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Becoming a tutor

jiào xué xiāng zhǎng — “Teaching and learning grow one another”

Turning on a tutor account, what changes about your workspace, and what verification means.

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A tutor account gives you circles, homework and a real view of what your learners did between lessons — and it includes full Pro Plus learner access for your own study. This article is what the account is, how verification works, and what it costs.

What the account adds

  • Circles — A private space per group: roster, timeline, leaderboard and messaging.
  • Assignments — Set a lesson, a unit or a passage with a due date, and see completion measured from the learner’s own checkpoints rather than from them telling you.
  • Progress tracking — What each learner actually did, where they stopped, and where the group as a whole is thin.
  • The Learning Lab — Each learner’s seven-facet profile — subject to what their own plan includes.
  • Your own Pro Plus access — Included. A tutor plan is a learner plan with teaching on top, not an add-on to one.
Eight feature cards in two rows of four, each headed by a red circle icon. Top row: “Your roster” — one dashboard for every student, students included with no per-student fees; “Assign HSK lessons & homework” — any HSK 1–9 lesson, word list, reading, writing task or mock exam, to a class or an individual, with due dates; “Progress analytics” — opens, completions, XP and skill growth per student and per class; “Room to grow” — up to 50 assigned students on Tutor, 200 on Tutor Plus. Bottom row: “Classes & groups” — a class with a shareable invite code, multiple classes on Tutor Plus; “Verification” — start teaching immediately as a provisional tutor, the badge comes later; “A ready-made library” — backed by a dictionary of 21,000+ entries and the grammar library; and “Public tutor directory”, the only card carrying a link, “Browse the directory”.
The pricing page’s own framing of the same account — overlapping the list above without matching it: no card mentions the Learning Lab or your own Pro Plus access. Two of the eight cards are not teaching features. The directory card is about being found by strangers; the Verification card is there to say the badge gates none of the rest — the distinction the section on verification and listing, further down, draws out.

Getting a tutor account

  1. Choose the tutor role — During onboarding, or by changing your account type afterwards.
  2. Subscribe — Tutor at $39/month and Tutor Plus at $69 have the same features; the difference is the monthly AI budget — 1,500 credits against 12,000. Credits are what a seat in your circle costs (50 a month per student who is not on Pro, nothing for one who is), so the budget decides how many learners you can carry: roughly thirty against two hundred and forty. Yearly is two months cheaper.
  3. Start teaching immediately — Circles, assignments and tracking all work from the moment you subscribe. Verification is a separate thing and is not a gate on any of it.
Two pricing cards, each with a “Start 7-Day Free Trial” button. Tutor, marked 师, at $39/mo billed monthly, lists six lines: a starred “Full Pro Plus learner access for you”, then teacher & tutor dashboard, assign HSK lessons & homework, up to 50 assigned students, one class / student group, and progress tracking & basic reports. Tutor Plus, marked 名师, at $69/mo, is outlined in red under a “MOST POPULAR” badge, opens with “Everything in Tutor”, then stars up to 200 assigned students, multiple classes / student groups, class tools & content assignment, and advanced reports & analytics, and ends with an extra class or student group as an add-on at $10–20/mo.
Tutor Plus stars what it adds: 200 students rather than 50, multiple classes, class tools and advanced reporting. Full Pro Plus learner access is the first line of the $39 card, not something the upgrade unlocks. Both prices shown are monthly.

Verification, and being listed

These are two different things and confusing them is the commonest tutor question.

Verified is ours: a new tutor account starts provisional, and we review it. Listed is yours: an explicit opt-in to appearing in the public tutor directory.

Appearing in the directory needs both. Neither is required to run circles, set homework or track learners — you can teach an entire cohort while unverified and unlisted, because they came to you rather than through us.

What your learners need

An account, and that is all — a free one is enough to join a circle and receive assignments. What their own plan decides is how much of the content they can open, and how many Learning Lab facets you can see about them.

You do not pay for their access and they do not pay for yours. See what your learners see.

Your first week as a tutor

  1. Create one Learning Circle — Not one per learner. One group, private by default.
  2. Invite two or three people first — Check the flow end to end before sending twenty invitations that all have the same problem.
  3. Set one assignment — A unit rather than a lesson, with a due date a week out.
  4. Look at the roster before your next session — Not to police it — to know where they stopped, which is the most useful thing you can walk into a lesson holding.

Common questions

No. Verification only controls whether you can appear in the public directory. Circles, assignments and tracking all work from the day you subscribe.

Continue learning

Circles explainedThe four kinds of circle, which one you want, and what visibility actually controls.The Teaching BoardA slide editor built for Chinese: what it is, what is on the screen, and how to get a lesson onto it.Tutor plans and billingWhat a tutor plan costs, what it includes, and why we take no commission on your teaching.Being found in the directoryYour public profile, the levels and skills you list, and how learners reach you.