What IB Tutoring Costs in Hong Kong

Across Hong Kong centres, IB tutoring is priced roughly like this. Treat it as orientation, not as a quote.

Our own small-group rate starts at HK$250 an hour. One-to-one is quoted by subject and level, and we give you the figure before the first paid lesson rather than after the trial.

It is a supply problem, not a marketing one. The pool of tutors who can teach Maths AA HL or Physics HL to a student chasing a 7 is small, and those tutors can charge accordingly. Group 3 subjects at SL have a much deeper pool.

This matters when you are budgeting for a full Diploma. A student needing help in two HL sciences is a materially different cost from a student needing help in one SL humanities subject, and centres rarely say so upfront.

Ask about each of these by name. Every one of them is standard somewhere in Hong Kong.

• Registration or enrolment fee. A one-off charge before any teaching happens.
• Assessment or placement fee. Charged for the diagnostic that decides your package.
• Materials fee. Sometimes per term, sometimes per subject.
• Minimum package length. A HK$400 hour bought in a compulsory 40-hour block is a HK$16,000 decision.
• Cancellation terms. How much notice, and whether a missed lesson is forfeited or rescheduled.
• Peak-season pricing before mocks and the May session.

We charge no registration fee and no materials fee, and the trial lesson is free. That is not generosity, it is a pricing choice: we would rather the hourly rate be the whole story.

Do this arithmetic before you commit, because centres quote per hour and families budget per term.

1. Hours per week, times weeks in the term, times the hourly rate.
2. Add every fixed fee from the list above.
3. Multiply by the number of subjects. This is the step families skip, and it is where the number stops being comfortable.
4. Add the intensive block before mocks if the centre runs one.

A student taking two subjects one-to-one at HK$700 an hour, weekly, across three terms, is a low six-figure commitment for the year. That is worth knowing at the start rather than in March.

Groups of four are better value than one-to-one and, for a student whose problem is exam technique rather than content, they are also better teaching. Hearing another student reason through a question wrongly, and hearing it corrected, is instruction you cannot get alone.

One-to-one earns its premium in three situations: a real content gap that needs a different pace, a compressed timeline before an exam, and coursework such as the Internal Assessment or the Extended Essay. Outside those, paying for one-to-one buys attention the student may not need.