Typical hourly tutoring rates in Canada and Alberta, what the monthly total works out to, and what you get for the money.
In Canada, private high school tutoring generally runs somewhere in the range of $40 to $80 an hour, with agency and specialist rates going higher. In Alberta, one hour a week works out to roughly $200 to $320 a month for a single subject.
What moves the number: whether it's an individual tutor or an agency, whether the tutor is a certified teacher, the subject, and whether sessions are in person or online. Grade 12 diploma subjects tend to be at the higher end.
Broadly the same range nationally — roughly $40 to $80 an hour for high school subjects, higher in the larger urban markets and higher again for specialist exam preparation.
The hourly figure understates the real cost, though, because tutoring is usually bought by the month and by the subject. Two subjects means two tutors or two sessions.
One hour a week, booked around someone else's schedule, in one subject, working on whatever the student remembers to bring.
That's not a criticism of tutors — a good one is genuinely valuable. It's a description of what an hour can cover. Nothing happens on the Sunday night before a Monday deadline, and you usually hear how it went second-hand, if at all.
On four things it isn't close.
It's there when the work is. Homework happens at 9pm on a Tuesday and the panic happens on Sunday night. An hour on Thursday afternoon covers neither.
It covers every course at once. A tutor is hired for a subject. A second subject is a second tutor and a second bill.
It remembers everything. A tutor sees the homework a student remembers to bring. This has seen every question they've ever answered, so it knows which ones they get wrong — nobody has to notice a pattern and mention it.
And it marks work before it's handed in, not after. A tutor reviews the assignment that already came back with a mark on it. This one catches the error while there's still time to fix it and learn from it.
There's a fifth that parents raise more than we expected: students will admit to it that they don't understand something. Saying that out loud to an adult, week after week, is harder than most teenagers will let on.
It doesn't read the room. A good tutor notices when a student is having a bad week, or when the real problem isn't the algebra, and adjusts. This doesn't.
It can't build a relationship, and for some students that relationship is the thing that makes them show up at all.
And it works from what the student gives it. A tutor across the table can see a student is lost from their face.
Ask what specifically is going wrong first. A student who doesn't understand the material needs teaching. A student who understands it but doesn't know where to start, misreads what questions ask, or never checks their work needs something different — and more hours of explanation won't fix any of those three.
If you don't know which it is, that's the thing to establish before spending anything.
JoSeki has a free level with no card and no expiry, and paid packages at $39.99, $69.99 and $99.99 a month. Every level covers every course the student is taking — a second subject costs nothing extra.
The reason it's less isn't that it's a thinner version of tutoring. It's that a tutor's cost is their hour, and ours isn't. It's there every night rather than one, in every course rather than one, and it has already seen every question the student has answered — so it knows where they're weak without anyone having to remember to bring it.
One month of tutoring costs about what two to three months of full support costs here.
The question isn't really tutor versus app. It's what the student is actually short of.
If it's one specific gap that a single good explanation would close, an hour with the right person can do it. If it's the nightly grind — the assignment due tomorrow, the unit that isn't landing, the exam in three weeks, across every course at once — that's a lot of hours to buy, and it's what we're built for.
The free evaluation takes five minutes and will tell you which of the four steps is costing marks. Worth knowing before you spend money on anything.
Sources: Alberta Education and Childcare, alberta.ca, and the Diploma Examinations Program General Information Bulletin. Requirements vary by institution and change — always confirm with the school, the institution's own admissions page, or a school counsellor before making a decision.
A five-minute academic evaluation, free. Then a free plan that never expires — and full packages from $39.99 a month, every course included.
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