LiveXP Review Summary

LiveXP is an online marketplace for language teachers. Lessons are 1v1. No qualifications are required, sign up is simple with no interview/demo, hours are flexible, and there’s no tutor commission fee. Pay is $10-15 an hour, though finding English students is competitive, and several teachers report bad experiences.

LiveXP Pros and Cons

Pros:

• No formal application process or qualifications required
• Multiple languages to teach
• No commission charges levied on tutors
• No penalties for rescheduling lessons
• Use your own teaching materials
• Time-off periods allowed

Cons:

• High competition for English teachers
• Several negative experiences reported by tutors
• Teachers must create and customize lesson plans for each student
• Convoluted formula for calculating pay (XP) levels

What Is LiveXP and Is LiveXP Legit?

LiveXP is a legitimate online language tutoring marketplace, founded in 2019. They currently have over 2,000 tutors teaching around 40 languages, the most popular being:

• English
• Chinese
• Spanish
• Arabic
• French
• Russian
• Filipino
• Italian
• German
• Urdu
• Ukrainian
• Turkish

The vast majority (1,612) are LiveXP English tutors. If your language is not currently taught by LiveXP, they invite you to suggest it to their Support Team.

At the application stage, Tutors may select 1-2 languages to teach, adding up to 5 languages to their profile afterwards.

Here is a short video introducing what LiveXP is:

Does LiveXP Provide Lesson Plans?

LiveXP teachers must create their own lesson plans, customizing them for each student and their level. Teaching materials are not provided by the company.

LiveXP uses Micro for its online teaching platform and virtual whiteboard, though in the case of technical problems you may switch your lesson over to Zoom or Skype.

How Much Can You Make on LiveXP?

LiveXP pay amounts to $10-$15 per 60-minute regular class, depending on your ‘XP’ level. This is calculated by a convoluted formula:

Total XP = 1XP × No. of regular lessons over last 180 days + 2XP × No. of students who subscribed after trial lessons over last 365 days

Trials pay $3.49 for a 30-minute lesson, though you get an additional $10 and 2XP if the student buys a subscription within 30 days of that.

This LiveXP tutor review does warn, however, that if you teach a lesson of fewer than 60 minutes, you will only receive a pro-rata amount for that, while the time taken to prepare teaching materials is not paid:

How Do You Get Paid on LiveXP?

A LiveXP tutor receives money in their ‘Wallet’ once they and the student have both confirmed the lesson has taken place. This will be in US dollars, but can be converted into another currency when withdrawn.

Withdrawal requests are processed every Thursday, so must be made before this day each week.

LiveXP payment methods include:

• PayPal ($25 minimum)
• Payoneer ($50 minimum)
• Bitcoin* ($50 minimum)
• Tether* ($50 minimum)
• Ethereum* ($100 minimum)

*A 1% withdrawal fee is applied if you choose to receive your payment via a crypto wallet.

Be aware that some teachers have reported problems withdrawing their earnings (see reviews below).

You will not be paid if you have more than 10 failed lessons, and are thus encouraged to reschedule any missed lessons to avoid this.

In the case of a student no show, you will still be paid for that lesson, but must stay online for its entirety in case they turn up.

Is LiveXP Commission Charged?

LiveXP does not deduct a commission from its tutors, though a 15% rate is factored into what students are charged.

LiveXP Hours

LiveXP tutors can decide their own schedule and there are no minimum hours. Furthermore, you are allowed to take ‘time-off periods’ when needing a break.

Regular lessons are 60-minutes long, though trials last 30 minutes and ‘Instant Lesson’ requests can be for 30, 45 or 60 minutes.

LiveXP Requirements

• Anyone can create a LiveXP teacher profile without needing any specific qualifications or experience.
• You must be a Native Speaker or fluent in the language you intend to teach.
• You must have a modern smartphone and be willing to download their app.

How Do I Become a Tutor on LiveXP?

You can search for LiveXP jobs here.

