Driving Instructor Earnings Calculator Australia

A full-time driving instructor charging around $75-$85 an hour and teaching 25-30 lesson-hours a week grosses roughly $95,000-$130,000 a year before costs. After running costs (fuel, the dual-control car, insurance, accreditation) a typical net is around $60,000-$90,000. The two biggest levers are how many hours you fill and whether a marketplace takes a commission on each lesson.

EzLicence states the rate on its own instructor page: 25% commission of the hourly rate, with no subscription and nothing upfront, read on 31 August 2026. Payout processing costs are charged on top of that and sit in a separate factsheet, so 25% is the floor rather than the full cost. EzLicence charges it on lessons 1 to 20 with each learner it matches you with, and nothing from lesson 21 onwards, so what it actually costs you turns on how many lessons your learners take. A learner who finishes in 20 lessons is charged at the full 25%; a learner who takes twice that pays it on half their lessons. What you get for it is real, a marketplace fills an empty diary in a way no software does, but the commission lands hardest on new learners, which is exactly the diary a growing instructor has, and you do not own the customer relationship. Set the lessons-per-learner field above to your own average and the calculator works out what it costs you over a year.

The big ones are the vehicle (a dual-control car, bought or leased, plus certified dual-control pedals), fuel, comprehensive and public-liability/professional-indemnity insurance, annual or multi-year accreditation renewal, and marketing or marketplace commission. Fuel and vehicle depreciation scale with how much you drive; insurance and accreditation are largely fixed.

It depends on whether you can fill your own diary. A marketplace is worth its 25% while you are building demand and have empty slots, and that is a genuine strength rather than a grudging concession: nothing else brings a new learner to a brand-new instructor. EzLicence stops charging after lesson 20 with each learner, so a long-running student costs you less than the headline rate. Once you have steady word-of-mouth and repeat referrals, that same 25% on every new learner's first 20 lessons is margin you are giving away, which on a busy full-time diary runs into the tens of thousands a year. Put your own numbers into the calculator above rather than taking a range from us. Most established instructors run a hybrid: keep some marketplace leads, but push repeat and referral bookings through their own system where they pay no commission.

Allowing for travel between pickups, no-shows and admin, a sustainable full-time load is around 25-35 lesson-hours a week. Packing in more is possible short-term but travel time between students and fatigue cap most instructors well below a '40-hour' equivalent. Efficient scheduling and geographic clustering of students is what lets the best instructors hit the higher end.