First Tutors Has Closed: What Its Tutors Can Do Now

First Tutors closed on 8 May 2026. Its site now shows only a closure notice, so the profiles, messages and reviews it held can no longer be reached there. Your lessons never ran through it, though: its terms put each lesson arrangement between you and the family, and families paid you directly. This week, save the contacts you still have, send each family your own terms, and give them one place to book or ask. Then rebuild your reviews and choose where to list yourself next.

Facts checked on 5 November 2026 from each site's own pages.

Teamlilit makes software for tutors who run their own bookings. We are not a tutoring directory, we do not find students, we are not connected to First Tutors or any site below, and nobody paid to be listed.

What happened to First Tutors

Its home page and its UK pages now show one notice:

"After more than 20 years of trading, First Tutors has made the difficult decision to close. We'd like to thank all of the customers and tutors who have used the platform to facilitate private tuition services for their support over the years."

When. Snapshots in the Wayback Machine date it:

So the closure was announced on 8 May 2026, after about a week in which the site was down "for maintenance".

Who ran it. First Tutors' privacy policy said: "First Tutors is the trade name of EduNation Limited". Companies House still lists EduNation Limited (company 06071367) as active. An active company record says nothing about whether the service will return.

What you can still reach.

• Queries: the notice gives info@firsttutors.co.uk and says "responses will likely be delayed".
• Personal data: the notice links to First Tutors' privacy centre at privacy.firsttutors.com/portal.

Nothing else is reachable: no profiles, no messages, no reviews.

What is not known. No reason for the closure has been published. We found no statement from First Tutors or EduNation Limited naming a successor.

Keep the families you already teach

How First Tutors worked matters here. Tutors advertised for free; its FAQ said "We do not charge any commission". A family paid First Tutors a finder's fee to receive the tutor's contact details, then paid the tutor directly for lessons. So the families you teach most likely have your number or email already. What went with the site is the record: messages, enquiries, who asked for what.

1. Save every contact you still have, today. Go through your phone, email and WhatsApp for every family you taught through First Tutors, and keep the list somewhere that is yours.
2. Send each family a short message with your own terms: your rate, your notice period for cancellations, how to pay you. If you have never written them down, start from our free tutoring agreement template and cancellation policy template.
3. Invoice from your own records. Nothing about billing changes, because First Tutors never handled lesson payments. If you want a cleaner invoice, the UK self-employed invoice template and the invoice maker are free.
4. Give families one place to book or ask. Without the site, each enquiry arrives by text, email or a phone call. One link that every family uses keeps the requests in one place.

Where Teamlilit fits, and where it does not. Teamlilit gives you a public booking page with your username in the link (teamlilit.com/en/t/your-username), switched on in your settings. On it, a family:

• requests a time slot, and nothing is booked until you approve it;
• can ask you a question with a form that needs no account;
• can open it from a link or a QR code you share.

The page shows your name, bio and subjects, not your prices. If you keep your families in a spreadsheet, you can import them in one go: import is part of the Pro and Academy plans, and the free trial is on Pro. Teamlilit does not take payments and does not find you students.

Get your reviews back

From the site: no. The profiles and the reviews on them no longer display.

From First Tutors, as your data. Its privacy centre says: "You have the right to download or request the deletion of the personal data we hold about you." Its "Download my data" option is for getting "a copy of the personal data we hold about you".

• TutorDex's guide to the process says the request form has an option called "Reviews about me". That is TutorDex's description; we have not made a request ourselves.
• What the copy contains, and how long it takes, is up to First Tutors.
• The UK regulator, the ICO, explains the general right: "You can also ask them for copies of your personal information", and "Organisations usually have one month to respond".

From your families: the reliable way. Ask the families you teach now, and those you taught recently, for a short review on a site you control:

• a Google Business Profile, if you teach in person (Google excludes online-only businesses; see the eligibility section of our UK roundup);
• the directory you list on next;
• your own website, with the family's permission to quote them.

Our free review request template gives you a short, polite message to send. From now on, keep your own copy of every review you receive, so that a platform closing never takes them with it.

Old public pages. The Wayback Machine (web.archive.org) kept copies of many First Tutors pages. Your old public profile may be among them: search for its address there.

Where UK tutors can list themselves now

Each row comes from the site's own pages, read on 5 November 2026. It is in alphabetical order, with no ranking.

Read the table with two things in mind.

• TutorDex works the way First Tutors did: a one-off fee from the family for your contact details, then lessons between you and them. It calls itself "The Successor to First Tutors UK" and imports First Tutors reviews. Those are TutorDex's claims; First Tutors has named no successor.
• Latimer Tuition and MyTutor are not directories. Latimer's FAQ says it "is an employment agency" and takes a share of each lesson. MyTutor recruits university students and recent graduates and pays them by the hour.

For the longer comparison, including what each platform allows when a family it introduced wants to pay you directly, see the best websites to advertise tutoring services in the UK.

Finding families without a directory

A directory is one source of enquiries, and the last year showed that it can disappear. Spread the risk.

• Referrals. A family that is happy with your lessons is the cheapest source of the next one. Our guide to getting tutoring referrals and reviews covers how to ask.
• Schools and local groups. Parent groups, school newsletters and local noticeboards, where their rules allow it.
• A flyer. The free tutor flyer template makes a printable one with your subjects, levels and contact details.
• A Google Business Profile, if you meet students in person.
• A new profile, written once. The tutor bio generator drafts a profile you can reuse on each site.

For a full plan, see how to get more tutoring students.

Frequently asked questions

What happened to First Tutors?

First Tutors, a UK tutor directory, has closed. Its site now shows only a notice: "After more than 20 years of trading, First Tutors has made the difficult decision to close." No reason has been published. Its profiles, messages and reviews can no longer be reached on the site.

When did First Tutors close?

On 8 May 2026. Wayback Machine snapshots show the site working on 17 April 2026, a page saying it was unavailable for maintenance from 2 May 2026, and the closure notice from the evening of 8 May 2026.

Can I still log in to First Tutors?

No. The site shows only the closure notice, so there is nothing to log in to. For an existing query, the notice gives info@firsttutors.co.uk and warns that replies will be delayed. For your personal data, it points to its privacy centre at privacy.firsttutors.com/portal.

Can I get my First Tutors reviews back?

Not on the site, which no longer shows profiles. First Tutors' privacy centre lets you ask for a copy of the personal data it holds about you; TutorDex's guide says the request form includes an option called "Reviews about me". What the copy contains is up to First Tutors. The reliable way to have reviews again is to ask the families you teach now, and those you taught recently, for a new one on a site you control.

Is TutorDex the official successor to First Tutors?

TutorDex calls itself the successor to First Tutors, and it imports First Tutors reviews. That is TutorDex's own description. First Tutors' closure notice names no successor, and we found no statement from First Tutors or its operator, EduNation Limited, naming one.

Can I keep teaching the families I met on First Tutors?

First Tutors' terms from March 2026, the last version in the Wayback Machine before the closure, describe each lesson arrangement as one between the tutor and the client, with the tutor collecting payment. The one restriction we found on tutoring a client outside First Tutors covered a client who had asked First Tutors for a refund, for 12 weeks from that request. This is not legal advice: read the terms you agreed to, which may differ.

Changelog

• 5 November 2026: first published. The facts are due to be checked again by 3 February 2027.

Corrections

If you work at one of these sites and something here is out of date, write to support@teamlilit.com. We correct verified errors within 5 working days and note the change in the changelog above.