- Private LSAT tutoring typically runs $160 to $600 an hour in 2026; the large companies sit at roughly $150 to $300 and sell it in 16- to 40-hour packs.
- Giant Prep is $500 an hour, $4,500 for ten sessions, or $12,800 for the full 16-week program of 32 sessions, and every student starts with a hand-scored diagnostic.
- Merit aid is decided at the 75th percentile LSAT of each school, which is often only a few points above the median.
- Price a tutor per point you can plausibly gain, not per hour. $12,800 for a realistic 10-point move is $1,280 a point.
- Take one proctored official PrepTest before paying anyone. The miss pattern tells you which tier you actually need.
Private LSAT tutoring in 2026 costs somewhere between $160 and $600 an hour, and most of the large companies land between $150 and $300 when you divide their packages by the hours inside them. Giant Prep is $500 an hour, with the same 10% and 20% packs we offer on every program. That is the number you came for, and the rest of this guide is about what the number buys, because the hourly rate is the least useful figure on the page.
You’re probably a senior or a year or two out of school, and the money is probably coming from a parent who wants to know why one option costs $99 a month and another costs more than a used car. That is a fair question. The honest answer has two halves: what the tutor actually does during the hour, and what a few LSAT points are worth at the schools you’re applying to. Both are checkable.
The tiers, in one table
Prices below for other companies are what their public pages and recent reviews showed in late 2026, and they change often, so treat every figure marked [verify] as a starting point rather than a quote. Our own prices are exact.
| Tier | Typical cost | Who teaches | What you get | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Official self-study | LawHub Advantage, about $124 a year [verify] | Nobody | Every released PrepTest in the real testing interface, score reports | Everyone, as the base layer under any other option |
| Drilling app with group access | LSAT Demon Essential about $99 a month; Pro about $499 a month including two tutoring hours [verify] | Rotating staff tutors in live classes | Adaptive drilling, explanations, daily live classes | Students below 160 who need volume and structure |
| Large-company tutoring packs | Blueprint roughly $2,699 to $10,840 per pack, about $150 to $300 an hour by tier [verify] | Assigned company tutor, tier sets the tutor’s score | 16 to 40 hours, course materials bundled | Students who want a brand and a schedule |
| Independent private tutors | $160 to $600 an hour [verify] | The person you hire, if you vet them | Varies enormously | Students who have checked the tutor’s real score |
| Giant Prep | $500 an hour; ten sessions $4,500 ($450 an hour); 16-week program, 32 sessions, $12,800 ($400 an hour) | Rick, 99th percentile, every session | Hand-scored diagnostic first, weekly proctored full-length tests, line-by-line review | Students stuck in the 160s with a 170+ target |
Two things stand out when you read across the rows. First, the cheapest tier and the most expensive tier both include real LSATs; nobody is selling you better questions, because LSAC writes all of them. Second, the price mostly tracks one variable: how much of a strong scorer’s attention you get, and whether it is the same person each week.
What the hour actually contains
The hourly rate hides the thing that matters, which is what happens with your wrong answers. At the app tier, a wrong answer produces an explanation and a percentage by question type. That is useful up to about 160. It fails after that because the misses that remain are not “weaken questions.” They’re a scope shift you did not notice, or a necessary assumption you treated as sufficient, and the app cannot see which one happened in your head.
At the large-company tier, you get a person, which is better. But the person is assigned, often not a top scorer unless you pay for the top tier, and the pack is sized to the company’s course, not to your pattern. If you only need twelve hours on conditional logic, a 24-hour pack is twelve hours of expensive review.
At the independent tier the range is huge because the vetting is on you. A $600 tutor with a 178 who taught at a company for eight years and a $160 graduate student who scored 165 are both “private tutors.” Ask for the score report.
Here is what we do with the hour, because you should hold every tutor to the same list:
- Your first session is a debrief of a proctored diagnostic, or of your most recent official score or PrepTest if you have one. Every logical reasoning miss gets classified by argument structure, every reading comprehension miss by question type and by timing.
- You get a named, realistic target in that first debrief. If 170 is not realistic in your window, we say so then, not at week twelve.
- Every week you take a full-length proctored PrepTest, and we review it line by line, not by percentage.
- The teaching is a closed system: about a dozen argument structures, conditional logic, and a prephrase for every question type, taught until the prephrase is automatic.
- One tutor, start to finish. Nobody hands you off.
That list is why the price is $500 and not $150. Whether it is worth $500 to you depends on the next section.
The scholarship math
Law school merit aid is not a prize for being smart. It is a price a school pays to raise its medians, and it is decided mostly by where your LSAT sits against that school’s 25th, 50th and 75th percentiles. Every accredited school publishes those numbers each December in its ABA Standard 509 report, along with the share of students receiving grants and the median grant. Pull the report for each school on your list. It takes ten minutes.
The pattern you’ll see is that the gap between a school’s median LSAT and its 75th percentile is often small. At The University of Texas School of Law, the 2025 report lists a median of 172 and a 75th percentile of 173, one point apart [verify, 2025 ABA 509]. At SMU Dedman the same report shows 167 and 168 [verify, 2025 ABA 509]. At Baylor it is 164 and 165 [verify, 2025 ABA 509]. One or two points separates “admitted at full price” from “above the 75th, where the school needs you more than you need it.”
