How To Charge For Life Coaching –  Ideal Pricing Guide 2024

It can be difficult to decide how to charge for life coaching.

On one hand, you want to attract a lot of new clients. On the other, you want to be paid as well as possible for the coaching services you provide. 

So, how can you find the balance? That’s what we’re going to explore in this guide on setting your life coaching rates.

Important are also your life coach prices and your initial cost to become a life coach.

How Much Do I Charge As A Life Coach?

There are several factors that you should consider when setting your life coaching fees. Let’s explore some of the pertinent ones.

What Are The Average Rates For Your Niche And Your Region?

Be aware of the average rates being charged by competitors in your local area.

This guide should help you: Life Coach Prices – A Complete Guide

If you’re specializing in a certain niche of life coaching, make sure to research the rates for that niche. You’ll often find that coaches who focus on a specific niche tend to charge more, due to a lower supply of experts in that area. 

Once you’re aware of the average rates, you can decide whether your coaching is worthy of charging above the average rates.

I’ll give you some tips to help you decide that shortly…

How Many Clients Do You Have?

If you’re a new coach with no existing clients, you may decide to charge below the average life coaching rates for your area. This can help you quickly secure some income and testimonials for your coaching business. Then, you can always raise your rates once your business is established.

If you’re overwhelmed with clients, it makes complete sense to raise your prices. After all, you will have maxed out your earning potential at your current rate. 

Perhaps you’ll attract fewer new clients by raising your prices, but you’re likely to earn more money overall. 

If that’s not the case, you can always drop your prices again later. Your goal should be to find the sweet spot that brings in the most revenue for your business.

What Are Your Life Coaching Expenses?

There are a few reasons why life coaches tend to charge more in some countries than in others; The disparity in business expenses is a key one.

If you’re working from a fancy office in Manhattan, you’ll be spending a lot more than a life coach working from home in Mumbai.

Most life coaches – and most business owners in general – will consider their expenses when setting their prices. 

How Much Expendable Income Does Your Target Audience Have?

This is the other key reason why life coaching fees vary across the globe; the expendable income of the coach’s target market.

If you’re based in a third-world country and only targeting members of your local community, you won’t be able to successfully charge as much as the business coach targeting CEOs in North America.

Thankfully, through the emergence of online life coaching, it’s possible to expand your client reach and target wealthy individuals no matter where you live.    

What Should I Charge For Coaching Sessions?

You can structure your life coaching fees in a number of different ways, and this can dramatically affect your earnings.

So, let’s explore the pros and cons of the most popular fee structures in more detail.

Life Coach Rates Per Hour

This is the simplest way to structure your life coaching fees, and most coaches will advertise an hourly rate. 

Many coaches will charge more per hour to clients who only want to buy single sessions, compared to those who are ready for a long-term commitment.

How Much Does A Life Coach Charge An Hour?

You can learn more about the average life coaching hourly rates in this life coaching salary guide

Life Coach Rates Per Month

It’s also common for life coaches to bundle their life coaching sessions into monthly packages.

In most cases, they’ll lower the hourly rate on these coaching packages to encourage potential clients to make a long-term commitment.

It’s up to you how many sessions you want to include in a monthly package, and how much of a discount you want to offer those who purchase more sessions.

Life coaching makes a far bigger impact over multiple sessions compared to one session. For that reason, some coaches will only offer monthly packages to potential clients. Others also offer quarterly or annual life coaching packages with a bigger discount per session. 

By offering these discounted life coaching packages with a number of sessions, life coaches can guarantee a more consistent monthly income. That’s the biggest incentive and the main reason why coaches use this strategy.

If you only charge an hourly rate, you could potentially lose all your clients within the space of a week. Life coach packages can save you from the stress of searching for new clients on an ongoing basis. That’s why they’re becoming increasingly popular in the life coach industry. 

Life Coach Packages With Additional Services

If you have additional services to offer alongside your one-on-one coaching, you can bundle these into a life coaching package too.

Perhaps you have a book, an online course or online mastermind groups to offer your clients. 

If so, you can sell them all together in a coaching package. By offering these at a discounted price compared to buying them separately, you can make great money while also offering tremendous value to your clients.  

Some coaches experiment with offering different tiers, allowing potential clients to choose whatever package they believe offers good value. The coaching tiers you decide to offer will vary depending on what services you have to offer.  

You can learn more about monthly packages and pricing tiers in this guide: Life Coaching Fees & Packages

Why Do Life Coaches Charge So Much? 

