A Science Teacher's Online Tutoring Income: Vedantu vs Direct Students

There are two screenshots saved in my phone that I sometimes look at back to back. One shows Rs 7,240, my earnings for February 2025 from a large edtech platform. The other shows Rs 18,730, from March this year, earned from my own direct students.

Nearly identical teaching hours in both months. That gap is the whole story of this post.

Some background so the numbers make sense. I teach science at a government-aided school, Class 9 and 10. Chemistry is my stronger subject but at this level you teach everything. I started online tutoring at the end of 2024 because the school salary was getting stretched thinner every month. Since then I have sat on both sides of the online tutoring fence, and both sides have things nobody mentions upfront.

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Getting onto the platform took three attempts

I applied to three edtech platforms in the same week. The first never replied. Not a rejection, just silence, which honestly stings more.

The second rejected me after a demo class. Their feedback said my "screen presence" needed work. I was annoyed for a full weekend. And then I watched my own demo recording and stopped being annoyed. Sixteen years in a physical classroom had taught me to fill a room, not a webcam frame. I kept looking at the whiteboard instead of the camera. My voice dropped whenever I wrote.

The third application worked. Part-time tutor, Class 9-10 science, evening slots.

To be fair, the training they gave was genuinely good. How to write on a digital whiteboard without it looking like a doctor's prescription. How to check in with students every few minutes. Where to put the light. Small things that a classroom never teaches you.

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What the platform paid, honestly

My first payout was Rs 3,860 for about half a month of sessions. The per-session math worked out to roughly Rs 300 for me, with demo classes counted differently and some of them unpaid. Nobody had explained the demo class arithmetic before I joined. I found out when the first statement arrived.

A steady month brought in Rs 6,500 to Rs 8,500. My best month there was Rs 11,340.

The genuinely good part: I never had to find a single student. Log in, teach, log out, get paid. No fee reminders, no negotiating with parents, no marketing. For someone holding a full-time job, that convenience is worth real money.

But three things wore me down over 14 months.

The rate was fixed and my experience counted for very little. A tutor with 2 years of experience in the next slot earned nearly the same as me with 16.

The schedule belonged to them. I once got assigned a 7 am Sunday slot and my change request took 11 days to process.

And ratings. A parent once gave me 2 stars because their child felt the homework was too much. My slot allocation dipped the following month. My income was tied to something I could not control, and that feeling never went away.

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The accidental switch to direct students

I did not plan the exit. A parent from my colony, no connection to my school, asked if I could teach her son Chemistry for his Class 10 board year. I said yes. Rs 1,000 a month, three online sessions a week.

His result was good, not spectacular. Actually, let me be precise, because "good result" is how tuition teachers inflate things: he went from 61 to 78. No miracle. But his mother was delighted and passed my number to three colleagues at her office.

That one referral chain changed everything. Four students became seven. Then I opened a group batch of six at Rs 900 per student. Today I have 17 direct students across two batches, and the monthly income lands between Rs 16,000 and Rs 18,500.

Weekly hours: 8 to 9. Same as the platform days.

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The comparison nobody gives you straight

Per hour, the platform paid me around Rs 300-350. Direct group batches pay me Rs 1,600-1,900 per hour. Written down like that, the choice looks obvious.

It is not obvious. Because direct tutoring has costs that arrive later and hurt more.

Fee collection is awkward every single month. Two parents delayed payment for two months each and then quietly pulled their kids out. That Rs 3,800 is gone forever, and there is no platform support team to complain to. Summer vacation empties half a batch. One month, two old students left and no new one came, and I just absorbed the dip.

On the platform, student supply was their problem. With direct students, everything is my problem.

So when someone asks me which one is better, I ask them a question back: do you have any way to reach students? If the answer is no, a platform is the smarter start. Learn the craft of teaching online there while getting paid for it. If you already have a network, a school reputation, parents who trust you, the direct route is slower to build and pays roughly five times better per hour.

One more thing that turned out to matter more than I expected: specialization. Parents of Class 11-12 students search for a Physics tutor or a Chemistry tutor, not a "science teacher." The narrower the label, the better the rate.

My next experiment is a separate Class 11 Chemistry batch at Rs 1,800 per student. I am slightly scared of it, genuinely. I last taught the Class 11 syllabus six years ago and it has changed. But the pattern I keep noticing is that the things that scare an experienced teacher are usually the ones worth doing.

If the batch works, the numbers will show up here just like these did