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How Tutors Get Paid
There is no platform commission on Koydo Lingua. Tutors subscribe to Pro Educator ($19/month flat) and keep their lesson earnings. You can arrange payment directly with students — Koydo takes nothing — or take payments through the Koydo marketplace, where a charity-bound 3% fee plus standard Stripe processing applies. Compare that to italki's 15-21%, Preply's 18-33%, Cambly's ~59%, Wyzant's 25%. Below is exactly what you'd see during signup.
Flow A — Default
Koydo takes nothing · your own payment rails
Monthly math at $1,600 in lesson revenue:
$1,600 − Stripe ($47) − Pro Educator ($19) =$1,534 you keep
Flow B — Recommended
Charity-bound 3% + standard Stripe processing · no commission
Monthly math at $1,600 in lesson revenue:
$1,600 − Stripe ($47) − charity-bound 3% ($48) − Pro Educator ($19) = $1,486 you keep
Why the 3% isn't a commission.
It's charity-bound. The 3% on marketplace payments funds Koydo's charitable giving. It doesn't flow to Koydo's margin, and it doesn't scale Koydo's incentive to push you toward more expensive lessons — the fee exists to do good, not to tax your teaching.
Koydo's revenue is the subscription. The $19/month Pro Educator subscription is what pays for the platform — the curriculum, the AI assist, the gradebook, the booking pages. Because Koydo's income is flat, the matching surface never has a reason to favor whoever generates the biggest cut.
Stripe processing passes through. Card processing costs what it costs — Stripe's standard rate (2.9% + 30¢ in the US) goes to Stripe, itemized on every transaction. Koydo doesn't mark it up.
Their fee math vs ours.
| Platform | Per-lesson cut | Published in plain English? | Chargeback policy? |
|---|---|---|---|
| italki | 15–21% | Vague rate page | Buried in support FAQ |
| Preply | 18–33% (first 400 hours) | No public table | Tutor-bears-all, no notice |
| Cambly | ~59% (set rate, $0.17/min) | Not published | N/A — Cambly holds all funds |
| Wyzant | 25% | Brief mention | Buried |
| Koydo Lingua | No commission — $19/mo flat + charity-bound 3% on marketplace payments | This page + gated signup acknowledgment | Stripe's standard process, published here |
Most tutors start with marketplace payments. Some never leave.
Running your own payment rails is the right flow for tutors who already have a multi-year clean payment history, who run their own accountant relationship, and who view managing a single chargeback per year as routine paperwork rather than a disruption. You keep your existing Stripe (or PayPal, or bank-transfer) setup, Koydo takes nothing, and the trade is that you carry the billing admin and the chargeback risk yourself: Stripe gives you the dispute notification, the evidence-upload window, and the standard $15 network fee per chargeback. You write the response. You eat the loss when you lose.
Marketplace payments are the right flow for new tutors, for tutors who hate paperwork, and for any tutor who wants booking and billing in one place. Families pay from the booking page; you see the split on every transaction — your earnings, Stripe's standard processing (its exact pass-through), and the charity-bound 3%. Koydo's own revenue stays the flat $19/month Pro Educator subscription no matter how much you teach, which is exactly why the directory can rank tutors on fit instead of on anyone's cut.
What counts as a chargeback in this business is worth knowing before you choose. A parent who disputes a single $40 lesson because their kid forgot the appointment is rare — most parents who want a refund just ask, and most tutors just refund. A parent who disputes a $480 package because a teenager went through a rough month and missed five lessons is the chargeback that actually shows up. So is the parent whose credit card got stolen and who disputes every charge in the past 60 days, including yours. So is the divorce-and-custody dispute where one parent pays for lessons and the other parent contests the charge as unauthorized. These are rare-but-painful events — on either flow, they run through Stripe's standard dispute process.
International tutors get the same choice with one footnote: Stripe Connect is available in 40+ countries, the 1099-K is US-only (non-US tutors get a year-end income summary suitable for local filing), and EU SaaS VAT on the $19 Pro Educator subscription is added at checkout per local rate. UK, EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Japan are first-class. A tutor in Lisbon teaching Portuguese to a student in Boston runs the same dashboard, the same booking page, the same Stripe Connect deposit — Stripe handles the cross-border money movement, Lingua handles the software on top.
No. You can arrange payment directly with your students from day one (PayPal, Venmo, bank transfer, your own Stripe — Koydo takes nothing), and switch to taking payments through the Koydo marketplace whenever having booking + billing inside Lingua becomes worth it to you. Nothing is locked in.
It's charity-bound: the 3% fee on payments taken through the Koydo marketplace funds Koydo's charitable giving — it is not commission and it is not Koydo's margin. Koydo's revenue is the flat $19/month Pro Educator subscription. Stripe's standard processing (2.9% + 30¢ in the US) passes straight through to Stripe.
Disputes run through Stripe's standard process: you're notified, you get an evidence window to upload lesson logs and your response, and Stripe adjudicates. If you lose, Stripe debits the disputed amount plus its standard network fee. Koydo doesn't add fees on top of a dispute.
You handle the dispute yourself through your own Stripe Dashboard. Stripe notifies you within 24 hours of receiving the dispute. You upload lesson logs, attendance records, and your narrative response directly to Stripe. If you lose the dispute, Stripe debits the chargeback amount + the $15 network fee from your next payout. Koydo never touches it.
Yes. Stripe's dashboard itemizes every transaction, fee, refund, and dispute. On marketplace payments, the charity-bound 3% shows as its own line — you always see the split: your earnings, Stripe's processing, and the 3% charity fee. There are no hidden or bundled fees.
Stripe issues the 1099-K for US tutors on Stripe-processed payments at the federal reporting threshold. For non-US tutors, Stripe produces a year-end income summary suitable for local tax filing — Stripe Connect handles the local tax compliance layer.
italki, Preply, Cambly, Verbling, and Wyzant don't publish a page like this because publishing the math would make their 15-59% take rates look bad next to a flat $19/mo subscription plus a transparent charity-bound 3% on marketplace payments. We publish it because the transparency is itself a selling point — tutors who've been burned by hidden marketplace fees should know exactly what they're getting before they sign.
14 days free, no credit card. You'll see this same comparison + the full TOS + an "I understand" acknowledgment before any money moves.