How Much to Charge for Life Coaching in 2025
Good morning my coaching friends and soul family. Today, we’re talking about how much to charge for life coaching.
This is one of the most common questions new life coaches ask.
We're going to go into what's a fair rate to start charging when you're a new coach, what other coaches are charging out there, how to set your prices with confidence, what factors can affect your pricing, and some pricing mistakes to avoid.
Anything I talk about today, run it through your filters. Some things might resonate, others might not. Take what feels true and leave the rest. I’ll share facts, downloads, values, and beliefs. I believe it's most ethical to start out pro bono while you're learning.
Let’s jump in.
How Much Do Life Coaches Charge
If you’re wondering how much life coaches charge, the range is wide: from $50 per session to $1,500 per session.
New coaches usually charge $50 to $150. That’s what I charged after three months of training. Before training, I charged $50 for prenatal yoga coaching under my business Stretching for Two.
Intermediate coaches charge $150 to $300 per session. At that point, they’re usually offering packages, like four sessions per month at $300 each. That’s $1,200 monthly. Over three months, that’s $3,600. Over six, $7,200.
Established coaches charge $300 or more per session.
These are common industry ranges, not rules.
According to a 2025 salary guide:
ICF-credentialed coaches earn about 30% more than non-credentialed coaches on average. (Not credentialed yet? Start your training now)
ACC coaches charge $100 to $200 an hour. That’s what I pay my ACC support coaches.
PCC coaches charge $150 to $350. That’s what I pay my PCC trainers.
MCC coaches make $250 to $500 or more.
Geography matters too. In places with higher living costs like New York or California, coaches tend to charge more. A 2023 global coaching study said ICF credentialed coaches earn:
$244 an hour globally
$272 in North America
$277 in Western Europe
Your coaching speciality also matters. Executive coaching is often $200 to $600+ per hour.
Do some market research. See what others in your niche or area charge. You don’t have to copy them, but it’s good to know. That way, if someone questions your pricing, you can respond with clarity.
How to Set Your Rates as a New Coach
1. Charge What You Pay
Personally, I believe in paying the price I want to receive.
Before coach training, I worked with a life coach for a year. I started paying $350 a month, and later paid $1,000 a month for business coaching. That prepared me to start charging.
After three months of coach training, I began charging $150 per session. That felt good because I had experience both as a client and as a trainee.
A year and a half ago, I started working with Jessica Riverson and now pay $2,500 a month because I want to eventually charge that for a mastermind. I felt it was important to practice paying that first.
So ask yourself: would you pay the amount you’re asking others to pay? If not, dig into why.
2. Price the Transformation, Not the Coaching
Let the price be a side effect of the transformation you offer. Focus on the results, not on the coaching itself.
On sales calls, I tune into the person’s goals and help them get clear. Then we discuss pricing as an energy exchange. You give energy, and you receive energy.
When I obsess over the money, things don’t flow well. I’ve learned to shift focus to service and results. The money follows naturally.
3. Check In With Your Intuition
I love co-creating with the universe.
I’ll meditate and ask, “What do you want me to charge?” A number usually drops in. Then I compare it with my retreat expenses and the profit I want to earn. That’s how I priced my latest mastermind retreat.
You can also tune into your body when you think of a price. If it feels light and expansive, it’s likely in alignment. If your body tenses or constricts, it might be too high too soon.
Should You Coach for Free When Starting Out?
The Value of Pro Bono Coaching
I'm a big fan of starting with pro bono work when you're new to life coaching or any service or skill set you're learning. Pro bono means you're not charging anything for your services at first.
In other words, wait to charge until your skill set and confidence are stronger.
Even if you’re not earning money, you’ll still receive value from the learning process.
There’s a lot of value in working with pro bono clients. You build testimonials, gain referrals, increase your confidence, and build real relationships. And, you’ll discover what works, what doesn’t, and what results you can create through your coaching.
A lot of us are afraid to do this because we think we're not valuing ourselves.
The Ethics of Pricing Something You Haven’t Tested
Many coaches put pressure on themselves to start charging high-end prices before they've had any training. Life coaching is a professional skill set. It’s learned, developed, and mastered over time with education, training, and feedback.
We sometimes think, "Because I’m a human and I’ve been through hard things, now I’m a coach."
If you want to charge thousands for packages, that’s your choice. Life coaching isn’t regulated yet, but you still need to ask what is ethical.
If you want to figure out how much to charge for life coaching, you need a clear offer. We teach you how to do that inside the Born to Coach Training Academy.
But creating it is not enough. Once it's created, you need to figure out if your program works.
If you haven’t run someone through it from start to finish, how do you know?
Do you have testimonials or results to stand behind?
If not, is it ethical to ask for money for a service you haven’t tested?
I would be upset if someone sold me a coaching program they had never tested. That doesn’t feel ethical.
