Flyers, marketplaces, rates, and getting paid legally: the private-class system that still works

Building a full private-class roster in Spain still runs on flyers, referrals and a handful of marketplaces, but where students find you and how you get paid legally have both changed since this list was first written. Building a full course-load realistically takes most of a school year.

Private classes, aka teaching English one on one, are called clases particulares , so pay particular attention to the information that follows if you want to be successful with your particular classes. Okay, bad joke.

Editor's note

- 2026 update Casi Cielo's original list still holds up as a system. The parts we've updated: loquo.com is long gone, so the marketplace section now points to tusclasesparticulares, Superprof and LingoBongo, along with the online tutoring platforms and their fees. The hourly rate figures are refreshed against current listings and reader reports, with the honest caveat that marketplace averages and what native English speakers actually charge in Madrid or Barcelona aren't the same number. Biggest fix: the old line about not needing a tax ID confused NIE (every foreign resident needs one, full stop) with the separate question of whether your teaching income needs to be declared. It does, and the €80/month autónomo tarifa plana changes that math for the better since this piece was first written. See teaching in the black for the fuller honesty conversation on informal pay.
- Make Your Teaching Poster/Flyer: Make an English teaching poster with tear-away phone number and email address strips. Write it in Spanish, English and the local language (Catalan, Gallego, Euskera) if you can manage it. You can download our sample English teaching poster here.
- Post Your Poster: Print them out and tape them to lamp posts, bulletin boards at local gyms, internet cafes, libraries and university boards, anywhere posting is actually allowed. Ask friends to put one up at their office. Flyers at high-visibility spots like bus stops or phone booths tend to disappear within days (disheartening, but expected).
- Business Cards: Get English teaching business cards and keep at least five on you at all times. A surprising number of new students come from referrals, and a card is easier to hand over than a phone number recited out loud.
- Flyers: Print smaller half-sheet flyers and hand them out on busy streets or at metro stops during rush hour. A QR code that opens a WhatsApp chat gets you more replies than a phone number these days, most parents would rather message than call a stranger.
- English Teacher Networking: Network with other English teachers. When someone's schedule fills up or they leave Spain, you're often first in line for their overflow students.
- Where People Actually Look in 2026: tusclasesparticulares.com is still the biggest Spanish tutoring marketplace, several hundred thousand listed tutors and thousands of academies browsing it for subcontractors, so a profile there costs nothing and gets seen. Cross-post to Superprof. In Madrid and Barcelona, LingoBongo runs an old-school classifieds board that works on the same word-of-mouth logic teachers here have used for two decades: a cheap listing, no algorithm deciding who sees it. If you want online-only students, Preply and italki bring learners to you rather than the reverse, though both keep a commission that bites hardest when you're new (Preply starts around a third of what the student pays and steps down as you log hours; italki's cut runs lower, roughly a fifth). Facebook groups built around your city's auxiliares de conversación cohort are worth joining too; teachers there refer their overflow constantly. Building a full course-load realistically takes the better part of a school year. One widely-read account from a Madrid-based auxiliar took about two months to land her first private lesson and didn't have a full roster until her second year, word of mouth did more than any ad ever did.
- Hourly Rate: Marketplace averages and what a native English speaker actually charges are two different numbers. Listings on tusclasesparticulares average roughly €10 to €15 an hour nationally, but that blends every subject and every tutor's experience level, and it runs lower in smaller cities than in Madrid or Barcelona. Review sites tracking English specifically put the realistic range closer to €15 to €30 an hour,



