Kaplan NCLEX-RN Online Tutoring Review

Kaplan NCLEX tutoring starts at $999, and that is not only a tutoring price. The package bundles Kaplan's full PassTrack Live Online course, which sells on its own for $399, so the five one-on-one hours inside the cheapest package account for roughly $600, or about $120 an hour. Kaplan prints neither that hourly figure nor the price of the ten-hour version on any page where it publishes prices.

That makes this an easy product to misjudge in both directions. Compared with buying bare tutoring hours it looks expensive, and it is not: you are also getting 18 hours of live class, 3,800+ practice questions and three full-length computer adaptive tests. Compared with Kaplan's own course it looks like a small upgrade, and it is not: it is $600 more.

Buy it if you want the course and the tutor in one purchase and you are sitting the NCLEX for the first time. If you already own Kaplan prep, or you are retaking after a failed attempt, read the guarantee section below before you spend anything.

Summary Table

The Kaplan NCLEX tutoring page and its one published price. Source: kaptest.com (captured September 2026).

Kaplan NCLEX Tutoring Overview

Kaplan does not sell NCLEX tutoring as a standalone service. It sells one product, called Online NCLEX Tutoring plus PassTrack Live Online Course, in two sizes: five hours of private tutoring or ten. Both sizes carry the entire Live Online course with them, which is why the entry price is close to four figures rather than the two or three hundred dollars an hour block would cost elsewhere.

The tutoring itself follows three steps that Kaplan sets out on the product page. First an assessment of what you know and where you trained. Then a match to a tutor based on that assessment. Then a study plan the tutor builds for your schedule and your weak areas. You keep the same tutor, and the plan is meant to direct how you use the course material rather than sit beside it.

What you are buying alongside the hours is Kaplan's most complete NCLEX package. Everything below is included in both tutoring sizes:

• 5 or 10 hours of private one-on-one tutoring with an NCLEX-RN expert
• The full PassTrack Live Online course, three days of live instruction totalling 18 hours
• 3,800+ practice questions with explanations, and 3 full-length computer adaptive tests
• The NCLEX Channel, a video library with downloadable handouts and recurring live events
• A 700-page ebook and the Kaplan content review guide
• The Decision Tree method, Kaplan's framework for working through unfamiliar questions
• 6 months of access, the Kaplan AI Tutor, and the mobile app with the Qbank and 300+ flashcards

One structural note worth knowing before you shop. There is no way to buy the hours on their own. If you already hold Kaplan's NCLEX prep course, adding a tutor means buying the Live Online course a second time inside this package. Kaplan's advisors may work around that on a call, but nothing published says they will.

Kaplan NCLEX Tutoring Review For 2026

The hours cost about $120, and Kaplan will not tell you that

Kaplan's main NCLEX page lists four NCLEX products with prices: CAT + Qbank at $99, the Practice Pack at $119, PassTrack Self Paced at $349 and PassTrack Live Online at $399. The tutoring package is $999 and contains the last of those four in full, with wording identical on both pages: "A 3-day intensive live review course with faculty and support, totaling 18 hours of instruction."

Subtract and the answer falls out. $999 minus $399 is $600, and $600 across five hours is $120 an hour.

What the tutoring adds over the same course bought alone. Source: Kaplan NCLEX course pages, read September 2026.

Treat $120 as a ceiling rather than an exact rate. Kaplan's Live Online course page says the course comes with "3 or 6 month access" without breaking out a price for each, while the tutoring package includes 6 months. So some of that $600 is buying the longer access window, and the true hourly figure is a little under $120.

Either way it is a useful number, because $120 an hour is the sort of rate that makes the ten-hour package the interesting one, and Kaplan does not publish its price. The company's own GI Bill FAQ confirms both products exist by name, listing "NCLEX-RN Online Tutoring + 10 Hours Live Online" and "NCLEX-RN Online Tutoring + 5 Hours Live Online" among the packages approved for VA reimbursement. You simply cannot find out what the larger one costs without booking a call.

The Pass Guarantee excludes the students Kaplan recommends tutoring to

The tutoring page lists the Pass Guarantee as an included benefit, in the same bullet list as the practice questions: "Pass the first time guaranteed, or your money back." The page also answers the question of who should buy tutoring, and the answer is explicit. Kaplan writes that tutors "can be especially beneficial for students who have failed the NCLEX exam previously or are just looking for a more personalized study plan."

Now read the nursing guarantee page. The NCLEX-RN guarantee covers students who graduated from an ACEN, CCNE or CASN accredited program, "are taking the exam for the first time within 6 months of graduation", and do not pass. Those students can claim a 100 percent tuition refund or a free three-month repeat.

A student who has already failed the NCLEX is not taking the exam for the first time. The audience Kaplan names as the best fit for tutoring is the audience its guarantee does not cover.

Who the guarantee actually covers. Source: Kaplan tutoring and nursing guarantee pages, read September 2026.

This matters more than a contract footnote usually would, because repeat testers are a large group. NCSBN's 2024 figures put the pass rate for repeat US-educated NCLEX-RN candidates at 50.9 percent, against 91.2 percent for first-timers, as our NCLEX pass rate breakdown sets out. Roughly half of repeat testers fail again, which is exactly why they go looking for a tutor.

There is a second gap in the same document. The refund "applies ONLY to the original 3-month enrollment, and does not apply to any enrollment renewal", while the tutoring package sells six months of access. The back half of your access window carries no guarantee at all.

And the conditions on the front half are demanding. To stay eligible you must take the Kaplan diagnostic and readiness tests, attend every class session, with at most two made up online, and answer every question on all seven Question Trainer tests. To take the money rather than the repeat, you must not open the Online Study Center after your exam date, and you must call Kaplan within 20 days.