Life coaches charge a lot of money because of the perceived value of their coaching.

That’s a simple answer, but it’s the truth.

Let me ask you a couple of questions to give you some specific examples. 

How much would you pay to fix your mental health issues, while smashing all your personal and professional goals within a year?

Many coaches claim to be able to help their clients achieve that, and that’s why their personal coaching is so expensive. They don’t charge based on how hard they work, but the value of their work to their customers.

Here’s one more question to hammer this idea home; 

How much would you pay to be able to solve the problems that stop your business from succeeding? 

In the business world, these could potentially be million-dollar problems. That’s why business life coaches charge so much and why business coaching is such a profitable niche in general.

A Life Coach Will Consider Supply And Demand When Pricing Their Coaching Programs

If you’re a business life coach with a decade of experience in executive coaching, you’ll be able to charge more because there’s a lower supply of coaches with your credentials. Most likely, there’s also an exceptional demand to be coached by such an acclaimed executive coach too.

If you’re a youngster who has just decided to start coaching, there’s much a bigger supply of people like you (or better). The demand to be coached by a complete newbie is lower too. As such, you won’t be able to successfully charge as much as other coaches.

These are extreme examples, but they illustrate the idea of supply and demand well. 

Life Coach Certifications Influence The Rate

Most potential clients understand the benefits of working with a certified life coach. A life coaching certification provides undeniable evidence that an individual has undergone coach-specific training. It proves you are qualified to provide a quality coaching experience.

There’s already a huge supply of certified life coaches out there, so coaches without a certification don’t have much of a chance to compete with them. 

That’s why I recommend all aspiring life coaches invest in a life coaching certification. For more information, see my list of the best life coaching certification programs.

An Important Fact About Life Coaching Fees

You might think you’ll attract more clients by lowering your life coaching prices, but that’s not always the case. 

If you charge too little for any product or service, its perceived value drops. If you raise the prices, its perceived value rises. 

Think about that before offering bargain basement prices for your life coaching sessions. It could be damaging to your reputation.

How Do You Pay A Life Coach?

Most life coaches accept all forms of debit and credit cards. When coaching face-to-face, they may accept cash too.

How To Charge Clients For Life Coaching

The more payment methods you accept, the more appealing it is for clients. So, you can choose to accept payments via the likes of PayPal, Stripe, or even cryptocurrency if you’re comfortable with that.

You’ll normally outline all of these options on your life coach website and after a free introductory session if you choose to offer one.    

Frequently Asked Questions About How To Charge For Life Coaching

Let’s round off this blog post with the answers to some frequently asked questions about life coaching pricing. 

How Much Can I Charge As A Life Coach? 

There are no regulations placing limits on life coaching pricing. You can charge whatever you see fit.

How Much Do People Charge For Coaching?

There are several factors affecting what people charge for their life coaching sessions. You can find the average rates in this guide on life coaching prices.

Does Insurance Cover Life Coaching?

In most cases, no.

The rare exceptions include coaching prescribed by medical doctors, such as weight loss coaching or smoking cessation coaching. However, this is not commonly defined as life coaching.

Another rare exception is when someone uses a life coach employed by a health clinic, rather than those with a private practice.

Online Life Coach Cost

You might think that online life coaching would be generally cheaper than face-to-face coaching because an online coach faces fewer business expenses.

However, that’s rarely the case.

As mentioned earlier, online life coaches have a global client reach, meaning there’s likely to be a higher demand for their services. They’re also able to sell their services to wealthier clients, even if they live in an impoverished part of the world.

Most importantly of all, the value of life coaching remains the same whether it’s given online or in person.    

These are just some of the reasons why online coaches can charge the same or even more than a life coach who works face-to-face with clients.  

How Much Should I Charge For Group Coaching?

If a life coach offers group coaching sessions, they’ll be paid by multiple clients for the same hours of work.

With that said, the benefit for the client is insubstantial compared to an individual coaching program.

Most clients understand this, so they’ll be expecting a significant discount in comparison to your one-on-one coaching prices. 

How Much Should I Charge For Life Coaching?

I hope these handy tips will help you decide what to charge for your services as a life coach. This is one of the more important decisions of your coaching career, so it shouldn’t be taken lightly.

With that said, there’s nothing stopping you from experimenting with your prices until you find the sweet spot that helps you make the most profit.

Remember that you’ll find it easier to increase your prices as you gain clients, testimonials, skills, and qualifications. 

Best of luck!