with the low end for general conversation with kids and the high end for TEFL-certified exam prep (Cambridge B2/C1, EOI) or business English with adults. Travel time is the cost nobody prices in until they've done it a few times: teaching at the student's home or office means your commute belongs in the rate rather than coming out of your own pocket. Teaching at your place, if you have the space and comfort level for it, or online, saves you that time and usually justifies charging a little less rather than a little more.
- Evaluations: Do a free half-hour evaluation with every new student, the way your TEFL course likely taught you. Cafes work well for this. Use it to decide where classes will actually happen and whether this student is a good match for you. Don't put yourself in awkward or uncomfortable situations to land a sale.
- Communication: If your Spanish isn't strong yet, encourage communication by email or text, where you have time to translate and reply correctly on your own terms rather than fumbling logistics live.
- Professionalism: Maintain it from day one. It's tempting to get casual over time, but you'll feel the cost the first time you want to raise your rates, take a vacation, or charge for a missed class and the relationship has drifted into "friend who teaches sometimes."
- Cancellation Policy: Have one and stick to it. A common version: 24 hours' notice, no charge; inside 24 hours, half charge. That's fair, just be upfront about it during the initial evaluation so nobody's surprised later.
- Getting Paid, and Doing It Legally: Charge up front where you can, tallying the month's hours and handing over something that looks like an invoice even if it's informal. Every foreign resident needs an NIE regardless of whether they teach a single class, that's unrelated to how you get paid. The separate question is whether this income has to be declared, and it does. The legal route that's opened up since this piece was first written is registering as autónomo and requesting the tarifa plana: roughly €80 a month (about €88.64 with the MEI surcharge added in 2026) for your first 12 months, extendable for another 12 if your net income stays under the minimum wage threshold. English classes on the official curriculum are IVA-exempt, so you're not charging tax on top, and quarterly you'll file modelo 130 unless most of your income already has IRPF withheld at source, which is rare for private students paying you directly. See business taxes in Spain for the mechanics. Plenty of teachers still take cash and skip all of this, and we're not going to pretend that isn't the norm in parts of this sector. The honest cost: no Social Security contributions means no healthcare or unemployment credit building up, a real fine if Hacienda catches an undeclared pattern, and for non-EU teachers a genuine threat to the next residence renewal. We lay out that trade-off properly in teaching in the black rather than repeating it here.
- Socializing With Students: Minimize outside social activities with paying students or you'll end up with an intercambio partner instead of income. Where an intercambio does earn its keep is as a funnel: someone who likes learning with you informally is often the easiest person to convert into a paying student once they want faster, structured progress, just be direct about that shift when it happens rather than letting it stay ambiguous.
- Class Location: This matters more than people expect. Teaching at your own place isn't something we'd recommend for a single woman living alone until you know the student well. Classes at their house or office mean you commute, so that time belongs in your rate. One teacher we know runs small group classes in the back room of a bar where he knows the owner; students order something non-alcoholic and he charges less per head since it's a group, everyone comes out ahead. Cafes work fine too, but background noise cuts into listening practice and the question of who pays the tab can get awkward.
- Class Schedules: Most students want 2 to 5pm or 7 to 10pm, lunch break and after work respectively,



which compresses your usable hourly slots more than you'd think. Charging less outside those windows and more inside them nudges some students to shift. Keep weekend teaching minimal: it eats your social life, students are less focused, and cancellations climb on both sides. It also cuts into weekend travel, which most English teachers in Spain lean on hard.
- Summer Holidays: Your class hours mostly dry up in August. Save for it, travel, or pick up work at a summer camp to bridge the gap instead of watching your income drop to zero.
- Don't Give Up: There are plenty of English teachers in Spain and things get thin at times, but teachers come and go constantly, which keeps opening space. Expect a dip too: most students show up motivated in week one and coast by week four once presente effort is required. When that happens, revisit what they actually want out of the classes, bring in a topic they care about instead of the next page in the book, and show them something concrete they can now do that they couldn't a month ago. Stick it out, keep marketing yourself, and soon you'll be turning students away or referring them to other teachers. Don't show up hungover. Enjoy it, it'll probably change your life.
- Teaching Materials: Materials can be hard to find or expensive to buy. Here's what actually works.

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Request an invitation Founding waitlist open — founding pricing locked before anyone is charged The honest cost of skipping registration: no Social Security contributions building toward healthcare or unemployment, a real fine if Hacienda catches an undeclared pattern, and for non-EU teachers, risk to a current or future residence renewal.

- Borrow books where you can and photocopy them. Nearly everyone does this, though we can't wholeheartedly recommend it as a matter of copyright.
- Onestopenglish, the old standby for themed news lessons, has been folded into Macmillan's corporate site, but the leveled-news technique it was best at still works: run the easier version of a themed lesson first (Breaking News English publishes every story at several levels), then the harder version of the same theme next class, so the context the student has already built carries them through the extra difficulty. The British Council's LearnEnglish site is a solid free companion for grammar and listening practice.
- Assign writing pieces, a half or full page done over the weekend, with student-centered corrections done together in the next class. They hand in a final copy by week's end that you grade and mark.
- Dictate a clip from an English source, something they'll actually find interesting, and have them answer contextual questions across two or three passes. Let them check it against the original, then have them read it aloud, with discussion points ready for after.
- Keep a running vocabulary list from each lesson and open the next class by reviewing it, prompting the student for their own example sentences with each word.
- Learn to re-use and adapt lessons across levels. A well-built lesson used several times beats a rushed one you'll want to throw out after a single use. Quality over quantity, every time.
- With kids, skip anything too technical and keep them drawing, playing games, and moving if the space allows. Routine matters to them, so build a repeating shape to your sessions and mix review material into games rather than presenting it cold. You'll likely need some Spanish to give clear instructions, so run those instructions past a fluent speaker beforehand to avoid confusing commands.
- Use the child's school English books and review their actual homework when you can get hold of it.
- A TEFL instructor once passed along advice that sounded odd at the time and turned out to be right: don't smile until after Christmas (or Easter). Meant originally for classroom groups, it holds for private kids' lessons too. One-on-one sessions with children can feel intimidating for both of you, so keep a calm, patient manner without letting them sense they can stall their way through the hour.
- For structured lesson plans, exam past papers, and a running list of what other teachers in Spain actually use, our resources roundup is a good next stop.

📌 Teach English in Spain: Teach Private Classes (Estado de México)
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