Teach english online for any of the 18 companies we've highlighted in this post. These are all home-based jobs, and the companies are almost always hiring.
When I research home-based jobs, I often come across a lot of companies that are looking for people to teach English online (English Second Language tutors). If you want to work from home and are qualified to do this, it could be a great way to make some money! The requirements vary from company to company as does the pay (some pay $18 hourly and more!).
Some want a college degree, others don't mind if you have don't have one. You'll also find that some want language teaching certifications, like TEFL or TESOL. You can get a TEFL online here or a TESOL online here.
Also, sometimes the work will be done online while other times it's via phone and/or webcam.
Teach English Online – Companies To Consider
The following companies all offer legitimate online English teaching jobs you can do from the comfort of your own home. Certifications, educational requirements, and estimate pay vary. These are all independent contractor positions.
VIPKid – Earn between $14 and $18 hourly tutoring Chinese children in English. Read VIPKid review here.
EF – EF (Education First) — Read EF Education First Review – Now hiring online English teachers in the US and UK. You can earn between $12 and $19 hourly for teaching Chinese children online. A bachelor's degree along with teaching or some sort of related experience is required. It's also preferred if you have a TEFL certificate or are committed to getting one.
Magic Ears – Read Magic Ears Review – Open to US and Canada. Bachelor's degree or current university enrollment required. Pay is between $18 and $26 hourly with a flexible schedule offered.
Cambly – Webcam tutoring. You can teach English online without a degree, and you can work anytime! Currently they need English & Spanish language tutors. This is informal tutoring — you're mostly doing social chatting. Also, check out my Cambly review if you need more info.
SayABC – Read SayABC Review – Open to US, Canada, and Australia. Must be a native English speaker with a bachelor's degree or above.
QKIDS – Earn $20 hourly teaching English online to Chinese students. Must reside in the US or Canada and either have a degree or currently be enrolled in a university program. Read QKIDS Review here.
Gogokid – This site pays $14 hourly for online ESL tutoring (you'd be tutoring Chinese, school-aged children).
51 Talk – This company pays $18 for every 45-minute tutoring session. Bachelor's degree and one year of teaching experience required (US or Canadian education systems). Payments are made monthly via Paypal or bank transfer.
Berlitz – This company pays $13 an hour for ESL tutoring. You must be a native English or French speaker to be considered.
English Hunt – Often hires people to teach English online from home via video (independent contractors). Must have a four-year degree and have either teaching or substitute teaching certification.
GoFLUENT – Hires tutors in the U.S. and Canada (certain areas only). This is a company I have reviewed. You can read the review of GoFLUENT here.
TutorABC (TutorGroup) – Must have a four-year degree. Read my review of TutorABC here.
Open English – Hires native English speakers to teach English online. Must be able to put in 15 hours per week. Read my review of Open English here.
iTalki – Work anywhere in the world teaching any language. You will qualify as long as you are a native fluency speaker for your lanuage.
SameSpeak – If your first language is English, you can apply. You will earn $10 for every half-hour tutor session you complete. Also, you can be as young as 16 to sign up.
Learnlight – This company hires online ESL telephone teachers. Pay is monthly. They were formerly known as ISUS.
TEFL and TESOL Certification – Where To Get It & What It Costs
Some (but not all) of the online English teaching jobs above will require or prefer that you are TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) or TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language) certified prior to hiring you. And even if the certification isn't needed, having it is more likely to help rather than hurt your acceptance chances.
For an affordable TESOL certificate, you can go through International Open Academy. It's highly rated by students and only costs $19 if you go through Groupon to sign up (regular price $499).
Groupon also has a TEFL course for $39 you can go through to get certified for that.
The course you should take depends on which company you're interested in and their requirements. It would certainly be beneficial to have both, however.
Online English Teaching Jobs Not Requiring College Or Certification
If you have no college degree and no certification but still want to teach English online, below are a couple of companies to consider (a few of these may also be listed above):
- Cambly
- NiceTalk
- Tutlo
- iTalki
- See many more ESL tutoring jobs that don't require a degree.
Want To Do Academic Tutoring Instead?
If you don't think language tutoring is for you, we have a list of academic online tutoring jobs you might consider instead. Note that these also require college degrees for the most part.
We also post new ESL teaching jobs when we find them on our work at home job leads page.
Good luck!
Post originally published on May 1, 2012. Updated and republished on October 7, 2019.
Hi! I have an English major and a masters degree in English. I am from India. Can I apply?
