How to Teach Kids English Online: Platforms, Pay and What They Require

How do you teach kids English online?

You teach kids English online by joining a platform that hires for young learner classes, meeting that platform’s own entry rules, and passing its screening. For how kids’ platforms compare with marketplaces, business English and other online work, see our guide to online English teaching jobs. Requirements vary sharply: Cambly Kids asks for no degree or certificate, while Qkids requires a bachelor’s degree and an English teaching certificate before it will assign you lessons.

Key takeaways

• There is no single industry standard. Each platform sets its own bar, and the gap between the easiest and the strictest is the whole difference between starting this month and not qualifying at all.
• Cambly Kids states plainly that no teaching certificate, degree or prior experience is needed, and publishes a rate of 0.20 US dollars per minute, which works out at 12 US dollars an hour.
• Qkids sits at the other end. It asks for the legal right to work in the United States or Canada, a bachelor’s degree, and a teaching licence or English teaching certificate before lessons are assigned.
• Preply lets tutors set their own price and states that no official qualifications are required, so what you earn there is a pricing decision rather than a fixed rate.
• Children’s classes are a parent-facing product. You are being chosen by an adult who is paying for their child, which changes how bookings, cancellations and repeat lessons work.
• A qualification an employer can look up independently does the work a degree would otherwise do. That is the practical argument for a regulated certificate rather than an unverifiable one.

Teaching children online is one of the few corners of English language teaching where you can be hired quickly, paid modestly and kept busy indefinitely, all at the same time. It is also the corner where the published requirements are least consistent, which is why so much of the advice about it is wrong. What follows is what the platforms themselves say, checked on the day of writing, plus the parts nobody puts on a careers page.

If you want the wider view of the market first, our guide to the best platforms to teach English online covers adult teaching, business English and exam preparation alongside young learner work. And if your interest in children’s classes began with the old Chinese market, our guide to teaching English online to Chinese students explains what replaced it.

What do the main platforms actually require?

Requirements fall into two camps. One group screens on documents, the other screens on your trial lesson. Knowing which camp a platform sits in tells you where to spend your effort.

The table below is taken from each company’s own published pages rather than from job boards or recruiter summaries, which is where most of the misinformation about this market comes from.

How to cite this table. The TEFL Institute, “How to Teach Kids English Online: Platforms, Pay and What They Require”, teflinstitute.com, data checked 1 September 2026. Each figure is attributed to the company that publishes it. Platforms change rates and entry rules without notice, so verify against the company’s own page before applying.

Two things in that table deserve a second look. Cambly pays more for children’s classes than for adult ones, which tells you where demand sits. And Qkids requires a certificate before lessons are assigned, not before you apply, which means people are routinely accepted and then stuck.

What does teaching children online actually pay?

Somewhere between 10 and 20 US dollars an hour on the large platforms, with the top of the range reserved for tutors who set their own price and fill their diary. Anyone quoting 40 dollars an hour as a starting rate is describing a private client, not a platform.

The important number is not the hourly rate, though. It is the rate multiplied by the hours you can actually get, and those two move in opposite directions. Fixed-rate platforms give you predictable pay and unpredictable volume. Marketplaces such as Preply give you control of your price and put the burden of filling your diary on you.

Watch the unit of payment carefully, because it is where advertised pay and real pay separate. A per-minute rate only pays for minutes taught, so gaps between bookings are unpaid. A per-lesson rate pays the same whether the lesson runs long or the child logs off early. A per-hour rate quoted by a marketplace is a price you have set, not a wage anyone has promised you.

Do you need a degree to teach kids English online?

Not for every platform, and this is the single most common misunderstanding in the market. Cambly and Preply both state that no degree is required. Qkids requires one. So the honest answer is that a degree opens more of the market, and its absence closes some doors completely rather than all of them.

Where a degree is not required, something has to take its place in the employer’s decision, and that something is usually evidence that you have been trained and assessed by somebody other than yourself. A certificate a company can look up on a public register carries weight precisely because it does not rely on trusting you. Our guide to becoming a Preply tutor goes through how that plays out on a marketplace where you are competing on a profile rather than passing a checklist.

There is also a passport question sitting quietly underneath this. Qkids asks for the legal right to work in the United States or Canada, which is a nationality and residency filter rather than an educational one. Read entry requirements for that kind of condition before you spend an evening on an application.

How is teaching children online different from teaching adults?

Commercially, it is a different job with the same subject. Four differences matter before you commit.

You are chosen by a parent, not a learner. The person reading your profile is an adult deciding whether to trust you with their child. Photographs, phrasing and a clear statement of what you are qualified in do more work here than they do on adult listings.

Lessons are shorter and more numerous. Children’s classes are commonly booked in short slots, so the same weekly income involves more separate appointments, more transitions and more admin than an equivalent adult timetable.

Retention is the whole business. A child who enjoys the lesson is rebooked weekly for a year, which is why platforms weigh your trial lesson so heavily. A single good trial can be worth more than a strong CV.

Scheduling follows a school day that is not yours. Demand clusters around after-school hours and weekends in the learner’s time zone. If your learners are in East Asia and you are in Ireland or the United Kingdom, the profitable hours are early morning.