In other professions, people put in hundreds of hours of practice before getting paid. Life coaching shouldn’t be different. In nursing school, I did hundreds of hours of rotations before I could get paid, graduated, passed my exam, and only then began working.
As coaching becomes more regulated, I believe we’ll see supervised hours required before charging clients. This ensures we're practicing in a safe and ethical way.
When to Start Charging for Life Coaching
1. Build Confidence First
Eventually, you’ll know when it’s time to start charging. You’ll feel it. You’ll start seeing the value of your offer and notice clients getting real results. Then it will feel natural to begin charging.
If charging still makes you nervous or out of alignment, it might be too soon. Tune into that. Ask yourself, would you pay the amount you’re asking for your own service?
2. Slowly Transition Out of Pro Bono Work
The best way to step out of pro bono coaching is to charge $1 per session to start regulating your nervous system.
That $1 counts as a paid hour toward your ICF credential. You’ll need to get a payment processor set up. See what it feels like to be paid, even a small amount, after delivering a session.
That practice helps you prepare to receive money for your services. It’s a process.
3. Raise Your Life Coaching Rates Over Time
Typically, you will raise your rates as you specialize, get trained, earn credentials, build proof of results, or create a unique method.
For example, one of our students is a grief coach using the Grief Recovery Method. That’s a proven signature framework.
Eventually, you’ll want to offer packages.
Start session to session if you’re new, then move to three, six, or twelve-month packages. That can feel intimidating at first, so don’t rush it.
3 Pricing Mistakes to Avoid
❌ Never Charging for Your Services
You want to eventually start charging if you’ve put in the time, training, and education. You deserve to get paid for your time, energy, and skill set. Don’t make the mistake of never allowing yourself to charge. You do need to charge for your services eventually, and it should feel good to get paid.
If something is blocking you from receiving money when it’s time to start, that’s something to look at on a deeper level with your coach. Start to see what’s going on there.
❌ Undercharging From Fear or Guilt
A lot of times, we’re afraid to ask for money or feel guilty, like we shouldn’t be receiving that much. Think about the energy and intention behind your pricing. That energy will be felt by your audience.
If you’re choosing a price from a place of lack, like “I’m going to just charge $50 because I don’t think anybody’s going to pay me more,” that energy will reflect back to you.
But if you say, “I’m going to charge $100 because it feels good, it feels right, it feels in alignment, and I trust that the right people will find a way to pay for this,” that belief and confidence will be reflected back to you as well.
Just be aware and intentional of what thoughts, beliefs, and energy you are putting into your pricing and your business decisions in general.
If it’s important to you that your prices remain affordable, honor it. But make sure your prices also support your lifestyle. You need to pay your bills and avoid running your business from fear or scarcity.
To make your coaching more affordable, you can use a sliding scale, extended payment plans, or financing. I use a company called FlexBuy. I also offer scholarships once or twice a year.
If you’re putting together coaching packages, you can offer a pay-in-full bonus. This works well and incentivizes upfront payments.
❌ Charging High Prices Because Your Coach Told You To
Your coach shouldn’t be telling you to do anything. If they’re truly staying in the role of coach, they will be partnering with you and supporting you in making aligned decisions.
Or maybe you see another coach you admire charging a certain rate, and you feel like you need to be making that same amount. That kind of comparison creates pressure. It's driven by external factors and doesn't honor what feels true to you.
At the end of the day, you are the CEO and founder of your business. You get to make the decisions that are best for your living situation, your clients, and what you offer. Nobody else gets to tell you what to do.
Owning Your Price as a Life Coach
I hope this helped you decide how much to charge for your coaching. Trust yourself. Pick your price, move on, and don’t stay stuck.
Focus on helping others and creating from a place of pleasure and trust. There are people out there ready and excited to pay for your coaching.
I always like soul first, strategy second. Soul before strategy.
You want to lead with your heart first, listen to your intuition, take direction from that place, and then from there just start to pour your heart and soul into content and topics you're passionate about.
After that, you can start to throw more strategy on top of things to create even better results, helping more clients and making it easier for your ideal client to find you.
In the Born to Coach Training Academy, you’ll learn to coach at a PCC level and build your business from the ground up, including how to choose pricing that fits you and the clients you want to serve.
See everything that’s included in the program
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Hey There! I’m Krista
A Retired Nurse Turned Professional Certified Life Coach, Spiritual Business Mentor, Hypnotherapist, World Traveler, Author & Mama to Lincoln.
I was born to be a coach and live a life beyond the white picket fence. I was never designed to struggle through a 9-5 job and sell my soul to the devil.
Now I work with heart-centered humans all over the world showing them how to become life coaches and start their own online businesses.
Hopefully one day I’ll get to work with you inside one of my coaching programs too. Because you deserve to have a life and career that brings you the ultimate freedom and flexibility so you can do the work you were born to do.
Xo,
Krista Kathleen, PCC