Great post! I wanted to leave a comment in response to one of the companies you mentioned. I am a certified ESL Teacher with a Bachelors of Science and have been teaching for almost two years now. I have worked for TutorABC before, as well as EF and VIPKID. The requirements for TutorABC have changed recenty. You have to have a Bachelors Degree or be nearing completion of your degree AND you have to have at least a 100 hour TEFL certificate. They no longer accept candidates that are not certified. I wasn’t sure if you were aware of this or not, so I figured I would comment to let you know!
Thank you! I did not know.
Hi there, that is not the case. Because I was hired and I don’t have a degree or TEFL certificate but I have 15 years experience though. However I did not accept the position because the pay is too low ..
I don’t know if this is allowed, but here is a link to the company I work for. I have been with them since April, and I love it!!!! After 16 years in the classroom this company is a breath of fresh air! I love teaching young students in a developmentally appropriate way where the key goal is to have fun while being immersed in learning with someone who encourages you! They pay us for every teacher who signs up, so use my link if you are interested. Or if you have a friend who teaches for VIPKID, use their link. ( :
http://teacher-recruitment.vipkid.com.cn/home.shtml?refereeId=1537904
Hello,Sandy, I am a non-native speaker TEFL certificated and with a long teaching experience. May I apply?
Hello! Thank you for your article about online Skype English tutoring. I’d like to try your service to compare it to my previous experience. I did 10 lessons by Skype with a native speaker from http://preply.com/enenglish-by-skype. And I was pretty satisfied with the quality,but I want to try another option.
The following is part of something I wrote on another forum a few months back:
I would say for most people live online teaching is still just a way to supplement your income when you are teaching face-to-face. Some companies just off the top of my head where I have personally made money are:
Myngle
Edufire
Talk Bean
Teacher James (not sure it is still in business)
ESOL Nexus
English Bee (formerly Culture Link Online)
Most of the above are free market systems where you set up a profile and start offering courses–you need to get a reputation and you are lucky to get one paying student a week until you get the reputation, which does take a while. The exception to the above is Talk Bean and ESOL Nexus, which is highly selective in their hiring, but they do guarantee and give students.
Other companies that I’ve recently become aware of:
English_and_Skype
English4Learning
OpenEnglish
HiKnow.com
AloudOnlineSchool
EnglishHunt
Things I have learned through the years:
1. Don’t bother giving too many free trial lessons–it is a waste of time and energy and most of the students will not pay for lessons anyway–they just go on to the next teacher that offers free lessons.
2. Make sure you have very good internet–just wifi isn’t enough for many people (I had interviewed someone located in the Philippines who seemed fairly competent, but his bandwidth was so low that I didn’t continue with hiring).
3. Although Skype is the best VOIP available, become knowledgable of the different virtual classrooms available as the students will have a better experience if you actually use a virtual classroom with all of the tools.
4. USE A HEADSET! Even though you have a really good internal microphone/speakers, there is a huge possibility of echos and other technical issues if you don’t bother to spend $20 on a good headset. Some employers won’t hire.
I recently started a recruiting agency/consulting firm for live online teachers and language schools and pretty much only hire people with certain qualifications/experience. The following are ‘deal breakers’ for me during the interview/test lesson:
1. The teacher only uses Skype.
2. The teacher doesn’t use a headset/feel the need for it
3. The teacher doesn’t have an interest in furthering their qualifications in online training (COLT, Consultants-E, LANCELOT, AVALON are all good training opportunities which concentrates on online training)
4. The teacher is not technically fit
5. The teacher does not prepare for the interview/test lesson
6. The teacher will only use their own virtual classroom
7. The teacher won’t use a web camera
8. I’m drawing a blank…
I have been teaching ESL since October of last year and I love it! The first company that I worked for was Talkool. I worked as a phone English tutor with South Korean students. It’s a wonderful company and one of the few that offered hourly pay regardless of how many sessions you taught, although I think that this may have changed now to being based on the number of lessons. I love this company and was sad to leave but I was given another opportunity that I couldn’t pass up.
Just recently I started working with Englishunt as a Video Language Teacher working with kids in South Korea. The pay is great and I’m really enjoying it so far. It is part-time and I work 15 hrs./week.
And finally, I also currently work with Hello English tutoring Japanese students. The pay is $12/hr. and you make your own schedule which is very convenient.
Thanks for sharing all these details, Keisa! This is very helpful info 🙂