None of that is unusual for a test prep guarantee. It is worth reading before you treat the guarantee as a reason to pay $999.

Two Kaplan pages, two prices for the same package

The tutoring page says From $999, and the Affirm financing link on that page is built around the same figure, offering payments from $63 a month at 0 percent APR. Kaplan's main NCLEX page lists the same product, under the same name, at From $900.

Both were read on 25 September 2026. We have gone with $999 throughout this review because it appears on the product's own page and is corroborated by the checkout financing link, which is the stronger evidence. If you are quoted $900, take it: the same subtraction then gives $501 for five hours, or about $100 an hour.

It is a small discrepancy in dollars and a telling one in practice. This is a product you cannot buy from a page. The purchase path is a consultation call with a Kaplan NCLEX advisor, so the number you end up paying is settled on the phone.

Pricing

Kaplan publishes one price for NCLEX tutoring, and the table below is the whole of what the company discloses, read on 25 September 2026.

For context, the same page sells the course without tutoring at $399, and Kaplan's cheaper NCLEX products run from $99 for CAT + Qbank to $349 for the self-paced course. Financing runs through Affirm at 0 percent APR from $63 a month, and both tutoring packages are approved for VA reimbursement under the Post-9/11 GI Bill and related programs, which is a genuine advantage for veterans and one Kaplan states plainly.

What you do not get is the thing every hourly service normally publishes: a rate. Compare that with how 7Sage sells LSAT tutoring, where every package size, list price, discount and payment plan sits on one page. Kaplan's approach is defensible for a bundled product, but it does mean you cannot compare it with an hourly tutor without doing the arithmetic yourself.

Who Kaplan NCLEX Tutoring Is Best For

• First-time testers inside six months of graduation. You are the only group the Pass Guarantee covers, and the guarantee is worth real money to you. Nobody else should price it in
• Students who want a course and a tutor in one purchase. The bundle is genuinely complete, and at $600 for the tutoring layer it is fair for what it adds
• Students who need direction more than material. If you own plenty of resources and still cannot build a plan, the assessment-then-match-then-plan sequence is the part you are paying for
• Veterans using GI Bill benefits. Both tutoring packages are approved for VA reimbursement, which changes the arithmetic completely
• Anyone who struggles with question logic rather than content. The Decision Tree method is Kaplan's strongest teaching asset, and a tutor applying it to your own wrong answers is the best version of it

When You Might Look Elsewhere

• You have already failed the NCLEX once. You are outside the guarantee, so you are paying $999 for tutoring and a course with no safety net. NCLEX Bootcamp at $59 or Archer Review's qbank at $129 will cover far more practice for the same money, and you can add hours later
• You already own Kaplan prep. There is no tutoring-only option, so you would buy the Live Online course again. Ask an advisor before you buy anything
• You mainly need more questions. UWorld and Archer are the two qbanks we rate highest for NCLEX, and neither costs anything close to $999
• You want a guarantee with fewer conditions. Hurst Review is the other NCLEX course we review that leads with a pass guarantee, and it is worth comparing the two documents side by side
• You are not sure tutoring is the gap. Run our NCLEX pass probability calculator and build a schedule with the study plan generator first. If the honest answer is that you have not done the questions yet, a tutor cannot fix that. Our review methodology explains how we weigh price against guarantees across every NCLEX product we cover

Final Verdict

The practical advice is to separate the two purchases in your head before you call. Decide first whether you want Kaplan's Live Online course at $399, using our Kaplan NCLEX course review and, if you prefer books, the NCLEX-RN Prep Plus guide. Then decide whether five hours with a tutor is worth $600 on top. If you are a first-time tester those two yeses make a good purchase. If you are retaking, the guarantee that makes this package attractive is not available to you, and the money goes further elsewhere. You can see the full NCLEX tutoring listing and how the exam itself is structured before deciding.

Kaplan NCLEX Tutoring FAQs

How much does Kaplan NCLEX tutoring cost?

Kaplan publishes one price: From $999, which covers five hours of private tutoring plus the full PassTrack Live Online course. Kaplan's main NCLEX page lists the same product at From $900, and the price is settled on a consultation call rather than at a checkout. The ten-hour package exists and is named in Kaplan's GI Bill FAQ, but its price is not published anywhere. All figures read on 25 September 2026.

How many hours of tutoring do you actually get?

Five or ten, depending on the package. Because the course bundled with those hours sells separately for $399, the five hours in the $999 package account for roughly $600, or about $120 an hour. That is a ceiling rather than an exact rate, since the bundled package includes six months of access while the standalone course is sold with either three or six months.

Does Kaplan's Pass Guarantee cover NCLEX tutoring?

Only for some buyers. The guarantee covers graduates of ACEN, CCNE or CASN accredited programs who are taking the NCLEX-RN for the first time within six months of graduation, and it pays either a full tuition refund or a free three-month repeat. Students retaking the exam after a failed attempt are not covered, even though Kaplan's tutoring page names them as the group tutoring helps most. The refund also applies only to the original three-month enrollment, not the full six months of access.

Can you buy Kaplan NCLEX tutoring without the course?

Not as a published product. Every version of Kaplan's NCLEX tutoring includes the PassTrack Live Online course, so a student who already owns Kaplan prep would be paying for that course a second time. If you are in that position, raise it on the consultation call before buying, because nothing on the site offers an hours-only option.

Is Kaplan NCLEX tutoring worth it?

For a first-time tester who wants a complete course and a personal tutor in one purchase, yes. You get 18 hours of live instruction, 3,800+ questions, three adaptive tests and five hours of one-on-one time, with a guarantee you can actually claim. For a repeat tester, the guarantee does not apply, and the same $999 buys several years of a strong question bank instead.

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