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What should your hourly rate be?

Most teachers set a rate by copying someone else’s — then quietly work unpaid hours around it. Start from the income you actually want, and let the maths set the rate. Nothing is sent anywhere; it all runs on this page.

Target income per year (£) before tax — what you want teaching to pay you

Business costs per year (£) room hire, insurance, sheet music, instruments, exam entries, CPD, software

Teaching weeks per year UK term time is usually 36–39

Teaching hours per week actual lesson hours — not admin, travel or prep

Unfilled slots (%) holidays-in-term, gaps and churn — 10–15% is realistic

Your numbers, your maths — we just divide. Nothing here is tracked, stored or emailed.

You need to charge about

£0 /hour

Per 30-minute lesson£0

Per 45-minute lesson£0

Paid teaching hours / year0 hrs

That rate earns you£0/year

Charging £5/hr more adds£0/year

Small rate changes compound — most teachers under-charge for years.

Run your teaching on LessonLoop — free →

30-day trial · no card · invoicing that charges your real rate, every time

How to read the number

Your rate carries more than the lesson.

An hourly rate isn’t pocket money per hour — it has to fund the unpaid halves of the job. That’s why working backwards from income beats copying the teacher down the road.

The unpaid hours

Prep, marking, parent messages, invoicing and travel all live outside the lesson. A rate that only counts contact time underpays the actual job.

The costs nobody bills

Insurance, room hire, music, instrument upkeep, exam runs, CPD — they come out of the rate. Put real figures in and the rate stops lying to you.

The empty slots

Term-time holidays, churn between pupils, the 4pm slot nobody wants — realistic utilisation is 85–90%, and your rate has to absorb the rest.

Questions

About this calculator.

How does the maths work?

Target income plus business costs, divided by your realistic paid hours — teaching hours × teaching weeks, reduced by your unfilled-slot percentage. No hidden benchmarks; change an input and the answer changes.

What do UK music teachers typically charge?

It varies widely by region, instrument and experience — roughly £30–£60 an hour, with London and conservatoire-level teaching above that. The point of this tool is to start from your income goal rather than the local average, then sanity-check against your market.

Is this before or after tax?

Before tax. Most UK private teachers are self-employed, so income tax and National Insurance come out of this via Self Assessment — worth budgeting roughly a quarter to a third of profit for HMRC, depending on your band. (This is a planning tool, not tax advice.)

Do I have to give you my email?

No. The calculator runs entirely on this page, sends nothing anywhere, and isn’t gated. We’d rather be useful than collect addresses.

Should I charge per lesson, per month or per term?

Whatever you charge by, anchor it to an hourly rate that funds your income — then package it. Termly billing smooths your cash flow and cuts admin; it’s how most UK schools on LessonLoop bill.

Set the rate. Then stop chasing it.

LessonLoop invoices every family at your real rate, on time, every term — automatically.

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