How to price coaching packages without guessing

Most coaches price by looking at what others charge and picking a number slightly below it. It works until it does not: the calendar fills, the income stays flat, and raising the price feels like breaking a promise. There is a quieter way to arrive at a price, and it starts with your own week rather than someone else's website.

This guide walks through it. The maths is simple enough to do on paper, and we publish a package pricing worksheet that lays it out as a page you can fill in.

Start from the hours

Decide how many client hours you want in a week. Not how many you could do; how many you want, with room for preparation, notes, admin and a life. For many solo coaches this is between twelve and twenty. Write the number down.

Multiply by the weeks you will actually work in a year. Fifty-two minus holidays, minus the week you are ill, minus the fortnight where nothing gets booked. Forty-four is a realistic figure for most people. Fifteen hours a week times forty-four weeks is six hundred and sixty client hours a year.

Then write down what you need to earn, before tax, including the costs of running the practice. Divide one by the other. If you need seventy thousand and you have six hundred and sixty hours, your floor is about a hundred and six per hour. Nothing you sell should imply a lower rate than that, including the free call, which you pay for with time.

This number is not your price. It is the line below which you are quietly subsidising your clients.

Price the outcome, not the hour

Clients do not buy hours. They buy a change over a period. Packages let you price that change and stop selling time by the slot.

A package has four parts: the number of sessions, their length, the period they are available in, and what sits between them. Between-session support is where most of the value is and where most coaches forget to price. A daily check-in, chat, a review of written work, an action list that you look at every week: these are real work. Decide what the package includes and put it in writing.

Three shapes

One-off. A single session at a single price. Useful as a way in, for a specific decision, or for former clients who want a check-up. Price it above your floor; one-offs carry all the overhead of a new client with none of the continuity.

Multi-session bundle. A set number of sessions over a set period, paid once up front. Six sessions over three months is the most common shape. Bundles give the client a defined commitment and give you predictable income. Price the bundle as sessions times your session rate, then add something for the between-session work and subtract a little for the commitment. Most coaches end up around five to ten percent under the one-off rate per session, with the support included.

Monthly subscription. A recurring charge with a session allowance that resets each month: two sessions a month, say, with chat and check-ins included. Subscriptions suit long engagements and ongoing support. Price the month as the allowance times your session rate plus the support, and make it easy to stop. A subscription nobody can cancel is a complaint waiting to happen.

Offer two or three packages, not six. A free or low-priced first call, one bundle, one subscription is enough for most practices. More choice slows decisions.

Session length

Sixty minutes is the default and it is often too long. Forty-five minutes of focused work with a clear end is kinder to both of you and lets you hold more clients in the same hours. Ninety minutes suits deep-dive first sessions. Pick a length per package and keep it; the booking page shows the length next to the price, and clients choose accordingly.

Say what is included

Every package description should answer the questions a client is quietly asking. How many sessions. How long. Over what period. What happens between sessions. How to reschedule. Whether sessions roll over. Put these as a short list, not a paragraph. A list is read; a paragraph is skimmed.

Currency and location

Set your packages in the currency your clients think in, not the one your bank uses. If you coach people in two countries, choose the one where most of them are and let the other group do the conversion; two price lists are more confusing than one slightly foreign currency.

Raising prices

Set a date each year to look at your prices. Existing clients keep their price until their current package ends; new clients see the new one. Tell existing clients before they renew, in one line, with the new number and the date. Most will stay, and the ones who leave over a modest increase were going to leave over something.

Checking the model

Once the packages are priced, go back to the hours. Suppose your bundle is six sessions over three months at a certain price, and you expect a typical client to buy two bundles a year. How many clients does it take to fill fifteen hours a week? Does that number of clients produce the income you wrote down at the start? If not, the price moves, the hours move, or the included support moves. Something has to give, and it is better to know which on paper than at the end of the year.

What the tools should do for you

Once the prices are set, the software should hold them. The booking page shows each package with its price, length and what is included. Checkout takes the payment, in your currency, and the receipt goes out under your business name. The package editor stores the sessions, the period and the description so you type them once. The pricing worksheet is a page for the thinking part; the app is for the part after.

If you are starting from nothing, do the worksheet first. Fifteen minutes with the four numbers at the top will change the prices you set more than any amount of looking at other coaches' pages.