share, or out of the amount before commission is calculated, which quietly makes the headline rate worse than it looks. On Parlora it comes out of our 13%. Your 87% is 87% of what the learner paid.

Where tutors get stuck: getting paid outside the platform's home country

This is the part that catches people. A platform can be perfectly happy to let you teach from anywhere and still be unable to pay you where you live.

The reason is usually the payment processor. Automated payout systems only operate in a set list of countries. If you are outside that list, the platform has three options: refuse to onboard you, pay you into a third-party wallet you then have to withdraw from at your own cost, or handle your payment manually.

The wallet route is where fees accumulate invisibly. Platform commission, then a withdrawal fee, then a conversion spread on the way into your own currency. Three cuts, only one of which was disclosed up front.

How Parlora handles it

We pay tutors in every country except those under sanctions. That is the only exclusion.

• Australian tutors are paid through Stripe, straight to the bank account you connect. Automated.
• Everyone else is paid by international transfer, arranged by us, to the account details you save in your settings.

Why payouts are late, and what usually causes it

Parlora pays out monthly. Lessons you deliver in a month are paid in the first week of the following month.

When a payout does not arrive, it is almost always one of three things, and two of them are fixable in about four minutes:

• No payment details saved. The most common cause by a distance. The money is calculated, held, and waiting — but there is nowhere to send it. Nothing about teaching requires payment details, so it is easy to teach for weeks without noticing they are missing.
• Incomplete Stripe onboarding. Stripe asks for a bank account, an identity check and a terms acceptance. Stopping halfway leaves an account that exists but cannot receive money. It looks connected from the tutor's side and is not.
• The lesson has not settled yet. Payouts run on a monthly cycle, so a lesson taught on the 2nd waits longer than one taught on the 28th.

If you take one thing from this article: set up your payment details before your first booking, not after it. Sorting it out while money is already sitting there is the same amount of work and considerably more annoying.

Currency

You set your rate in your own currency. Learners see it in theirs, converted at the rate of the day, and are charged in their own currency by their own bank. You are paid the amount you set, in the currency you set it in.

The conversion happens on the learner's side of the transaction, not yours. That means the number you agreed to is the number you get, rather than a figure that moved between the booking and the payout.

What to ask any platform before you teach on it

• What is the commission, and does it change with volume, lesson type or student?
• Who pays the card processing fee — you or the platform?
• Is there a withdrawal fee on top of commission?
• Can you be paid in your country, and by what method?
• What is the payout schedule, and what is the minimum threshold?
• What happens to your earnings if a student disputes a lesson?

A platform that answers all six quickly is telling you something. So is one that does not.

Common questions