Now price the tutoring against that. The full 16-week program is $12,800. If your realistic gain is ten points, which is a target and not a promise, the cost is $1,280 a point. If those ten points move you from a school’s 25th percentile to above its 75th, the program paid for itself in the first year of a typical award. If they do not, because you were already above the 75th or because ten points is not realistic from your start, then do not buy it. The diagnostic exists to tell you which case you’re in.
When the cheap option is the right option
We lose money saying this, so believe it. If your diagnostic is in the low 150s, the first eight to ten points are mostly volume: learning the question types, learning to read a stimulus with a purpose, building stamina for four 35-minute sections. A drilling app at $99 a month plus LawHub, a written schedule, and a weekly proctored test you administer yourself will get a disciplined student from 151 to 159. That costs under $700 for four months.
The expensive option earns its price at the plateau. Around 160 to 163, the remaining wrong answers stop being about knowledge and start being about perception: you read the stimulus correctly and still picked the trap, because the trap was built on a distinction you have never been shown. Apps cannot see that. A company tutor on a 16-hour pack might. A 99th-percentile tutor who reviews every miss by hand will, and that is the whole case for the top tier.
The in-between case is real too. Plenty of our students buy ten sessions, $4,500, spend them on argument structures and conditional logic, and run the practice tests themselves. That is a sensible purchase.
What Giant Prep charges, exactly
The rate is $500 an hour. Ten sessions are 10% off, $450 an hour, $4,500. The full 16-week program, two sessions a week for 32 sessions, is 20% off, $400 an hour, $12,800. There is no free first session on the LSAT; the program starts with a proctored full-length diagnostic, hand-reviewed, and a one-hour debrief. If you have a recent official score or a recent PrepTest with your answer sheet, send that instead and we’ll debrief it.
The debrief is where we name the target. Sometimes the target is “you don’t need us,” and we’ll say so. The cost of asking is one afternoon.
Rick’s note: I sit in every session myself. I don’t have a staff of tutors, which is why there is no cheaper tier. If you want the cheaper tier, the companies in the table above run good ones, and I’d rather you buy one than pay me for work an app can do.
How to ask a parent to pay
If the money is coming from family, bring them numbers, not a brochure. Three documents do the job. Your proctored diagnostic score with the miss breakdown, so they can see the plateau is real. The 509 reports for your top three schools, with the median and 75th percentile LSAT circled and the grant table highlighted. And a one-line cost-per-point calculation using a target you and the tutor agree is realistic.
A parent who sees “$12,800 to move from 163 to a realistic 171, at schools where the 75th percentile is 168 and the median grant is $X” is looking at an investment with a stated return and a stated risk. A parent who sees “$500 an hour” is looking at a number. Give them the first one.
Ask the tutor to join a ten-minute call with the parent, too. Any tutor who won’t is telling you something.
What to do this week
- Take one official PrepTest under full proctored conditions: four 35-minute sections, one short break, no pausing. Use the current format with two logical reasoning sections.
- Download the 2025 ABA 509 reports for the three to five schools you care about and write down the 25th, median and 75th percentile LSAT and the grant table for each.
- Mark where your diagnostic sits against those numbers. If you’re already above the 75th everywhere, your problem isn’t the LSAT.
- Price each option in the table per point of realistic gain, not per hour.
- If you’re in the 160s with a 170+ target, request a diagnostic debrief and bring the 509 printouts. If you’re in the low 150s, buy LawHub and a drilling app and come back when you plateau.
Questions people ask
Is $500 an hour reasonable for an LSAT tutor?
It is at the top of the market, and it only makes sense if the tutor is a 99th-percentile scorer who teaches every session personally and your target is a school where a few points change the scholarship offer. If you are moving from 150 to 158, a $99-a-month drilling app and a disciplined schedule will do most of that work. If you are stuck at 161 and need 170, the remaining misses are subtle and need a teacher, and the merit-aid math usually covers the fee several times over.
How many hours of LSAT tutoring do most people need?
Fewer than most companies sell. A student with a clear plateau usually needs ten to fifteen hours of direct instruction on argument structures and conditional logic, plus a lot of proctored practice they can run themselves. A student starting from scratch with a 170+ target and a 16-week runway benefits from two sessions a week for the whole program, which is 32 hours.
Is LSAT Demon or Blueprint cheaper than a private tutor?
Per hour, yes. LSAT Demon’s plans are priced monthly, and Blueprint’s tutoring packs work out to roughly $150 to $300 an hour depending on tier and pack size (confirm current prices on their sites). What you give up is choice of teacher and continuity: you may not get the same tutor twice, and the tutor may not be a top scorer. For a lot of students that trade is fine. For the last ten points it usually is not.
What should I ask before paying any tutor?
Four things. Their own official score, not a practice score. Whether the person you talk to on the sales call is the person who teaches you. What they do with your wrong answers (hand-reviewed and categorized, or just a percentage). And what they’ll say if your target is unrealistic. A tutor who has never told a student no is not giving you information.