What Do I Charge?
What Should I Charge?
A Coaching Pricing Baseline Calculator
Find the baseline hourly rate your coaching business needs to support your life - before factoring in value, demand, or positioning
This coaching pricing calculator helps you determine your baseline hourly rate for paid client time - the foundation for pricing sessions, packages, or ongoing support pricing.
It’s designed for work where:
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You control your pricing
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Your time, attention, and expertise are part of the service
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Some of your work is unpaid, but still essential
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It isn’t designed for:
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Coaches who don’t control their pricing (platform-set rates, revenue splits)
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Product-based businesses or passive-only income models
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By the end, you’ll have a baseline hourly price for paid client time - a number you’ll use to build pricing for sessions, packages, or ongoing support.
How to use this calculator
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Fill in the input fields
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Use the toggles to choose between quick estimates vs. full breakdowns
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Open the optional sections if they apply to you.
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Review your results
If your number feels
uncomfortably high
If this number feels high, that’s common - especially if you’ve been underpricing or absorbing unpaid work for a long time.
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Baseline hourly rates can feel high when:
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You're doing more unpaid work than you realized
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Your available paid hours are limited
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Your business expenses have increased​
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A “big” number doesn’t mean you should abandon your business or charge hourly forever.​
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It means that you need a pricing structure that supports it. ​​​​
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If you want to price by the session:
→ Learn how to structure sessions so you're protecting your out-of-session time
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If you want to sell packages:
→ Use this baseline in creating package pricing that doesn’t undercut your time
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If you want to offer ongoing support:
→ Use this number to sanity-check monthly pricing
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If you're not sure which pricing structure is right for you, check out this coaching pricing structure guide.
Why you need your hourly pricing baseline first
Before you decide how to price sessions, packages, or ongoing support, you need one number that answers:
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What does one hour of paid client time need to be worth for your work to be sustainable?
This calculator doesn’t just look at the time you spend with clients. It accounts for:
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Unpaid work like admin, prep, and follow-up
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Time off, taxes, overhead, and business profit
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The reality that not every working hour is billable
The result is a baseline paid-client hourly rate that ensures you're paid for all of your time.
Who this calculator is for
(and who it's not)
This calculator is for coaches who sell their expertise, guidance, or transformation and want to understand the minimum hourly rate their coaching work needs to earn to support their life.
It’s designed for coaches who:
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Set (or want to set) their own prices
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Work directly with clients through sessions, packages, or ongoing support
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Want pricing that covers real life, not just fills their calendar
By the end, you’ll have a baseline hourly rate.
This is the number you’ll use to build baseline pricing for:
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Sessions
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Packages
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Ongoing or retainer-style support
Think of it as the financial floor your pricing needs to clear.
Who this calculator is not for
This calculator is not designed for:
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Coaches who don’t control their pricing
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Product-only businesses
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It also won’t tell you what you should charge based on:
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Niche
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Demand
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Market positioning
Those factors come after you know your baseline hourly rate and baseline pricing for your pricing structure.
What to do with your baseline next
Once you have this baseline number, the next step depends on how you plan to price your services:
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If you price by the session:
→ Price sessions without undercutting yourself
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If you sell packages:
→ Turn your baseline into package pricing
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If you offer ongoing support:
→ Check if your monthly pricing actually works
Not sure which pricing structure fits your work yet?
→ Read this guide on choosing between sessions, packages, and ongoing support
Important mental note
This number is a baseline.
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It's what you need to charge in order to cover the scenario you created in the calculator - to cover your expenses and to hit your financial and time capacity goals.
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This number's job is to make sure that when you increase prices based on demand, niche, authority, or perceived value, you’re building on a solid foundation instead of guessing.