Maktab QuranMost pages about teaching the Quran online avoid the number. This one leads with it, because if you are deciding whether to spend ten hours a week teaching, a vague answer is worse than no answer.
What does Maktab Quran actually pay?
One rule, published and unchanged: you keep 50% of the fees paid by every student you teach. There is no joining fee, no equipment charge, and nothing deducted beyond the platform's half. Here is what that comes to in practice.
| What you teach | Student pays | You keep | Teaching hours | Per hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| One private 1-on-1 student | $60/mo | $30/mo | 10 | $3 |
| Ten private students | — | $300/mo | 100 | $3 |
| A group batch, half full (5) | $12 each | $30/mo | 10 | $3 |
| A full group batch (10) | $12 each | $60/mo | 10 | $6 |
A private student takes twenty 30-minute lessons a month, which is ten teaching hours. A batch runs the same five lessons a week for everyone in it, so a batch of ten costs you exactly the same ten hours.
Why does a full group batch pay nearly double?
Because your time is the fixed thing, not the fee. Ten hours spent on one private student earns you $30. The same ten hours spent on a batch of ten students earns you $60, because ten people are each paying $12 and you keep half of all of it.
The catch is in the word full. A batch of five pays $30 — exactly the same as one private student — so the arithmetic only works in your favour once the batch fills. Batches are capped at ten so that every child still recites in every class, which means ten is genuinely the ceiling, not a number we push past.
In practice most teachers here end up with a mix: private students, who are easier to schedule and more forgiving of a changed slot, and one or two batches, which pay better per hour once established. If you are choosing where to put a new free hour, a batch place is worth more than a private one.
What is $3 an hour actually worth?
This is where most recruitment pages start selling. We would rather you decide with the real picture, because a teacher who signs up on an inflated expectation leaves within two months and the students lose someone they had started to trust.
Where it works. For teachers in Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and much of North and East Africa, ten to twenty hours a week of teaching from home is meaningful income — often comparable to or better than local tutoring, without travel, and in hours you choose. Many of our teachers are studying, or at home with young children, and this fits around that rather than replacing it.
Where it does not. If you live in the UK, the United States, Canada, Australia or the Gulf, $3 an hour is below anything you could live on, and we will not pretend otherwise. Teachers in those countries who teach here generally do it for a small number of hours alongside other work, or because they want to teach the Quran and the income is secondary.
The honest summary: this is supplementary income that scales with the hours you can reliably give. It is not a salary, we do not describe it as one, and there is no minimum guaranteed.
What actually decides whether you earn more?
Four things, in the order they matter.
Reliability, far ahead of everything else. A teacher who keeps their slot every week builds a roster; a teacher who reschedules loses students to someone who does not. This matters more than experience, more than qualifications, and more than how many hours you say you are available.
Retention over recruitment. A student who stays a year is worth twelve times one who stays a month, and you did the hard part — the first four weeks — only once. Most of what looks like earning growth here is really retention.
Hours that match demand. Most families are in the evenings and weekends of the USA, UK, Canada and Australia. For a teacher in Asia, the Middle East or Africa that conveniently lands in your own daytime and evening. Narrow, dependable hours beat wide, aspirational ones.
Being a female teacher. A large share of our enquiries specifically ask for one — mothers learning at home, sisters who prefer a female voice, and parents of daughters. If you are a qualified sister, your profile fills faster than a comparable brother's, and that is simply what the demand looks like.
Is it better to teach independently or through a platform?
Independently you keep the whole fee, which sounds obviously better until you count what the fee is paying for. You would need to find your own students, market yourself, run the scheduling, chase late payments and supply the classroom technology. Teachers who do this well earn more than they would on any platform. Teachers who do it badly earn nothing for months while they learn.
Through a platform you share the fee and get students, payment handling and the classroom in return. The trade is straightforward: less per lesson, far less unpaid work, and income that starts sooner. For most teachers beginning online — especially anyone who does not want to run a small business — that is the better of the two.
There is no exclusivity here. Teaching with us does not stop you teaching elsewhere or privately.
When and how are you paid?
Monthly. Your first payment arrives about 30 days after you start teaching, and every month after that. You are paid by whichever online method suits you — bank transfer, UPI and Wise are the usual choices — arranged with our team once your profile is approved.
For context on what students are paying across this market: measured in September 2026, established academies charge roughly $85 to $160 a month for the same twenty lessons we charge $60 for. What those academies pay their own teachers is not published anywhere, so we make no claim about it — we can only tell you what ours is, which is the 50% above.