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Become a tutor on Koydo Lingua
Most tutors land here from one of two doorways. They taught school for years and finally walked away. Or they've been bilingual their whole lives and only just realized other people want what they have. Either way, the math is simple — you do the work, Koydo takes ten cents on the dollar, your students pay you direct, and the 60-language engine handles the parts that would otherwise burn your evenings.
No application gate. No audition. You list, the next day you can take a trial. First January's 1099 prep is auto-drafted; we'll explain the rest as you grow.
On every $40 lesson
Koydo Lingua
10%
Koydo fee
You keep
$37.34
$4 platform · $1.46 Stripe processing pass-through. You see this on your dashboard the same hour the lesson ends.
Preply
33%
Their take rate
You keep
$26.40
$13.20 platform commission, paid forever, on every lesson with every repeat student.
iTalki
15%
Their take rate
You keep
$33.54
Lower than Preply, but still a 6% delta vs Koydo on every hour you teach — every year.
Across a 25-lesson month at $40/lesson, the gap between Koydo and Preply is $263/month — $3,160 a year that stays with you.
Included with your $0/month start
The 60-language Lingua engine
CEFR-graded curriculum, vocab quizzes, pronunciation lab with formant tracking, the Reader story library, Music with karaoke alignment, Scenario roleplay, the conversation AI tutor. Replaces Quizlet ($4-15/mo), Anki, ElevenLabs ($22/mo + per character), Babbel-class drill content.
Your branded subdomain
sarah-chen.lingua.koydo.app — your storefront, your reviews, your booking link. Indexable, SEO-friendly. Replaces Calendly Teams ($12/seat/mo) and the WordPress site you'd otherwise spend a weekend setting up.
LiveKit video, built into every lesson
No Zoom subscription. No Meet handoff. Recording optional with two-sided consent. Whiteboard, screen-share, multi-party for cohorts. Replaces Zoom Pro ($15/mo).
Stripe Connect Express
Students pay you direct. Same-day payout ($1 fee) or 1-day standard (free). Lingua never holds your money. Auto-generated 1099-NEC drafts every January. TurboTax CSV export.
The student app, on the same engine
Your students don't need a separate app. They redeem your class code at lingua.koydo.app/join in any browser and use the same Reader, Pronunciation Lab, Conversation, Map, and Music surfaces you teach with. Replaces $0 — but it's the kind of thing competitors can't ship without a curriculum engine.
From tutors who started here
Career teacher
I retired from public-school French at 56 and didn't know what to do with my afternoons. A neighbor asked if I'd tutor their daughter, and four years later I have eighteen students and an income I never had as a public-school teacher. Koydo handles the parts that always exhausted me — billing, parent comms, the after-hours admin.
—Marie L., Trenton NJ
Bilingual parent
I'm Vietnamese, my husband is Senegalese, our kids speak both at home. Other heritage parents started asking me to tutor their kids in French. I built it slowly — first six students, then twelve, then twenty-three. Three school years in, this is what pays our mortgage. The engine does the curriculum heavy lifting.
—Anh P., Jersey City NJ
Polyglot side income
I'm a software engineer in Brooklyn who happens to speak Mandarin, Russian, and German. I list two languages on Koydo and teach maybe eight hours a week. It paid for a trip to Lisbon last spring. It's also the most consistent way I get to use Russian without flying.
—Daniel K., Brooklyn NY
Most new Koydo tutors start with one student — often a niece, a neighbor's kid, the friend who's been asking for 'a French weekend' for years. You list a profile, claim your subdomain, run one trial. Within two weeks most tutors have 3-5 paying students; within two months, ten. There is no minimum, no application gate, no audition. You teach the first lesson, and the rest follows.
If you charge $40 per hour, Koydo takes $4 and Stripe takes $1.46 (the standard 2.9% + 30¢ processing). You keep $37.34 — roughly 86% of every lesson. Preply tutors at the same rate keep $26.40. Across a 25-lesson month, that's a $200 difference per month, or $2,400 a year. We never raise our take rate retroactively.
Two paths. Path one: the people in your life who already want to learn — most new tutors fill 60-70% of their first month from their own networks. Path two: the Lingua /find-a-tutor directory — public, crawlable, free to list. Build your public profile right in the Lingua Educator app — add a photo and cover image, pick your languages and rate, and flip on your Koydo Tutor Marketplace listing in a tap. Tutors who post a real bio + a 30-second intro audio get inquiries within their first week of being listed.
The full 60-language Lingua engine (CEFR-graded curriculum, vocab quizzes, pronunciation lab with formant tracking, scenario library, Reader stories, Music with karaoke alignment). Your branded subdomain (your-name.lingua.koydo.app). LiveKit video built into every lesson — no Zoom subscription. A booking page with calendar sync. Stripe Connect Express onboarding. The built-in AI tutor (GPT-4o-mini class) at no extra cost.
Engine pulls your Stripe Connect earnings into a 1099-NEC draft you can hand to TurboTax or your accountant. Quarterly summaries, mileage tracking if you teach in person, expense tracking. The first January is the hardest; the second is one click. We don't promise to do your taxes — we promise to make them less of a scramble.
Yes. A verified third-party background screen plus annual renewal is required before you can accept minor-facing bookings. Under-13 students require their parent to complete COPPA verifiable consent before any data is stored — Lingua handles the email flow. Most tutors teaching minors find that families value the verification and the rates settle a bit higher than adult tutoring.
You can still list it. The directory accepts any language. You won't get engine support (vocab quizzes, the AI tutor, pronunciation lab) for that language, but the booking + payments + lesson room + branded subdomain all work. We add new languages quarterly based on demand signals; if you teach a language not in our 60, fill out the request form on your profile and we'll factor it in.
No. You list when you're ready, you can pause your profile any time, your students transfer their entitlements to other tutors if you stop. No annual contract, no cancellation fee, no penalty for slow months. Tutors teaching seasonally (academic-year only) make up roughly a fifth of the active directory.
Most tutors are taking their first paid lesson within a week of listing. No application gate. No quota. No catch.
Start your profile · $0