To teach English in Asia you need three things, and only one of them is up to you. A passport your target country will issue a work visa to, a bachelor's degree in any subject, and an accredited 120-hour TEFL certificate. The first two you either have or you don't — the third you can go and acquire in about eight weeks, which is why it's the one to worry about least.
Everything after that is a choice of market, and the markets are not interchangeable. This board covers 10 countries, and 6 of them account for about 88% of the 1,240 roles live on an average day. The pay gap across that list is wide, but the requirement gap is the one that decides where you can apply at all.
What follows is what each market asks for, what the adverts pay, what teachers report keeping, and how long the paperwork runs. It doesn't cover what living there is like. That varies by city far more than by country, and it isn't something anyone should take from a job board.
The three gates, in the order they matter
Nearly every rejection in this market happens at one of three gates, and two of them are set by immigration law rather than by the school. A school that likes you still cannot get you a visa you don't qualify for. Checking them in the right order is what saves weeks.
- Passport eligibility — 22% of listings here are open to all nationalities, and that concentration follows visa law rather than hiring taste
- A bachelor's degree in any subject — required by 81% of listings, and in China, Korea and Japan it's written into the visa rather than the advert
- An accredited 120-hour TEFL or equivalent — required by 64% of listings, and the only gate on this list you can clear in a few weeks
- Prior classroom experience — asked for by 29% of listings, so it's a filter rather than a gate
- A CELTA specifically — 8% of listings, concentrated at the higher-paying end
The order matters because the first two are fixed and the third is not. Someone without a degree who buys a longer, more expensive certificate has bought a better qualification for a set of countries that still won't issue them a visa. Filter on what you cannot change, then spend money on what you can. Our guide to the certificate schools actually ask for covers what a 120-hour course should contain and how to check an accrediting body exists independently of the provider selling it.
Where the roles actually are
1,240 live roles on an average day, 310 new ones a week against 265 that expire or are withdrawn. That churn is the number worth holding on to: the board turns over close to a quarter of itself a month, so a market that looks thin this week may not be next week.
The requirements below are set by visa rules, not by individual schools, which is why they barely move between employers in the same country.
- China — a degree plus a TEFL certificate for the Z visa, though some provinces accept two years of documented teaching experience in place of the certificate
- South Korea — a degree is mandatory for the E-2, which is restricted to passport holders from seven designated countries; a TEFL certificate is required for the public school programmes
- Japan — a degree is required for the standard work visa, and a TEFL certificate is competitive rather than legally required
- Taiwan — a bachelor's degree is preferred and an associate degree is accepted in some cases, with a TEFL certificate required if you have no experience
- Thailand — a degree is usually required alongside a TEFL certificate, on a non-immigrant B visa plus a work permit
- Vietnam — a degree and a TEFL certificate for the work permit, and one of the most open markets in the region on nationality
Two patterns are worth pulling out of that list. Nationality restrictions cluster in the highest-paying markets, and the certificate does the most work in the markets that are most open — Vietnam, Thailand and Taiwan. If your passport isn't on Korea's list, those three are where a strong application changes what you can realistically go after.
What the adverts pay
Salary bands quoted on this board, local currency first, because the local number is the one in the contract and conversions age badly.
- China, first-year training centre or public school: ¥14,000–24,000 per month (roughly $1,930–3,310 USD)
- South Korea, hagwon: ₩2,200,000–2,900,000 per month (roughly $1,600–2,110 USD); public school ₩2,000,000–2,700,000 (roughly $1,450–1,960 USD)
- Taiwan, cram school: TWD 62,000–78,000 per month (roughly $1,920–2,420 USD)
- Vietnam, language centre: VND 38,000,000–52,000,000 per month (roughly $1,520–2,080 USD)
- Thailand, private school: THB 35,000–75,000 per month (roughly $980–2,100 USD)
- Online tutoring: USD 11–19 per hour, median USD 14
The median advertised salary across the whole board converts to about $1,910 USD a month. Japan isn't in that list, and neither is Hong Kong, because we don't hold reliable banded figures for either — an invented range would be worse than a gap. Thailand's band is the widest here, more than doubling from bottom to top, so a country-level figure tells you very little about any individual Thai role.
