First Tutors Has Closed: What to Do Now

If you built a tutoring arrangement around First Tutors and have now watched it wind down, the calm answer is this: you do not need to panic, and you should not grab the first replacement a search result puts in front of you. First Tutors confirmed in May 2026 that it was closing permanently, ending the best part of two decades as a UK tutoring marketplace and leaving parents mid-arrangement and tutors without the profile they had spent years building. The right move is identical on both sides — judge any replacement on three things you can actually compare: how you are billed, whether your history and reputation travel with you, and how the service lets you check that a tutor is genuinely any good. This guide walks through each, fairly, without talking down a service that helped a lot of families.

Where things stand now

First Tutors ran for years as one of the more established tutoring marketplaces in the country, matching parents and students with independent tutors across academic subjects, music and languages. Its closure was announced earlier in 2026 and has been taking effect since, which is why you are reading this: the site you relied on to introduce and manage a tutor is no longer the place to go, and the coverage at the time pointed people towards a handful of rival platforms.

A list of rival brands is a starting point, not an answer. It tells you where else you can go; it says nothing about how to tell a well-run, safe tutoring service from a shaky one. Brand names change — First Tutors is proof of exactly that. The questions worth asking do not, so the rest of this guide is built around those questions rather than a leaderboard of logos.

If you would like the same framework applied elsewhere, we use it in companion guides on choosing a GoStudent alternative and a Tutorful alternative. The reasoning is deliberately the same in each, because good questions travel between brands.

Parents: a salvage checklist for the first few days

Your instinct will be to rebuild the exact arrangement you had, as quickly as possible. Resist that for one step. What you are really protecting is not a website — it is your child's momentum and hours of their time you cannot buy back. A rushed match that turns out badly costs far more than a few days of choosing well.

Work through these in order:

1. Write down everything you still have. The tutor's name, the subjects and levels they covered, session notes, and — where you can find it — a direct way to reach that tutor again. Plenty of good tutors work across more than one platform, so the person may still be reachable even though the service that introduced you has gone.
2. Check the money before anything else. If you paid session by session, you have little at risk. If you bought a block of lessons up front, find out in writing what happens to any unused balance and by when you must claim it. A closing service is under pressure, so put requests in writing and keep copies.
3. Protect the routine, not the brand. If your child had a Tuesday-evening maths slot, defend that slot first. Continuity of habit does more for progress than continuity of company ever did.
4. Choose the next service on how it lets you check a tutor — not on how polished its homepage looks. That is the step most parents skip, and it is the one that actually protects the outcome.

None of this is about fear. Good tutoring is one of the most dependable ways to help a child feel confident and stay ahead, and a closure is simply a prompt to make the next choice more deliberately than the first one.

Tutors: your reputation did not come with you

For a tutor, a marketplace shutting is a different kind of loss. You did not just lose a listing — you lost the reviews, the delivery history and the search position you had earned there, often over many years. That standing was real work, and on most services it lives inside the brand rather than with you. When the brand disappears, so does the visible proof of your track record, and you begin again from nothing somewhere new.

That gap has a direct price. Every week spent rebuilding a profile is a week of enquiries you are not receiving, and every empty slot is income you will not recover. So the question when you choose where to go next is not only "where are the students?" but "where does the credibility I build actually belong to me, and show up where parents are deciding?"

The practical answer is to favour a service where your verifications and your delivery record are treated as your earned signal — checked once and shown to the parents weighing you up — rather than a self-written blurb you have to sell afresh on every new site. That is better for you, because it rewards the effort of being genuinely good rather than the effort of marketing yourself.

The three tests for any replacement

Whatever brand you land on, put it through these three, in this order. They map onto the three things that actually differ between services.

1. Billing: pay as you go, or pay up front?

Some services charge per session as you go; others sell a block of lessons in advance, usually at a per-lesson discount. Neither is wrong, but they carry different risk. Paying as you go costs a little more each time and keeps you free to stop or switch the moment the fit changes. A pre-paid package can lower the price but asks you to pay ahead of the value — and you carry the loss if circumstances change. A platform closing is exactly the kind of change nobody plans for, as you have just seen. Match the model to how certain you are, not to the size of the headline discount.

2. Lock-in: how easily can you actually leave?

The closure you have just lived through is the strongest possible argument for asking this before you commit again. What is the notice period? Are unused lessons refundable, and until when? Can you take your arrangement elsewhere without penalty? A service that makes leaving easy is usually one that is quietly confident you will want to stay. Read the cancellation terms before the first payment, never after.

3. Credibility: how do you verify a tutor is genuinely good?

This is the test most people skip and the one that matters most. Billing and lock-in protect your money; credibility protects your child's time. The weak version of trust is a self-written profile and a five-star average drawn from a handful of reviews — both easy to game, and neither telling you whether the person has actually been checked. The strong version is verified: identity, qualifications, a real delivery record and background checks, each confirmed rather than simply claimed.

What "verify a tutor" really means on Tutorwise

This is where Tutorwise is built differently, and it is the honest reason to consider it after First Tutors.