What checks do platforms run before you teach children?

Expect identity verification, a recorded or observed trial lesson, and in many cases a background check appropriate to where you live. Platforms that place adults in unsupervised video contact with children have an obvious duty of care, and the serious ones act like it.

Two features are worth understanding as protections rather than as surveillance. Lessons are frequently recorded, which protects the child and also protects you if a complaint is ever made. And parents can often watch or review the class, which is why an off-hand remark in a children’s lesson carries a weight it would not carry with an adult learner.

Child protection standards across Europe are coordinated through the Council of Europe’s children’s rights programme, which covers violence and sexual violence against children and monitors how member states meet those obligations. None of that regulates online tutoring directly, but it is the framework the reputable platforms are drafting their own policies against, and it explains why the screening is heavier than the pay might suggest.

Which qualification makes you hireable for young learner work?

A general English teaching certificate gets you through most doors, and a young learner specialism is what distinguishes you once you are through. Qkids names TESOL, TEFL, CELTA and ESL certificates as acceptable, which tells you the category matters more than the brand.

Where the brand does matter is verification. A regulated qualification exists on an external public record, so a company can confirm the qualification independently of anything you send it. Our Ofqual regulated Level 5 TEFL Diploma is on the Ofqual register as qualification number 610/1571/4, awarded by Highfield Qualifications under Ofqual organisation number RN5219, with 180 guided learning hours and a total qualification time of 382 hours. The separate Level 5 Advanced Diploma is 610/1573/8, with 300 guided learning hours, a total qualification time of 542 hours and 54 credits. Both register entries were confirmed by our team on 26 August 2026. They are two distinct qualifications and should not be quoted as one.

For the young learner specialism itself, our 30 Hour Teaching English to Young Learners course is the targeted add-on, and it is the line on a profile that answers a parent’s actual question about whether you have trained for children specifically.

If you want to understand how the acronyms relate to one another before choosing, our reference page on TEFL qualifications and terminology explained sets out what each one means and which jobs ask for which. The British Council’s own Teaching English in primary course is a useful independent reference point for what training for this age group covers.

How many hours can you realistically get as a beginner?

Few at first, and this is the expectation most new online teachers get wrong. New profiles carry no reviews, no completed lesson count and no rebooking history, which are the three things both parents and platform algorithms use to decide who gets seen.

Plan for a slow first month on any platform. The teachers who fill a diary tend to be the ones who opened unpopular hours early, answered messages quickly, and stayed on one platform long enough to accumulate reviews rather than spreading themselves across four. Treat the first thirty lessons as the cost of entry.

What should you watch out for?

Four things, all of them avoidable if you read before you commit.

Unpaid training and unpaid trial lessons. Some screening is reasonable. A long sequence of unpaid mock classes is a cost, and you should count it.

Requirements that appear after acceptance. The Qkids condition is the clearest published example: a certificate is required before lessons are assigned, so being accepted is not the same as being able to work.

Rates quoted in a unit that flatters them. Per-minute and per-lesson figures are not hourly wages. Convert everything to a realistic hourly figure including unpaid gaps before comparing.

Cancellation policies that fall on you. Find out what happens when a child does not turn up, because on some platforms that is a paid lesson and on others it is an hour of your morning you gave away.

Which route suits which person?

Match yourself to one of four situations rather than applying everywhere at once. Scattergun applications are how people end up with three rejections and no idea which requirement they failed.

You have a degree and a teaching certificate. The whole market is open, including the fixed-rate platforms with published pay and assigned lessons. Start there, because predictable volume while you build reviews is worth more than a higher headline rate you cannot fill.

You have a certificate but no degree. The degree-gated platforms are closed, and that is worth knowing on day one rather than after an application. The platforms screening on a trial lesson are your market, and your certificate is what separates you from the applicants who have nothing.

You have a degree but no certificate. You are one step from the strictest platforms and already eligible for the most relaxed ones. Since a certificate is the cheaper and faster of the two credentials to obtain, this is the situation where training pays back quickest.

You have neither. You can still start. Cambly Kids states no degree, certificate or experience is required, so the door is genuinely open. Understand that you are entering at the lowest published rate in the market and competing on your trial lesson alone, and that a certificate is the normal way out of that bracket.

One route sits outside all four. Teaching private students you find yourself removes the platform’s cut and its rules, but it also removes its payment protection, its scheduling system and its supply of learners. It is a reasonable second stage and a difficult first one.

Where to start

Decide first whether you are competing on documents or on personality, because the platforms sort themselves that way. If you have a degree and a certificate, the stricter fixed-rate platforms are open to you and offer predictable work. If you have neither, the platforms that screen on a trial lesson are the realistic entry point, and a certificate is the fastest way to stop competing on price alone.

Then get the specialism on your profile before you apply rather than after, because the trial lesson is the moment it pays for itself. Our Teaching English to Young Learners course is built for exactly this decision, and it sits alongside the Ofqual regulated Level 5 Diploma for anyone who wants a qualification a company can verify on a public register rather than take on trust.