How Brightly ranks tuition centres
The Recommended order on the directory and the map adds up points for five things parents weigh when choosing: how convenient the centre is, what other parents say, the fee, the benefits the centre offers, and how much it publishes. No centre can pay to rank higher.
The points
Each centre gets up to 100 points. If you tell the map your child’s school or your home area, travel counts too; if you don’t, the other four parts share the points.
| Part | With your locations | Without |
|---|---|---|
| Travel | 30 | – |
| Reviews | 25 | 35 |
| Fees compared with the typical fee | 15 | 20 |
| Checked benefits | 15 | 25 |
| Published information | 15 | 20 |
Every card shows a short reason, for example “On the way home from school · 4.9 from 42 reviews · 12% below the typical fee · Small classes”.
Travel from school and home
Many children go to tuition straight from school. A centre next to the school, near home, or on the way between them is just as convenient as one next door. So when you give both, the map works out how much extra time a centre adds to the trip home from school:
extra time = school → centre + centre → home − school → home
- Weekdays after school: full travel points if the centre adds 5 minutes or less, none at 30 minutes or more.
- Weekends from home: full points at 10 minutes or less from home, none at 45 minutes.
- Both: the average of the two.
- School only: full points at 10 minutes or less from school, none at 40 minutes.
Example: school to home takes 15 minutes. A centre next to the school (3 minutes from school, 16 from home) adds about 4 minutes; one near home (15 and 4 minutes) adds about 4 minutes too; one the opposite way (20 and 25 minutes) adds 30. The first two get nearly full travel points, the third almost none.
Travel times are estimates, worked out on your device from straight-line distance and a formula fitted to 80 real public-transport and driving routes from OneMap. Typical estimates are within a few minutes, so cards show ranges such as “about 10–15 min”. Cards also show the nearest MRT station with the walk to it, whether the centre is on the same MRT line as your home station, and direct buses from the school’s or your home’s bus stops. You can ask for exact OneMap routes for the top 10 centres.
Online-only centres are listed separately when you give a location, so they are not ranked as far away. Centres whose location is not confirmed are marked “Location not confirmed” and receive no travel points. 285 of 300 listings have a checked location and 14 are online-only.
Reviews
A rating from two reviews says less than a rating from two hundred. Brightly uses a fair average: every centre is treated as if it also had 10 reviews of 4.5 stars, a cautious starting point below the directory’s average rating of 4.94, and its real reviews are added on top. A centre with 5.0 from 2 reviews therefore counts as 4.58, while 4.9 from 105 reviews counts as 4.87. Cards still show the centre’s own rating and how many reviews it comes from.
A centre with no reviews on record counts as 4.5 stars and is shown as “No reviews yet”, so centres with many good reviews come first. Reviews from parents who attended a trial through Brightly will be added to this part when that feature starts.
Fees
A centre’s listed fee per lesson is compared with the typical fee on Brightly: the median of S$68.50 per lesson across listings with a published fee, or the median for the subject you chose. Half the typical fee or less scores full points, the typical fee scores half, and one and a half times or more scores none. A centre with no published fee scores slightly below the typical fee, so hiding fees is never an advantage. See the Primary Tuition Price Index for the figures. For a secondary, IP, JC/MI or IGCSE/IB search, the typical fee is the median listed fee of the centres tagged for that stage, used once at least 30 of them publish a fee per lesson; until then fees do not change the order for those searches.
Fees are as listed by each centre; lesson lengths and group sizes differ, so compare details on the profile.
Checked benefits
Only benefits from a fixed list count, and each needs written evidence with a source. Marketing lines such as “recommended for all” and sponsor partnerships score nothing. 173 listings currently have at least one checked benefit.
| Benefit | Points |
|---|---|
| Free or discounted trial | 0.25 |
| Small classes | 0.2 |
| Replacement classes | 0.15 |
| Progress reports for parents | 0.15 |
| Homework help between lessons | 0.1 |
| Materials included | 0.1 |
| Exam preparation | 0.1 |
| Enrichment activities | 0.1 |
| Online option | 0.05 |
| Sibling discount | 0.05 |
| Holiday programmes | 0.05 |
Points are added up and capped at full marks. “Small classes” needs a stated size of eight or fewer. A free or discounted trial counts when the centre’s own site or a tuition directory says so.
Published information
Parents can judge a centre better when it publishes the details. This part gives points for listed fees (0.4), a class timetable (0.3), a recorded source for them (0.2) and a real photo of the centre (0.1).
Fairness rules
- No paid ranking. No centre can pay to rank higher, appear first, or remove a competitor.
- Fees do not count. A centre may pay Brightly an introduction fee when it confirms a trial that Brightly arranged (see the Terms). Whether a centre pays such fees never changes its rank.
- Room for variety. At most two branches of the same chain appear in the top 10; further branches follow just after.
- Reasons on every card, so you can see why a centre is where it is.
- Gaps stay gaps. A missing fee, location or rating is shown as missing, never estimated.
Your locations stay with you
- The school, MRT station, town or approximate location you enter, and HDB postal codes, are used only in your browser. They are not sent to Brightly, not put in the page address, and not stored by Brightly. HDB postal codes are looked up from a public file loaded into your browser.
- Other postal codes, such as condominiums and landed homes, are not in that file. They are sent once to Brightly’s server, which looks up the building on OneMap and sends back only its map point. The postal code is not stored or logged.
- Your choices are remembered on that device only, so you don’t have to type them again. “Clear search” on the map removes them and shows every centre again.
- After a search, the map shows only the top 10 centres, numbered like their cards, until you clear the search.
- “Check exact times” works only when you press it: your areas, rounded to about 200 metres, are sent to Brightly’s server to ask OneMap for real routes to the top 10 centres. They are not saved.
- Brightly’s analytics only record which kind of input was used (for example “postal code”), never the value.
See the Privacy Policy for everything else.
Other ways to sort
- Lowest fee: by listed fee per lesson; centres with no published fee come last.
- Highest rated: by the fair average above; centres with no reviews come last.
- Shortest trip (map, after you give a location): by the travel time or extra time described above.
Guide and town pages keep their own order, described on the methodology page.
Sources
Map tiles, address search and routes: OneMap, Singapore Land Authority. Bus stops and routes: LTA DataMall. MRT station exits, HDB buildings and MOE schools: data.gov.sg. Contains information accessed in October 2026 and made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0. Typical fees: Brightly’s price index.
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