On Tutorwise, a tutor's credibility is not a badge they hand themselves. It is a computed score, called CaaS — Credibility-as-a-Service. The platform builds that score from real, checkable signals and weights them by what actually matters: a tutor's delivery record counts for the most, followed by their credentials and qualifications, their standing in the network, verified trust signals such as identity and background checks, and their measured impact. The result is a single figure a parent can read and compare across tutors, rather than a bio taken on faith.

Two details make this concrete, and both are worth understanding before you rely on it.

• A tutor cannot be scored at all until they are identity-verified or have completed onboarding. Verification is the floor, not a flourish. An unverified profile does not merely score low — it does not get a comparable score in the first place.
• A verified DBS check lifts a tutor's score; its absence holds the score down. Be clear about what that does and does not mean. It does not mean everyone on the platform holds a DBS check, and no honest service can promise that. A DBS check is an optional, weighted signal — a real, visible marker that moves a number you can compare. So instead of being told "everyone here is safe", you get to see which tutors have been checked and choose on that basis.

The contrast with a self-written profile is the whole point. On a directory, "trustworthy" is a word a tutor typed about themselves. On Tutorwise it is an earned score, built from checks and designed to fall when the verification behind it is missing. If you want the mechanics, we set them out in how CaaS works and in why verified credibility beats a five-star average.

For tutors, that same design is the upside. Because the score is yours and is built from verified signals, the work you do to be genuinely good — getting a DBS check, verifying your identity, delivering real results — is exactly what raises your visibility to the parents deciding. Your reputation becomes an asset you own, not a listing you rent.

A practical note on prepaid credit and your records

Two loose ends catch people out when a service closes, so handle them early.

The first is money already paid. If you hold a prepaid balance, treat recovering it as a task with a deadline rather than something that will sort itself out. Ask, in writing, what the balance is, how it can be used or refunded, and by when. Keep every reply. If a session was booked and paid for but never delivered, note the date and amount clearly.

The second is your records. Whatever you can export — message history, invoices, a note of the levels and topics covered — save it now while the service is still reachable. Those records make it far easier to brief a new tutor accurately, and for tutors they are useful evidence of a track record when you rebuild elsewhere on a platform that lets verified history count.

Comparing honestly, and fairly

A word on fairness, because content written around a competitor's collapse is easy to do badly. First Tutors served a great many families well for a long time, and its closing is no reason to run it down. The point of this guide is not "they failed, so switch to us." It is that a closure forces a choice, and a choice is better made with a framework than in a panic. Any service that bills you clearly, lets you leave easily, and lets you verify a tutor properly is a reasonable place to land. We think Tutorwise does the third of those unusually well — and you should test that claim against the others rather than simply take it from us.

If you are weighing whether tutoring is even the right step at all right now, when to get a tutor for your child is a calmer starting point than any brand comparison.

The bottom line

First Tutors closing is disruptive, but it is not a crisis. Protect your child's routine or your teaching income first, recover any money and records while you still can, and then choose the next service on the three things that genuinely differ: how you are billed, how easily you can leave, and how you can verify that a tutor is genuinely good. Get that third one right and the brand on the invoice matters far less than the tutor in the room.

On Tutorwise, that third question has a concrete answer — a credibility score you can read, built from checks a tutor cannot fake, and gated so that unverified profiles do not get one. Browse tutors on Tutorwise and compare their verified credibility for yourself before you decide.

FAQ

Has First Tutors really closed for good?

Yes. First Tutors confirmed in May 2026 that it was closing permanently, ending the best part of two decades as a UK tutoring marketplace. If you had an active arrangement, save the tutor's details and any records now, sort out any prepaid balance in writing, and treat the closure as a prompt to choose your next service deliberately rather than in a rush.

What is the best First Tutors alternative?

There is no single "best" — the right choice turns on how you are billed, how easily you can leave, and how the service lets you verify a tutor's credibility before your child starts. Compare those three across whatever options you are shown. A service where trust is backed by verified checks, rather than a self-written profile, protects the one thing you cannot get back: your child's time.

Can I keep my First Tutors tutor now it has closed?

Often, yes. Many tutors work independently and across more than one platform, so the person who taught your child may still be reachable even though the introducing service has gone. Save their name and contact details, then look for a new platform where a tutor's verified credibility is visible, so you can confirm their track record wherever you continue.

I am a tutor — do my First Tutors reviews transfer to a new platform?

No. Reviews and delivery history are generally locked to the platform that hosted them, so a closure means rebuilding your visible reputation elsewhere. Favour a service where your credibility is built from verified signals you own — identity, background checks, qualifications and a real delivery record — so the effort of being genuinely good follows you rather than resetting to zero each time.

How does Tutorwise verify its tutors?

Tutorwise computes a credibility score, CaaS, from real signals: the tutor's delivery record, their credentials, their standing in the network, verified trust signals such as identity and background checks, and their measured impact. A tutor cannot be scored at all until they are identity-verified or have completed onboarding, and a verified DBS check raises the score while its absence lowers it. Rather than trusting a bio, you read an earned score you can check and compare.