Academies work following a strict syllabus and using predetermined material, not really accommodating students' needs. Academies will sell you packages of a fixed number of hours (the more hours, the better for them), charge for practice tests (which you can find online for free) and practice test time (it’s just students taking a test! There’s no work on their side there), charge too much for material they get somewhere else (not the minimal cost of the photocopies they provide), and they charge you over fixed costs that do not include the actual teaching (electric bills, rent, WiFi, administrative workers, etc.).
 

A good private tutor will not necessarily be looking forward to making money out of things other than actual tutoring:

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• A good private tutor will not try to sell you a predetermined package of hours, instead, the tutor will accommodate to your specific needs and goals, creating a personalized lesson plan that will change in order to adapt to your continuously changing needs.

• A good private tutor will not charge you for material you can find for free and will definitely not charge for work not done (looking at you taking a test while doing nothing).

• A good private tutor may charge you to provide a photocopy of some material (or his or her own material) but will not pretend the price is that of an original high-end overpriced book.

• A good private tutor will charge you for the teaching time, and that’s it. He or she will not charge you for electric bills, gas bill, cellphone bill, or other payments in which the tutor will definitely have incurred.