The advertised salary is the least useful number
Housing appears in 63% of listings on this board and a flight allowance in 41%. The gap between two offers is usually smaller than the gap between their packages, which makes the headline figure the thing to check last rather than first.
Two teachers compared offers in the same tier-2 Chinese city. One was ¥21,000 a month with no housing, the other ¥16,500 with an apartment provided and utilities capped. On paper the first was ¥4,500 better. After rent, the second was saving about ¥3,200 more a month, and hadn't spent a fortnight flat-hunting in a city she had never visited.
Where that stops: provided housing is only worth its rent if it's somewhere you'd have chosen. Ask for photographs and the commute before you treat it as money. A subsidised flat an hour from the school converts straight back into a transport bill and an hour of every evening.
So the list to price against a salary is the benefits list, and here is how often each one appears:
- Visa sponsored: 74% of listings
- Housing provided or subsidised: 63% of listings
- Health insurance included: 58% of listings
- Flight reimbursed or an allowance paid: 41% of listings
- Paid leave stated in the advert: 36% of listings
Only 11% of listings carry all five. A mid-band salary with three of them is a better offer than the top of the band with none, and adverts are not written to make that comparison easy. That is the entire reason the benefit stamps sit on the front of every card here rather than several paragraphs into a description.
What you'd actually keep
Saving separates the markets more sharply than salary does, because the cost of living moves independently of the pay. These are reported ranges rather than what any individual will bank.
- China, tier-2 city with housing covered: ¥9,000–13,500 a month (roughly $1,240–1,860 USD), against living costs of ¥5,200–7,400
- Seoul with housing covered: ₩900,000–1,400,000 a month (roughly $655–1,020 USD)
- Bangkok without housing: THB 6,000–14,000 a month (roughly $170–390 USD)
The Bangkok figure is the honest argument against treating Thailand as a savings market. It is a perfectly reasonable year and a poor balance sheet, and confusing the two is how people end a contract disappointed by a country that did nothing wrong.
68% of teachers finish a full 12-month contract and collect the completion bonus, which means close to a third don't. Where a contract carries that bonus it's one of the largest single lines in a first-year budget, and it's the line most easily lost — usually by someone who took the first offer rather than the right one.
How long it takes, in sequence
The visa itself is quick. The documents feeding it are not, and running them one after another instead of in parallel is the most common way to lose a month you didn't need to lose.
- Apostille on a national criminal record check: 12–21 days, median 16
- Korea, signed contract to landing: 4–8 weeks, median 39 days
- China, offer to arrival on a Z visa: 6–11 weeks, median 52 days
- Vietnam work permit: 3–6 weeks once documents are legalised
- First reply from a school after you email: median 6 days
Start the criminal record check before you start applying. The apostille runs to a median of 16 days and can reach 21, while the visa issuance number that follows takes a fraction of that. The limit on that advice is that checks expire — several consulates won't accept one older than six months, so start early rather than a year early.
47% of roles fill within 21 days of posting, and a first reply takes a median of 6 days. Read those two together and the conclusion is to apply to fewer roles sooner rather than more roles later. A perfect application to a role that closed a fortnight ago scores nothing.
If your passport isn't on the list
22% of listings here are open to all nationalities, and that concentration follows immigration law rather than hiring taste. A country's reputation for being welcoming has no bearing on whether its consulate will issue you a work visa. The eligibility line on the listing does, and it's the only thing that does.
The markets that hire on demonstrated fluency and classroom skill rather than passport are Vietnam, Cambodia, Taiwan and Thailand. An F-series visa, permanent residency, or a degree taught in English changes the answer in several markets, so read the eligibility line rather than the country's reputation.
44% of listings ask for a demo lesson somewhere in the hiring process, and it's the fastest thing you can produce that a school is able to judge directly. If you're being filtered on the wrong field, a recorded lesson gives them the right field to look at instead. Our guide to where non-native teachers can work goes through those markets in more detail.
How to read a listing without wasting a month
Job adverts compress a lot of legal detail into a few words. Learning to decode that line is worth more than any amount of application polish, because it tells you whether the application was ever possible.
