Teachworks vs TutorBird (2026): Which Should You Pick?

Teachworks and TutorBird are both mature tutoring platforms covering scheduling, invoicing, a client portal, and tutor pay. The decision between them mostly comes down to what your bill scales with: Teachworks charges a base fee plus a rate per student lesson, so cost tracks how much teaching you deliver, while TutorBird charges per tutor seat, so cost tracks headcount. One disclosure before anything else: Gigpie, which publishes this page, competes with both. Every fact below comes from the two vendors' own public pages, checked in August 2026, and we keep ourselves out of it until a short note at the end.

The Two Pricing Models, Priced

Teachworks sells three tiers, each with unlimited students, teachers, and user accounts: Starter at $16.49 a month plus $0.32 per student lesson, Growth at $47.99 plus $0.189, and Premium at $187.99 plus $0.065, with the first five branch accounts included on Premium and $35 a month for each one after (teachworks.com/pricing, August 2026). API access comes with Growth and Premium. The trial runs 21 days, the pricing page says you can cancel any time, and no money-back guarantee is published.

TutorBird sells one plan: $16.95 a month for one tutor with unlimited students, plus $4.95 a month for each additional tutor or staff member, everything included (tutorbird.com/pricing, August 2026). The trial runs 30 days with no card required, backed by a 90-day money-back guarantee.

The rule of thumb hiding in that math: an added tutor costs TutorBird $4.95 a month, and costs Teachworks that tutor's lesson count times the per-lesson rate. Teachworks wins on price only when the average tutor teaches fewer than roughly 15 lessons a month on Starter, or 26 on Growth. For most full rosters, TutorBird is the cheaper software bill, and the case for Teachworks rests on its feature depth rather than its price.

Side by Side

Neither column is our product. Both reflect each vendor's own pricing, feature, and help-center pages in August 2026; "Not documented" means the vendor's public materials don't confirm the detail either way.

Calendar Sync: Included vs Assembled

TutorBird ships two-way sync with Google Calendar and iCalendar in the base price: lessons land on the tutor's personal calendar, the tutor's outside commitments show up in TutorBird so neither side double-books, and its help center notes that edits made in TutorBird can take a few hours to reach Google. Outlook support appears in third-party writeups but isn't named on tutorbird.com itself, so treat it as unconfirmed. Teachworks reaches the same destination through its add-on catalog: two-way sync exists for Google Calendar only, sold as an add-on that carries a three-week trial of its own, while Outlook, Apple Calendar, and the rest get Calendar Feeds, a separate add-on pushing one way, out of Teachworks. If two-way sync matters to you and you don't want to pay separately for it, TutorBird has the simpler answer as of August 2026.

Payments, Invoicing, and the Portal

Both platforms automate the collection loop. TutorBird integrates Stripe and PayPal, takes ACH in the US and Bacs in the UK, and its Auto-Pay collects from a family's saved card at the point an invoice is emailed, trying multiple cards on file in order. Teachworks integrates Stripe only (including ACH in the US), auto-charges saved cards, and layers automation through add-ons: Invoice Autopilot generates invoices on a schedule, and bulk invoice payments charge many invoices at once. PayPal or Square on Teachworks means routing through Zapier, not a built-in integration. Both sell prepaid hour packages and track balances.

The portals differ more. In TutorBird's student portal, students book against tutor availability, families pay bills online, homework comes in with attached files and logged time, and parent reviews publish after an admin approves them. Teachworks' client portal covers schedules, invoices, and package balances in the base product, but booking requests, website booking, and client-initiated cancellation each come from a separate add-on, and a Results Tracking add-on charts test scores for parents. Neither vendor documents two-way messaging inside the portal.

Tutor Pay

TutorBird calculates multi-tutor payroll automatically, either at an hourly rate or as a share of the revenue each tutor generates, with category-level overrides, and every tutor gets a login showing their own schedule and pay. Teachworks pulls teacher hours from the calendar and applies Wage Tiers, which let two tutors carry different rates for one service, set at the service level or overridden per teacher. A percentage-of-revenue formula isn't documented on Teachworks' pages, so if you pay tutors a revenue split rather than an hourly rate, confirm that with Teachworks before committing.

Support, Mobile, and Your Data

Support styles diverge cleanly. Teachworks answers in live chat, backed by an AI agent available around the clock, with human hours Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm Eastern, and publishes no phone number at any tier. TutorBird staffs phone lines for the US and Canada, the UK, and international callers, weekdays 9am to 4:30pm Eastern, alongside email, and no live chat appears on its contact page. Neither has a native mobile app: both run in the browser, TutorBird documents saving itself to a phone home screen, and "Make an app" sits atop Teachworks' own public feedback board marked "Not planned," per a review quoting the board in 2026. On data, Teachworks publishes import templates for student, family, and employee lists plus a payments-import add-on, and its reports export to Excel and CSV. TutorBird publishes no import or export documentation, though third-party migration tools advertise reading TutorBird CSVs, which suggests data can come out; ask their support before you rely on it.

Which One, by Team Shape

A solo tutor or a team under ten, watching costs. TutorBird. It's cheaper at any normal teaching load, the two-way calendar sync and portal booking cost nothing extra, and the 90-day guarantee removes most of the risk of trying it.

A center running branches, QuickBooks, or its own integrations. Teachworks. Branch accounts on Premium, API access from the $47.99 Growth tier, a QuickBooks Online integration, and documented bulk imports make it the more operational platform, provided you budget for the add-ons that assemble your feature set.

A large roster of part-time tutors. Run the meter math above before assuming. If your average tutor teaches under about 15 lessons a month, Teachworks' per-lesson pricing can undercut TutorBird's per-seat pricing, and its unlimited-seats model means adding a twentieth tutor costs nothing until they teach.

Where Gigpie Fits in This Comparison

There's a third meter on the table too. Gigpie skips both a per-lesson rate and a per-seat fee for a flat 2% of collections, nothing owed before revenue arrives, with billing built around the household instead of the individual student. Shared sibling hour balances, payroll runs, and a CRM are the reasons people look at it; Gigpie vs Teachworks and Gigpie vs TutorBird work the numbers in full.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Resources

• Gigpie vs Teachworks - The head-to-head version, with break-even math against Teachworks' per-lesson pricing.
• Gigpie vs TutorBird - Where TutorBird's $16.95 plan beats us, and what the 2% buys past it.
• Best Tutoring Software 2026 - The whole field in one guide, with shortlists by team size.