Create your teacher profile through the LiveXP sign up page, by providing your name, email address and password, or with your Facebook, Google or Apple account. You must then submit the following details:

1. What do you teach? (select up to 2 languages)
   • Specialties (select all that apply):
     • Learn basics
     • Improve proficiency
     • Talk with people
     • Do business
     • For kids
     • Prepare for exams
2. Set up your availability for scheduled and instant lessons, connect Google Calendar, and manage your timezone:
   • Enable instant lessons
   • Set earnings per lesson
   • Set schedule
   • Sync Google calendar
   • Set time zone
3. Install and sign in to the LiveXP app
4. Provide the following profile details:
   • Profile pic
   • Your LiveXP title (make it specific, e.g. ‘Certified ESL teacher’)
   • About yourself
   • About your experience (e.g. Where you have taught? How long? Any certificates?)
   • Your lessons and teaching style (i.e. What can students expect from your lessons? What do you focus on?)
   • Introduction video (1-2 minutes long):
     • Say hi and introduce yourself briefly
     • Mention any experience and certification you have
     • Talk a bit about your teaching style
     • Invite students to connect and book lessons with you
   • Video thumbnail
5. Interests

LiveXP Reviews

The LiveXP Glassdoor page gives the company an overall rating of 2.7 out of 5, with only 37% willing to recommend them, though this comes from a relatively low sample size of just 19 reviews. All the comments from these LiveXP teacher reviews have been collated below, with ease of signing up and schedule flexibility the biggest positives, though there are a couple of negative experiences around finding students and getting paid:

• Advantages:
  • “don’t want to commit to the same schedule everyday every time this is an option
  • You define your work schedule yourself, they allow you to be seen by answering students’ questions in the question and answer section or writing essays. The support group works almost properly
  • Their customer support is really helpful
  • Easy application process and friendly
  • the platform, or rather, the website is quite nice looking and has most of the necessary tools for comfortable work. Very intuitive interface and the process of creating an account is incredibly simple.
  • Somewhat easy profile set up
  • payment. you get paid instantly customer service – you get almost instant response
  • Small, but a fast-growing platform. Support is amazing. Every time I’d had a problem they answered almost immediately. In the beginning, the platform was super confusing but they’ve improved many things.
  • LiveXP is an easy way to connect me to my students. The booking and scheduling system is really quick to use and to update. I also really like the chat function which is very handy to use when communicating with students before and after a video lesson. The LiveXP chat support is always very quick to interact with any query I have around changing session bookings or to send me push notifications to mind me of my upcoming sessions.”
• Disadvantages:
  • “Most of my students like to mix it up and not have the same tutor every time
  • Students can send you annoying messages, make immoral requests, and then block you
  • Their advertising needs more work
  • At first it was good but then for while I didn’t withdraw my money and it became 726 dollars when wanted to withdraw I found out they locked my wallet then they told me it was technical issue we will fix it. After 2 weeks they blocked my account. and nothing yet imagine that you work hard and they steals your money, unbelievable.
  • Working with this platform really sucks! The support team aren’t helpful at all and they always come to the teachers with false accusations and the tutors can’t give reviews after speaking to the support. The payment of any lesson isn’t released even if the teacher is present. Added to that, the price of the lesson isn’t determined by the tutor but by the platform. It was a very bad experience working with LiveXP.
  • No students and no assistance
  • Funds impossible to withdraw (have to provide various pics, and the same I used on italki and preply are rejected here). No google sync for the calendar, creating a profile is complex. Cannot set availabilities for specific days (so impossible to set holidays in advance). Cannot reschedule a class efficiently. Double booking left and right. Not enough students. The platform is just too complex. Quality of the video conference tool is not great.
  • If you’re not one of the lucky 10 (literally, only about 10 tutors), then don’t even expect of getting new students. They’re always (without exceptions) promoting the same ~10 tutors while sinking all new accounts after a couple of weeks. They have a set of rules (quick replies, don’t miss lessons, etc.), that is quite easy to follow, but following them doesn’t help, and even with the perfect rating and feedback from students, you won’t get any views.
  • My tutor profile was never visible when I would log out. Support never helped to change that and I started realizing I didn’t want to tutor there anymore. I did have one student who prepaid for 5 lessons although we only had 1 lesson together. I tried to ask for them to refund the student and I asked for the money I had made, unfortunately they said I was in volition and they blocked my account! Wow!!
  • format is horrible how they conduct there services and feedback, etc is horrible, there outdated and need better more professional format and customer service.
  • App they have isn’t an app. You click on the app and then you can see www.livexp.com on the top of the screen, so basically they redirect you to the web page when you open the app. Therefore, it’s not as fast as a real app could be.
  • Video chat room for lessons needs to be improved”

Conclusion – Is LiveXP Good for Online Teachers?

Despite being a relatively young company, LiveXP has already attracted a number of negative reviews from its teachers which should serve as a word of caution to potential applicants. While little is lost in creating a profile due to the quick and simple sign-up process, we would advise only teaching the threshold amount in your first month to check if the payment system works for you. That is, if you can find enough students on the platform, which seems to be a problem for English tutors, though teachers of less-competitive languages may have more success.

You can apply to LiveXP here.

A list of other online teaching companies can be found here.