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Lingua for Online Tutors
italki takes 15-21%. Preply takes 18-33%. Cambly pays you about 41 cents on the dollar. Wyzant takes 25%. Koydo Lingua takes $19 a month and 0% of what your students pay you. Even just starting out with one student? Pro Educator is open from your first student upward — 14 days free, no credit card. You break even versus italki at about 4 hours of teaching per week. Bring your students, plug in Stripe Connect, hand out your branded booking link (your-name.lingua.koydo.app), and stop renting your livelihood. 50-language curriculum + built-in AI tutor included.
~13 hours back every week. What you do with them is the only question left.
Online tutors lose ~14 hours a week to scheduling, parent notes, trial follow-ups, and the marketplace messaging treadmill. On Lingua those tasks run on their own. The savings are real. The hours are realer.
For your family
The Tokyo student's reschedule message, the Berlin trial's follow-up email, the São Paulo parent's billing question — all handled overnight by the engine. You eat dinner at home and read the digest in the morning.
For yourself
Your 1099 prep pulls from Stripe Connect automatically. Sibling discounts compute themselves. Parent digests go out on Friday before you've poured coffee. The Saturday morning that used to disappear into the admin pile is yours.
For your business
The marketing post for your branded subdomain, the new conversation-B1 cohort you've wanted to launch, the trial-week sequence for the three referrals waiting — fits in the 13 hours that used to belong to admin. No second job. Just the room to grow the first one.
Side-by-side day-of-week breakdown. 28 tasks that now run on their own. The full math.
The day you switch.
Break-even at 4 hours per week.
| Weekly hours | italki cut (18%) | Lingua cost | Net savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 hr/wk · $40/hr | $58/mo | $19/mo | +$39 |
| 5 hr/wk · $40/hr | $144/mo | $19/mo | +$125 |
| 10 hr/wk · $40/hr | $288/mo | $19/mo | +$269 |
| 20 hr/wk · $40/hr | $576/mo | $19/mo | +$557 |
| 40 hr/wk · $40/hr | $1,152/mo | $19/mo | +$1,133 |
Above 2-3 hours per week, Lingua is strictly cheaper. A full-time tutor saves over $1,000 per month.
Migration is a weekend, not a quarter.
The fear most marketplace tutors carry is that the migration will be painful — lost students, broken scheduling, weeks of email churn. The reality is closer to two evenings of focused work. The italki / Preply / Cambly CSV exporter dumps your historic student list including email and timezone. You import that file into Lingua's onboarding wizard; the wizard creates a draft student record per email, suggests a calendar slot per timezone, and stages a personalized migration email per student. You review the email batch, hit send, and the next morning the regulars who have been with you six months show up on your new branded booking page asking the same Tuesday-night slot.
What also moves with you, free, is the substrate of the work itself. The 50-language Lingua curriculum (CEFR-graded units, vocabulary banks, conversation scenarios, music with karaoke alignment, the SRS flashcard engine) replaces whatever combination of Quizlet, Anki, Quizizz, and Google Docs you were holding together. LiveKit video replaces Zoom Pro. The branded subdomain booking page replaces Calendly Teams. The 50-language native TTS replaces the ElevenLabs subscription you might have been quietly burning $22 a month on for pronunciation models. Total replaced subscriptions for a typical bilingual tutor: $60-$120 a month plus the marketplace commission tax. Lingua replaces that whole stack for $19 with 0% Koydo cut on student payments.
Payment migration is one click. Stripe Connect Express onboarding is the standard Stripe flow — name, address, tax ID, bank account, identity verification. Your students pay through your booking page; Stripe's 2.9% + 30¢ passes through; deposits arrive in 1-2 business days. If you want the optional Koydo Payments tier (5.9% + 30¢ all-in: 2.9% + 30¢ Stripe pass-through, 2% Koydo operational margin, 1% rolling chargeback reserve reconciled annually), you can toggle it on. Most tutors start on direct Stripe and pick up Koydo Payments later if a single bad chargeback teaches them the value of the reserve. The how-tutors-get-paid page has the full plain-English math.
EU + international tutors get the same Stripe Connect treatment. Stripe handles VAT collection on parent payouts in the 40+ countries where Stripe Connect is supported; Lingua's $19 per month SaaS fee is itself subject to standard EU SaaS VAT at the local rate, added at checkout. UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan tutors get parity with US tutors on every workflow except the 1099-K (which is US-specific; non-US tutors get a year-end income summary suitable for their local tax filing). Koydo never claims to be a payroll provider — Stripe Connect remains your money-movement layer, Lingua is the software on top.
italki takes 15-21% of every lesson, every time, forever. A full-time italki tutor billing $4,000 a month gives italki $600-$840 monthly. Koydo charges $19 a month flat, no matter how much you bill. You break even versus italki at about 4 hours per week of teaching.
Most do, especially the repeat regulars who bring you the bulk of your income. italki's terms allow tutors to communicate off-platform; once a student has booked you a few times they overwhelmingly prefer direct contact. Lingua's CSV importer lets you bring your student list in a weekend.
Yes. Pro Educator is open to any tutor from your first student upward — 14 days free, no credit card. The platform was built for the underdog: $19/mo whether you teach 1 student or 100.
Built-in via LiveKit. One-tap from any scheduled lesson. Recording, screen-share, captions, browser-only (no install). No Zoom Pro subscription required.
Your branded booking link (your-name.lingua.koydo.app) lets students self-book based on your availability windows. Timezone-aware. Calendar sync with Google, iCloud, Outlook. No Calendly Teams subscription required.
Stripe Connect Express. Students pay you through your branded booking page. Stripe's 2.9% + 30¢ passes through; Koydo takes 0%. Payouts to your bank in 1-2 business days. Optional Koydo Payments is 5.9% + 30¢ all-in if you want Koydo to handle statements, 1099 prep, refund mechanics, dispute coordination, and the rolling chargeback reserve.
Built-in GPT-4o-mini AI tutor at no extra cost. Daily drills, basic conversation, pronunciation feedback, grammar corrections. Premium AI add-on (Claude Sonnet 4.6 / GPT-5 tier) at +$15/mo for advanced students needing nuanced conversation, complex grammar derivations, exam-prep simulation.
Stripe Connect handles VAT on payouts to EU-based tutors. Lingua's $19/mo SaaS fee is itself subject to standard SaaS VAT in the EU (added at checkout). Available in 40+ countries via Stripe.
14 days free, no credit card, even with just one student. italki CSV importer included. Free migration call with the Koydo onboarding team.
Try free 14 days