How to Price Private Yoga Sessions vs Group Classes

Price private yoga sessions from your room, not from what the market charges. Use the Room-Hour Floor: after teacher pay, the private has to earn more than the group class it pushes out, and it should sit at roughly five to seven times your realized per-visit group rate. Below that floor, every private you book earns less than the class it replaces.

TL;DR

• Work out your realized group visit rate this week (total class revenue divided by total check-ins) and set privates at five to seven times that figure.
• Keep privates out of prime slots unless the fee clears the contribution of the full group class they would replace.
• Sell privates in five-session packs at 10 percent off with a 60-day expiry and a 24-hour late-cancel rule.

What should a private yoga session cost compared with a group class?

A workable starting point is five to seven times your realized group visit rate. At a $16 realized rate, that means $80 to $112.

The word that matters is "realized." Your posted drop-in rate might be $25, but once you count unlimited members coming four times a week, ten-packs bought at a discount, and intro offers, the average revenue per check-in is often far lower. To get the real figure, take last month's class revenue and divide it by last month's total check-ins. If you have never run that number, the walkthrough in running yoga studio numbers by the week shows where each input comes from.

Use the multiplier as a starting point. The Room-Hour Floor below is the real test of whether a price works.

How do you calculate the Room-Hour Floor?

Add teacher pay to the contribution the displaced group class would have earned in that slot. Your private price has to clear that total, every time.

You need three inputs for every slot: average group attendance, your realized rate, and the teacher's pay for that class. Group contribution is attendance times realized rate, minus teacher pay. The private's contribution is the fee minus the teacher's split. The private wins only when its contribution is higher than the group class contribution.

Worked example: A 6 p.m. Thursday flow draws 14 students at a $16 realized rate, so it brings in 14 x $16 = $224. The teacher earns $45 plus $3 for each of the 4 students above 10, so $45 + $12 = $57, leaving $224 - $57 = $167 in contribution. A $110 private in that same room-hour with a 50 percent teacher split leaves $110 - $55 = $55, which is $112 less than the class it pushed out. Move that private to the 1 p.m. Tuesday slot, where the group class averages 4 students (4 x $16 = $64 revenue, $45 teacher pay, $19 contribution), and the same $110 private earns $55 - $19 = $36 more than the class it replaces.

To break even in that Thursday slot at a 50 percent split, the private would need to cost $167 / 0.5 = $334. Almost no client will pay that, which is the point. The calculation tells you where privates belong, not just what to charge.

When does a private session lose money against a group class?

Privates lose money in prime slots, typically weekday 6 a.m. and 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., when a full group class earns more than almost any private fee.

The trap is that teachers and clients both want those same hours. A client with a 9-to-5 job asks for 6 p.m. The teacher agrees because they are already in the building. The front desk books it into Studio B, which looks free, but Studio B was where the overflow restorative class would have run next term.

Studios that handle this well publish a "private hours" grid: mid-morning, early afternoon, and the 8 p.m. slot after the last flow. Any private requested outside the grid is quoted at a premium rate, for example $30 to $40 above standard, or politely redirected. Many clients pick a grid slot once they see the difference in price. If you only have one room, protect every slot where the group class averages more than 70 percent of capacity.

How much of the private fee should the teacher get?

A common range is 50 to 60 percent of the private fee. That is a richer split than group pay, because the teacher often brought in the client.

Some studios use a two-tier split: 50 percent when the studio generated the lead through its website or front desk, and 60 to 70 percent when the teacher brought the client in. Write the tier into each teacher's agreement and tag every private client's source on the client record at first booking, not afterward from memory.

For context on what that split is worth, here is the federal benchmark for the occupation:

A teacher earning $55 from a $110 private is paid roughly two and a half times the median hourly wage for the occupation. That makes privates a strong retention tool when hiring and keeping yoga teachers. One caution: if the studio sets the private rate, the schedule, and the cancellation terms, those are behavioral and financial controls under the IRS worker classification categories. Have your accountant review the arrangement before you call private teachers contractors.

Should private sessions be sold in packs or one at a time?

Sell privates in packs of five with a modest discount and a hard expiry. That way the calendar fills ahead and no-shows cost the client.

At a $110 single rate, a five-pack at 10 percent off is $495. Make it expire in 60 days, which works out to one session every 12 days. Packs with no expiry turn into liabilities sitting on your books, and teachers end up holding open slots for clients who resurface eight months later.

Studios that already sell group packs can reuse the same logic. The discount steps and expiry rules in yoga class pack pricing carry over almost directly. Do not stack a private pack discount on top of a member discount. Pick one.

How should you price semi-private sessions for two to four people?

Price semi-privates per session, not per head, and let the clients split the cost. Two people usually pay about 1.5 times the solo private rate in total.

At a $110 private rate, a two-person session is $165, or $82.50 each. Add smaller steps from there: $195 for three ($65 each) and $220 for four ($55 each). Cap it at four. Above four, the teacher can no longer give individual hands-on cues, and you are running a small group class at a discount.

Semi-privates are the best answer to the prime-slot problem. Two partners paying $165 together earn $82.50 in contribution at a 50 percent split, so they come closer to an average evening class than a solo private does.

What cancellation rules protect private session revenue?

Use a 24-hour late-cancel window for privates rather than the 12 hours many studios allow for group classes, because nobody else can fill a private slot.

A group class absorbs a late cancel: someone on the waitlist takes the mat. A private slot is just an empty hour you still pay the teacher for. Deduct the session from the pack or charge the full fee inside 24 hours. Allow one courtesy waiver per pack for illness, and log it on the client record so a second desk staffer does not grant it again.

How do you test a private session price increase without losing clients?

Raise the rate for new clients first, grandfather existing pack holders for 90 days, and judge the result by rebooking, not by how many people inquire.

Inquiries often dip briefly after a price change, so they are a noisy signal. The useful one is whether clients buy a second pack within 14 days of finishing their first. If that rate holds after a $10 increase, the old price was too low. If it drops noticeably over two full pack cycles, roll back half the increase rather than all of it.

Send grandfathered clients a short note 30 days before their protected rate ends, stating the new price and the date. A change announced in advance draws fewer objections than one that shows up on a receipt.

Which numbers should you track monthly for private sessions?

Track three figures every month: private contribution per room-hour, pack renewal rate, and the share of private clients who also attend group classes.

The third figure is the one most studios miss. A private client who also takes two group classes a week is worth far more than the private fee alone, and that crossover is often where long-term members come from. If it falls, ask teachers to suggest a specific group class to try at the end of each private. For more benchmarks across pricing, scheduling, and retention, browse the yoga studio operations hub.

Review all three on the same day each month, next to your group attendance by slot. Your private hours grid should change whenever a group class grows into an off-peak slot.