For most students, yes — and not for the reason people expect. It is not that teaching over video is better. It is that online removes geography from the choice, and the thing that moves a grade is a tutor who has taught your exact subject at your exact level. There are not many of those in any one city. Online, you are choosing from all of them.
The IB and IGCSE are taught in all of these places. So are the tutors who know them. Time zones limit which slots exist, not which tutor you can have.
Older students usually do, particularly when the session is built around their own marked work rather than a lecture. Below MYP level this is a real concern and in-person is worth weighing.
Some things are. Practical demonstrations do not translate, though your school lab covers those. Most IB and IGCSE tutoring is a past paper, a markscheme and a piece of marked work examined together — which is a shared screen.
The same way you would in person: marked work changes, visibly. Set a checkpoint at four to six sessions and compare. Online has one advantage here — annotated files persist, so the record exists.
A stable connection, a quiet hour, and a screen big enough for two documents. That is the whole list. If any of those is genuinely missing, that is a real problem and worth solving before booking rather than after.
If three sessions in a row have not involved your own marked work, something has drifted. Say so.
First session is free. Bring a marked paper.