Work it out from what you need to earn, check it against what your market actually pays, and stop selling by the hour.
Most articles on this answer with a national average. That number is useless to you: rates vary enormously between a city centre studio and a small town, between in-home and gym-floor, between a first-year trainer and one with a waiting list. An average across all of that describes nobody.
What's more useful is the arithmetic, because there are only two numbers that matter — what you need to earn, and what your market will bear — and most trainers have never worked out the first one.
It's nearly always the same story. You set a rate when you were starting out and nervous about filling the diary. You got considerably better. You never changed the number, because the people paying it are the ones who have been with you longest and changing it on them feels like a betrayal.
So the rate becomes historical rather than deliberate. A trainer three years in is often charging what a beginner charges, while quietly resenting a schedule that doesn't pay enough.
The other cause is comparison. Trainers benchmark against the cheapest visible option in their area, which is usually somebody new and undercutting because they don't yet have a choice. That's not your competition.
Work backwards. This takes ten minutes and it's the part almost everyone skips.
Take-home, before you think about anything else.
Be honest rather than modest. Then add what self-employment costs you — tax, insurance, certification renewals, equipment, rent or gym fees, software, phone. That total is what the business has to produce, and it's usually a good deal more than people's first guess.
Not how many hours are in a week. How many are sellable.
Clients want early mornings, evenings and Saturdays. Those windows are finite, and the middle of a Tuesday is not. Then subtract holiday, illness, and the admin, programming and consults that don't bill.
Most full-time in-person trainers land somewhere well under thirty billable hours a week, and the gap between that and the forty people assume is exactly where underpricing comes from.
That's your floor, not your price.
The result is the number below which the business doesn't work. Your actual rate should sit above it, because a floor assumes a full diary every week of the year and nobody has that.
Now — and only now — look at what others charge, because the number you just calculated has to be sellable to real people nearby.
Don't use a national average. Find out what your own market pays:
Look at trainers with full diaries, not empty ones. Anyone advertising heavily on price is telling you they can't fill their week. The trainer with a waiting list and no visible advertising is the useful comparison, and you'll usually have to ask around rather than search.
Check what the gyms nearby charge for their own PT. It's published, it's the number your prospects have already seen, and it's the anchor in their head when you say yours.
Ask what people actually paid, not what's listed. Advertised rates and transacted rates differ, particularly where blocks and packages are involved.
If your calculated floor is well above what your market pays, that's information rather than a dead end — it means you need a different delivery model, a different clientele, or fewer hours at a higher value. It does not mean you should charge less than the business needs.
The pricing decision most trainers get wrong isn't the number, it's the unit.
Selling by the hour makes every session a fresh purchase decision and makes you a commodity compared against every other hour available. It also produces the least predictable income possible.
Sell a block. Eight or twelve weeks, a defined number of sessions, a stated outcome to work towards. The client buys a process rather than an hour, which is what actually delivers results and what makes the price defensible.
Blocks also fix the conversation at the end. There's a natural point to review progress and ask for the next one, rather than a relationship that quietly stops when somebody gets busy.
Keep a single-session rate, priced clearly higher pro rata. It exists to make the block look sensible and to serve people who genuinely want one-offs.
Plenty of trainers are priced correctly per hour and still underpaid, because of everything attached to the hour for free.
Programme design between sessions. Messages answered at nine at night. Nutrition guidance thrown in. A free session to close the sale. Rescheduling with no notice at no cost.
None of these needs to be charged separately — the simpler answer is usually to price them into the block and say so, so the client understands what they're buying. What doesn't work is providing them invisibly and feeling underpaid for the hour.
A correct price delivered apologetically converts worse than a higher one delivered plainly.
State it as one sentence — the block, what's included, the price — and then stop talking. The silence afterwards is uncomfortable and it's meant to be. Filling it is how trainers end up discounting something nobody objected to.
Where the price lands is also decided before you say it. A prospect who has just seen their own numbers and a realistic timeline is in a different frame of mind from one who has heard about your qualifications. How to run a personal training consultation covers the order that makes it land.
Two rules make this survivable.
Raise it at renewals, never mid-block. A rise announced part-way through changes a deal already agreed, which is the version clients genuinely resent. At a renewal it's simply the price of the next thing.
Do it in smaller steps, more often. Trainers who adjust annually get very little pushback. Trainers who go four years and then need one rise to carry four years of work get a reaction, because the jump has to do too much at once.
New clients get the new rate immediately. Existing ones move at their next block. That's it — a spreadsheet of individual exceptions is how pricing becomes impossible to explain the day two clients compare notes in the car park.