- Degree required — always literal, and the first line to read, because no certificate substitutes for it in China, Korea or Japan
- Native speakers only — a nationality restriction from immigration law, not a comment on your English
- TEFL required — non-negotiable, and usually because the visa file needs it rather than because the school is fussy
- TEFL preferred — you can apply without one, but you'll lose to candidates who have it
- TEFL or equivalent experience — the province allows the experience substitution, so document your teaching history properly
- Housing provided — ask what 'provided' covers before pricing it: a flat, a room in a shared flat, or an allowance
- Immediate start — worth checking against the paperwork, since even the fastest market on this board runs 3–6 weeks from legalised documents to a permit
Some of that decoding is done for you here. Benefit stamps sit on the card, eligibility and degree requirements show before you open the listing, and the filters run on those fields rather than on the description text. 57% of candidates use at least one benefit filter, and the most-used single filter is 'visa sponsored', at 31% of filtered searches — which is a fair summary of what people are really deciding on.
A limit worth knowing about
71% of listings here come from a partner board and are rewritten rather than read one by one. We check the listing, not the school behind it, and no board carrying thousands of rotating adverts has audited the companies posting them. The 29% submitted directly by a school are read by a person, and 4.2% of those are rejected before they go live.
The second limit is freshness. A listing can outlive the vacancy, because a school that fills a role doesn't always take the advert down. The median listing here is 9 days old and the board refreshes every 4 hours, which keeps that window narrow without closing it. Treat a listing as an invitation to contact a school rather than proof the job is open.
And there's a case for not going, or not yet. If you don't hold a bachelor's degree, the markets open to you are a short list and the pay on that list is lower, and no amount of extra certification moves it. If you're unsure whether you enjoy a classroom, find that out over four weeks on an in-person course rather than over a twelve-month contract in a country where quitting the job means losing the visa. The worst years are usually had by people who treated the move as the decision and the job as a detail.
Frequently asked
Which country in Asia pays the most? On advertised bands, China and Taiwan sit at the top — ¥14,000–24,000 (roughly $1,930–3,310 USD) and TWD 62,000–78,000 (roughly $1,920–2,420 USD). What you keep is a different ranking: a tier-2 Chinese city with housing covered reports ¥9,000–13,500 a month saved, which is ahead of Seoul on the same basis.
Can I teach English in Asia without a degree? Not in China, Korea or Japan, where the degree sits in the visa requirement rather than the job advert, and 81% of listings here ask for one. There are routes in parts of Southeast Asia, but the honest position is that both the choice of markets and the pay narrow sharply, and a longer certificate doesn't widen either.
Do I need a TEFL certificate? 64% of listings require a 120-hour TEFL or equivalent, and for China and Korea it goes in the visa file rather than being a preference. 8% ask for a CELTA specifically, almost all of them universities and higher-end centres.
Can non-native English speakers teach in Asia? Yes, in a smaller set of markets — 22% of listings here are open to all nationalities, concentrated in Vietnam, Cambodia, Taiwan and Thailand. The restrictions elsewhere come from immigration law, so no qualification overrides them and no application changes them.
Can I get hired with no experience? 29% of listings ask for prior classroom experience, so most don't. Public school schemes and language centres hire first-time teachers as a matter of routine. Experience tends to decide which end of a salary band you start at rather than whether you get an offer at all.
How long does the whole process take? A median of 39 days from signed contract to landing in Korea, and 52 in China. Vietnam's work permit runs 3–6 weeks once documents are legalised. Add the apostille at a median of 16 days, and start that one first, because nothing else in the chain can begin without it.
How much of the salary can I save? With housing covered, teachers report ¥9,000–13,500 a month (roughly $1,240–1,860 USD) in a tier-2 Chinese city and ₩900,000–1,400,000 (roughly $655–1,020 USD) in Seoul. Bangkok without housing reports THB 6,000–14,000 (roughly $170–390 USD). The spread inside each range is mostly habit rather than luck.
Is there an age limit? Not in any qualification, but several countries in the region set a retirement-age ceiling on work visas and some schools apply a policy of their own on top. Check the specific country before you spend anything if this is likely to affect you.
The sequence that wastes the least time is the same in every market: check the passport rule, check the degree, then buy the certificate if you need one — and start the criminal record check in the same week, because it's the slowest document in the chain and everything else waits on it. Choosing a country is the easy part once you've ruled out the ones that were never going to issue you a visa.