Price a group coaching program off two numbers: what one cohort actually costs you to deliver (mostly your hours) and the effective hourly rate you want to clear after filling every seat. Set the per-seat price so a realistically-full cohort beats your 1:1 rate per hour worked, then hold a target margin of 60 to 75 percent once your own time is paid at market. Everything below is the math to get there.
Most coaches price a group program by looking at what someone else charges and shaving 10 percent off. That is how you end up working harder for less than your 1:1 clients pay you. Group coaching is supposed to break the trade of hours for dollars, but only if you build the price from your own cost to deliver, not from a competitor’s sales page.
Here is the mental model I use with coaching clients: a cohort is a small product with a fixed cost to produce (your prep and live hours) and a variable revenue line (seats sold). Your job is to price the seat so a reasonably-full room pays you better per hour than doing the same work one person at a time.
What does one cohort actually cost you to deliver?
Before you can price anything, add up the real hours one cohort eats. Not the fantasy version where you reuse last quarter’s slides and never answer a Slack message. The honest version.
| Cost bucket | Example (8-week program) | Hours / cost |
|---|---|---|
| Live group calls | 8 calls x 90 min | 12 hrs |
| Prep & call review | ~45 min per call | 6 hrs |
| Async support | Slack/email, 8 weeks | 10 hrs |
| Onboarding + wrap-up | Welcome, offboarding | 4 hrs |
| Tools (per cohort share) | Zoom, community, workbook | $150 |
| Total delivery time | Live + behind-the-scenes | ~32 hrs + $150 |
Notice that live calls are less than half the total. The async support and prep are where group programs quietly bleed time, and they usually grow with seat count, which matters in a second. One-time build costs (curriculum, templates, the sales page) I keep out of the per-cohort number and amortize separately, because they get cheaper every time you run the program again.
Per-seat pricing versus your 1:1 rate
The anchor is your 1:1 hourly value. Say you charge $200 an hour for private coaching. A group program should let a client buy a slice of your attention for less than that, while paying you more per hour worked because the room is shared.
Rough starting point for a seat price: take the transformation and outcome a client gets, then price the seat at 25 to 45 percent of what the same result would cost in 1:1. If eight weeks of private work would run $3,200, a group seat landing between $800 and $1,400 feels fair to the buyer and still stacks up fast across a full cohort. The exact percentage depends on how much individual attention survives in the group format. More personal feedback, higher percentage.
Run the seat price and your cohort hours through a package profitability calculator that shows your effective hourly rate before you commit to a number. Seeing dollars-per-hour next to your 1:1 rate kills a lot of underpricing on the spot.
Setting a target margin and effective hourly rate
Two numbers keep you honest. First, effective hourly rate: total revenue divided by total hours you personally put in. Second, margin after you pay yourself: what is left once your own time is valued at a market rate, expressed as a percentage of revenue.
I tell coaches to aim for an effective hourly rate at least 1.5x their 1:1 rate by the time a cohort is two-thirds full, and a margin of 60 to 75 percent after paying themselves. If the program can’t clear your 1:1 rate at a realistic fill level, the price is too low or the seat count is too small, full stop.
Watch out: price for a realistic fill, not a sold-out dream. New programs often run 40 to 70 percent full for the first cohort or two. If your numbers only work at 100 percent capacity, one slow launch turns a profitable program into unpaid labor. Make the price survive a half-empty room.
A worked example, start to finish
Let’s price the 8-week program from the table above. Delivery cost: ~32 of your hours plus $150 in tools. Your 1:1 rate is $200/hr. Target cap is 10 seats.
Set the seat price at $1,200. Now look at three fill levels:
| Seats filled | Revenue | Your hours* | Effective hourly |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 (soft launch) | $4,800 | ~30 hrs | $160/hr |
| 7 (realistic) | $8,400 | ~34 hrs | $246/hr |
| 10 (full) | $12,000 | ~38 hrs | $316/hr |
*Hours creep up with headcount because async support scales with the number of people, not the number of calls.
Read the middle row. At a realistic 7 of 10 seats, you clear $246/hr, comfortably above your $200 1:1 rate, and the program grosses $8,400 for roughly the time two or three private clients would take. The soft-launch row still pays $160/hr, which is under your 1:1 but survivable for a first run while you collect testimonials. If even 4 seats felt painful, that would be the signal to raise the seat price to $1,500 rather than push volume.
After paying yourself $200/hr for ~34 hours ($6,800) at the realistic fill, you keep about $1,450 plus your paid time, which pencils out to a margin north of 70 percent once tool costs come out. That is a program worth running again. Re-run these rows whenever you change the format, and lean on a profitability calculator built for coaching packages so you are not rebuilding the spreadsheet each launch.
Scaling revenue without adding hours
The whole point of group coaching is that the next dollar shouldn’t cost you the next hour. A few levers, roughly in order of easiest to hardest:
- Raise the seat price, not the seat count. Going from $1,200 to $1,500 adds $2,100 at 7 seats and zero hours. Price is the fastest lever you own.
- Move async support into structured formats. A weekly group Q&A thread or one office-hours block replaces scattered DMs and caps the time that otherwise scales with headcount.
- Add a lower-touch tier. A self-paced or community-only seat at a lower price fills the room without adding live hours, so your blended effective rate climbs.
- Run the same curriculum more often. Build cost is a one-time hit. Cohort three costs a fraction of cohort one because the materials already exist.
What I would not do early on is chase 30-person rooms to inflate revenue. Support quality drops, refunds climb, and your effective rate can actually fall because async load explodes. Grow price and repeatability first, headcount last.
Frequently asked questions
How much should a group coaching program cost?
There’s no universal number, but a useful band is 25 to 45 percent of what the same outcome would cost in 1:1 coaching, per seat. For most independent coaches that lands seats somewhere between $500 and $2,500 depending on program length and how much personal attention each person gets.
Should group coaching be cheaper than 1:1?
Per client, yes, that’s the appeal to the buyer. Per hour of your time, no. A well-priced group program should pay you more per hour worked than 1:1 once the room is even partly full. If it doesn’t, the seat price or the seat cap is off.
How many seats should a group coaching cohort have?
For high-touch programs with live feedback, 6 to 12 keeps quality intact. Beyond that, individual attention thins and your async support time balloons. If you want a bigger room, split it into a high-touch tier and a lighter self-paced tier rather than cramming everyone into one call.
How do I calculate the profit on a coaching program?
Add up every hour you personally spend on one cohort plus hard costs like tools, value your own time at your target rate, and subtract that from revenue at a realistic fill level. Divide the remainder by revenue for your margin. Aim for 60 to 75 percent after paying yourself.
What if I can’t fill the whole cohort?
Price so the numbers work at 40 to 70 percent capacity, since that’s normal for early cohorts. If a half-full room still clears a rate you’d accept, you’re safe. If it only works sold out, raise the price instead of banking on a perfect launch.
Should I charge per cohort or offer a payment plan?
Offer both. A pay-in-full price plus a 2 or 3-part plan at a small premium (5 to 10 percent) widens who can say yes without hurting your margin. Just track which clients are mid-plan so your cash-flow picture stays honest between cohorts.
Pricing is only half the job; knowing what each cohort actually nets you is the other half. Tabby handles the bookkeeping behind your coaching business automatically, so your revenue, tool costs, and margins stay clear between launches. Start a free trial and price your next cohort from real numbers, not guesses.
