What an IB Math tutor costs, and when a tutor is the wrong tool

You want to know two things: what the going rate is, and whether paying it will change the grade. The first is easy. The second depends on why the grade is where it is, and that is the part worth thinking through before paying.

The going rate in 2026

Online tutors who specialise in IB Mathematics charge, in our checks this September, roughly:

• Marketplace generalists (Preply, Superprof and similar): from about 20 to 40 euros an hour. Often good at the maths, rarely IB examiners, variable on the mark scheme.
• IB specialists working online: 50 to 100 euros an hour. Most tutors advertising "IB Math AA" sit here. Around 70 is typical in Western Europe.
• Current IB teachers and examiners: 80 to 150 euros an hour, more in London, Zurich, Dubai or Singapore for in-person sessions.

Rates for Analysis and Approaches run a little above Applications and Interpretation, and HL above SL, because fewer people can teach them.

Those are hourly numbers, and hourly numbers hide the total. One hour a week from October to the May exams is about thirty hours: 2,100 euros at 70 an hour. Two hours a week is 4,200. Two hours a week with an examiner is 6,000 or more. Families rarely add this up in advance, and rarely compare it with what the hours bought.

What the hours buy

An hour with a tutor is an hour of explanation, one to one. That is valuable when explanation is what is missing. It helps less when the student already understands the idea in the session and loses the marks later, on paper, working alone. At a 4 or a 5 the second situation is common, and it is one reason grades can stay flat with a tutor.

A term of weekly tutoring is about twelve hours of contact. Unless you have arranged it, little of that time is the student practising while the tutor watches, and the practice between sessions is done alone.

When a tutor is the right tool

Tutoring is the right choice, and worth the rate, in these cases:

• The student is at a 6 and wants a 7. That is exam technique and harder questions, and a good tutor once a week can do it.
• One topic is the problem. Vectors, or the binomial theorem, or a run of logarithm equations. A few focused sessions fix a topic.
• The IA. The exploration is worth 20 percent of the grade, and a tutor who knows the criteria is the right help for it. It is individual work, and one-to-one help suits it better than a group course.
• HL. Higher Level is a bigger course with harder questions, the marks are lost in different places, and one-to-one help can go at the student's pace.
• The student practises reliably alone. Some do. For them, an hour of direction a week can be enough.
• Five fixed evenings a week are impossible. Sport at a competitive level, a long commute, a family situation. Then a tutor at times that work is the better fit.

When a tutor is the wrong tool

And it is usually not the best choice in these:

• The grade has been flat for three months with a competent tutor. More of the same hour is unlikely to change the outcome; something about the format needs to change.
• The marks are lost in slips, not in blanks. Algebra that breaks in the last two lines is a practice-under-supervision problem. More explanation tends not to help much, because the student already understands the idea.
• The gap is two grades by the mocks. That is around thirty marks in a hundred, and it needs volume: sixty hours of work, not twelve. Buying sixty tutor hours by January costs around 4,000 euros, and much of the practice would still happen alone.
• The whole syllabus is shaky. Weekly tutoring that follows the school's plan has little room to go back and rebuild the foundations while also keeping up with the class.

If you do hire a tutor, buy it like this

• A diagnosis before the first paid hour. Send a marked test. Ask what the pattern is. If the answer is a list of topics, keep looking.
• Practice sessions, not lessons. Ask for at least half of every session to be the student working through timed questions while the tutor watches and interrupts at the line where it goes wrong. This one change often makes the biggest difference.
• A full paper every three weeks, timed, marked to the scheme, with the marks sorted by type of mistake.
• A short written note after each session. Three lines: what was done, what the pattern was, what to practise. You cannot judge the maths; you can judge whether the notes change over time.
• Two shorter sessions often work better than one long one. Two forty-five-minute sessions leave three days between contact, not six.

The alternatives, and what they cost

• The school's maths clinic. Free, and under-used. A student who turns up every week with specific questions gets a lot out of it. It does not supply structure or volume.
• Online question banks and video platforms. Roughly 100 to 300 euros a year. Good for the student who practises alone and needs worked solutions. No one looks at the working.
• Weekend or holiday revision courses. Typically 300 to 900 euros for two to four days. Useful as a final-stretch top-up for a student who already has the syllabus in place; usually too short to rebuild the foundations.
• A live intensive with practice built in. IB Math Lab's course runs 8 weeks, five evenings a week, 60 hours in a group of 8 on a shared whiteboard, and costs €3,000, which is about €50 an hour. Three evenings teach the syllabus in order; two are lab sessions where the practice is done with the teacher watching the working. It costs more than a term of weekly tutoring and less than two hours a week with a specialist until May, and it is built for the situation described above: a flat grade, marks lost in slips, and a deadline.

The question that decides it

Not "what does it cost an hour", but "what has to change for the grade to move, and which format does that?" If the answer is explanation, buy explanation. If the answer is watched practice and volume before a date, buy that. The breakdown of what a 4 to a 6 actually involves will tell you which one you are looking at.