Teaching · For Tutors · Pricing

The rate that
actually pays
you.

Start from what you want to take home in a year. The calculator adds back self-employment tax, your costs, travel, fees and cancelled sessions, and tells you the hourly rate that covers all of it.

Work out my rateWhat you get
$12one-time · every device you sign in on
Buy · $12

Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Or get it in the Tutoring business kit, $69 for 64 items.

$78an hour in the example, to take home $32,000
15.3%self-employment tax, worked out for you
4session lengths priced, plus a package

Your hourly rate

Fill in the three groups on the left. The rate and its breakdown update as you type.

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What you get

Teaching · For Tutors$12 · included with Classroom and Whole-school licenses

What you finish with
The hourly rate you need, with every dollar of it explained: take-home, self-employment tax, your income tax set-aside, costs, travel and fees. Your real pay for every hour worked, prices for 30, 45, 60 and 90 minute sessions and a package, a check of the rate you charge now, a printed breakdown and a printed price list for families.
Who it is for
Independent tutors setting or raising their rates, tutors leaving a center to work on their own, and teachers who tutor on the side.
Format
Browser calculator. Works on a phone, tablet or computer, by touch or keyboard. Prints a rate breakdown and a family-facing price list; downloads the breakdown as a .csv.
Access
$12 one-time, yours on every device you sign in on; the tool opens once you are signed in with it. Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Also in the Tutoring business kit ($69) and the Teaching Suite pass ($199), and 1 more bundle. Everything you type stays in this browser; nothing is sent to Caveat.
Where it lives
The For Tutors space in Caveat Teaching.
Support
Questions, a correction or a request: team@caveatacademic.com.
The hidden part of a tutoring hour. In the example every paid hour brings about 38 more minutes of unpaid work, which the rate has to cover.

How to use it

  1. Load the example to see a full year, or type your own take-home goal and income tax set-aside.
  2. Fill in your weeks, booked hours, cancellations and unpaid prep time, and any in-person travel.
  3. List your yearly and monthly business costs and your card or platform fee.
  4. Read the rate and its breakdown, try your current rate, then print a price list for families.

Work out my rate

How the rate is worked out

Backward from the take-home amount, one line at a time.

Take home$32,000+ taxes$9,788Profit$41,788+ costs, fees$4,369Revenue$46,157÷ paid hours$77.12Rounded up: $78 an hourTake home$32,000+ taxes$9,788Profit$41,788+ costs, fees$4,369Revenue$46,157÷ paid hours$77.12
The calculator works backward from the take-home amount: first the taxes, then the costs and fees, then the 598.5 hours a year that are actually paid.

The taxes, and what is left out

Self-employment tax is Social Security and Medicare for people who work for themselves: 15.3% of 92.35% of net profit, with the 12.4% Social Security part stopping at the wage base ($184,500 for 2026) and nothing owed below $400 of net earnings. Income tax depends on filing status, deductions, other income and the state, so the page asks for your own set-aside rate and applies it to profit minus half the self-employment tax, which is deductible. The 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax on high earnings, the qualified business income deduction and state business taxes are not modeled.

Why the rate looks high

A tutor paid by a center or a school district gets a fixed hourly wage while the employer pays the other half of Social Security and Medicare, the software, the insurance and the gaps between sessions. On your own, every one of those comes out of the hourly rate, and so do weeks without students and sessions families cancel. The calculator puts each of them on a line so the rate can be explained to a family, or adjusted on purpose.

Sources

  1. Internal Revenue Service, Topic No. 554, Self-Employment Tax, and the Instructions for Schedule SE (Form 1040): 15.3% (12.4% Social Security and 2.9% Medicare) on 92.35% of net earnings, no tax below $400, and the deduction for half of self-employment tax.
  2. Social Security Administration, Contribution and Benefit Base: $184,500 of earnings subject to Social Security tax in 2026. Check ssa.gov each January.
  3. Internal Revenue Service, Standard Mileage Rates: 70 cents a mile for business use of a car in 2025. Type the current rate, or your own cost per mile, in Cost per mile.
  4. The arithmetic was checked against an independent Python version written for this page (guide/suite/thr_ref.py).

A pricing aid, not tax or legal advice. Income tax, state taxes and local business rules vary; ask a tax professional about your own situation. Example numbers are made up. Support: team@caveatacademic.com.