Free tool
Driving instructor earnings calculator
Work out your real take-home after running costs.
Lesson income is not take-home pay. Enter your lessons, rate and weekly running costs — fuel, the car, insurance, any franchise fee — to see what you actually keep before tax, and your true hourly rate.
Take-home before tax, per year
—
— a week · effective — per teaching hour (pre-tax)
- Gross lesson income
- —
- Running costs
- —
- Net before tax
- —
Effective hourly rate assumes one lesson = one hour.
How this is worked out
Gross lesson income = lessons per week × average fee × working weeks.
Running costs = the sum of your weekly costs × working weeks. Weeks you don’t teach still cost you finance and insurance, so be honest about the weekly figures.
Net before tax = gross minus running costs. Effective hourly rate divides that by total teaching hours (one lesson counted as one hour). Weekly take-home divides it by working weeks.
Common questions
- Is this before or after tax?
- Before tax. It shows what you keep after running costs but before Income Tax and National Insurance. Use the tax calculator link to estimate the tax on the figure it gives you.
- Why assume one lesson is one hour?
- The effective hourly rate divides your net income by total teaching hours, and it assumes each lesson is 60 minutes. If you mostly teach 90- or 120-minute lessons, adjust your lessons-per-week figure to the equivalent hours.
- What should I put for running costs?
- Everything the car and business cost you each week: fuel, lease or finance payments, insurance, any franchise fee, plus servicing, tyres, breakdown cover and your phone spread across the year.
Estimate only. Figures are before Income Tax and National Insurance and depend entirely on the numbers you enter.
Do the maths once a year, not every lesson
Lesson Diary keeps your lesson income and expenses logged all year and exports them ready for your Self Assessment. It never takes a cut of your lesson money — a flat £9.99 a month, free for 7 days.