How much to charge as a personal trainer: how to set your rate

To work out how much to charge as a personal trainer, do not copy someone else's rate: calculate what an hour of your work is worth and multiply it by the hours each service takes, counting the ones nobody sees. The value of your hour comes from dividing what you need to bring in each month (fixed costs, what you want to earn and a margin) by the hours you really spend on your clients. Here is the method in four steps, a worked hypothetical example and when to review your price.

Why copying someone else's rate does not work

Copying a price also means copying the costs, the week and the service of whoever set it, and none of that is yours. Someone who trains in their own premises pays rent that someone who visits clients at home does not, but the latter loses hours travelling. Someone who works online does not sell sessions but follow-up: their limit is how many reviews and messages they can handle well. Two identical rates can hide a healthy business and one that loses money every month.

That is why this article does not give you a price range. It gives you a calculation you can do with your own numbers in an afternoon and repeat whenever something changes.

Step 1: what you need to bring in each month

Your rate has to cover three things, and it is best to note them separately so you do not miss any:

• Fixed costs for the month. Rent or membership of the centre where you train, insurance, software, equipment, phone, courses and travel. If something is paid once a year, divide it across the months.
• What you want to earn. Your salary, decided before you calculate, not whatever is left at the end.
• A margin. For slow months, holidays, clients leaving and the unexpected. A business with no margin depends on no month going wrong.

Do the sums with the months you will really work. If you know that one month a year you will hardly have any activity, spread what you need across the whole year over the months in which you will bring in income.

Step 2: the hours you really spend on your clients

Here is the trap: counting only session hours. Each client asks for work before, during and after training, and that work has to be charged for too.

In person

Add up the session, the gap between one session and the next, the travel if you go to clients' homes or change centres, and the time you spend outside the session preparing or adjusting their plan, billing them and moving their appointments.

Online

Add up reviewing what they log and their check-in, plan adjustments when they are due and the time spent answering their messages. There is no session, but there is work every week.

Do not include here the hours spent on finding clients, social media or general running of the business: those belong to no particular client and are already paid for by the margin. Time yourself for a couple of real weeks before giving a figure: from memory it is easy to come up short.

Steps 3 and 4: the value of your hour and the price of each service

With the two previous steps, the calculation is straightforward:

1. Value of your hour = what you need to bring in each month ÷ hours per month you spend on your clients.
2. Price of a service = hours per month that service takes × the value of your hour.

The second formula avoids the mistake of charging the same price for services that take different amounts of time. A plan with two sessions a week, another that is online only and another that is mixed each have their own number of hours, and therefore their own price. If a service comes out more expensive than your client is willing to pay, the way out is not to lower the price by guesswork, but to redesign the service so it takes fewer hours or to aim it at a different kind of client.

Then check that the numbers fit your capacity: the clients you need to reach your figure have to fit into your week. How to work out how many fit is covered in how many clients a personal trainer can handle.

A hypothetical example: in person versus online

The numbers below are made up to show the calculation: they are not an industry benchmark or a recommendation on how many sessions to sell. We use a four-week month for simplicity.

Item	In person (two sessions a week)	Online
Sessions per month	8 sessions of 60 min = 8 h	—
Gap between sessions	8 × 15 min = 2 h	—
Work outside sessions	20 min a week = 1 h 20 min	40 min a week = 2 h 40 min
Hours per month the service takes	11 h 20 min	2 h 40 min

With the same hourly value, the in-person service in this example would have to cost a little over four times what the online one does, because it takes a little over four times the hours. If this trainer priced the two the same, or with only a small difference, they would be giving away time on one of them.

Note also what is not visible: in the in-person service, the gaps and the work outside sessions add up to 3 h 20 min of the 11 h 20 min the service takes. If they priced only the eight session hours, they would be doing all the rest unpaid.

When and how to review your rate

A rate is not set once and for all. Do the calculation again when any of these happens:

• Your fixed costs change: new premises, different insurance, one more tool.
• Your diary is full and you still do not reach what you need to bring in.
• You change the service: more reviews, fewer sessions, a different format.
• The real time per client no longer resembles what you put in step 2.

If you decide to raise your price, give notice in good time and in writing, say from when it applies and what the service includes from then on. Decide beforehand whether you will keep the price for your current clients for a while or change it for everyone at once, and apply it equally to all. The clearer the fee, the fewer arguments: in monthly fee or session pack you can see how to choose the billing format.

What helps you do the sums in Entrenify

Entrenify (in Spanish) does not tell you how much to charge: that decision is yours. What it does is give you your own numbers so you can check whether the sums hold up:

• Fixed costs and profit. You note your fixed costs for the month and the business dashboard shows you the profit: what you have collected minus those costs. If you do not enter them, it does not show you an invented profit.
• Monthly target. If you set a target in “Ajustes” (Settings), the dashboard compares it with what was collected in the period.
• Fee per client. Each client can have their own fee, with an amount and frequency, so each service can carry its own price.
• Recurring income and average payment. Recurring income converts each active fee to its monthly equivalent, and the average payment is what was collected divided by the number of payments in the period.
• Every figure with its rule. Each number on the dashboard explains where it comes from, so you can check it.

What it does not do: Entrenify is not a payment gateway and does not charge your clients for you, and it does not issue tax invoices. You record the payments yourself, with their payment method. Which figures to look at every week and every month is in the numbers of a personal trainer's business.

There are two plans: Esencial, €22 a month + VAT (Spanish IVA), to manage up to 20 active clients; and Pro, €32 a month + VAT, with no client limit, with your own public website and automations.