← Music lesson pricing calculator
A published rate of $60 an hour does not mean you are paid $60 for every hour you spend teaching. Preparation, travel, and cancellations all consume calendar time that a flat hourly rate hides. Pricing from your real teaching week — not the 60 minutes in front of a student — is what tells you whether your rate actually supports your target income.
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Cancellations and no-shows. A scheduled lesson that cancels still held the slot. At a 10% cancellation rate, 960 scheduled lessons a year pay for only 864 of them — the other 96 are calendar time with no revenue.
Preparation and travel minutes. Ten minutes of prep per lesson turns a 960-lesson year into 1,120 hours of work, not 960. Travel adds further hours without adding a dollar at the same price, which is why it moves your effective hourly rate but not your annual cash.
Fixed studio costs. Rent, materials, and software subscriptions have to be paid whether or not a lesson happens, so they belong in the price per paid lesson, not treated as a rounding error.
20 lessons scheduled per week, 48 teaching weeks a year, a 10% cancellation rate, 10 minutes of prep per lesson, no travel, $200 in monthly studio costs, and a $40,000 target annual pay after costs:
| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| Paid lessons per year | 864 of 960 scheduled |
| Annual hours (including prep) | 1,120 |
| Break-even price | $2.78 per lesson |
| Price that hits the $40,000 target | $49.07 per lesson |
| Effective hourly at a $60 price | $44.14 |
Two levers change that $49.07 target price without raising your published rate: cutting cancellations by 5 points brings it down to $46.49, and adding two more weekly lessons brings it down to $44.61 by spreading the same fixed costs over more paid lessons. Thirty minutes of travel per lesson changes neither number — it only drops the effective hourly rate from $44.14 to $30.90 for the same cash.
Start from your target annual pay after costs, not a rate you have seen a nearby teacher charge. Divide your target pay plus your annual studio costs by the number of lessons you actually expect to be paid for once cancellations are subtracted — not the number you schedule. For 20 lessons a week, 48 weeks a year, a 10% cancellation rate, and $200 in monthly costs against a $40,000 target, that price is $49.07, not $40,000 divided by 960 scheduled lessons.
Yes, because an empty slot still cost you the calendar time even though it paid nothing. Tightening cancellations from 10% to 5% on the same schedule raises paid lessons and annual revenue without changing your published price, which lowers the price you would otherwise need to charge to hit the same target — in the worked example below, the target price drops from $49.07 to $46.49.
Travel time changes your effective hourly rate, not the cash a lesson brings in at a given price. Thirty minutes of travel per lesson does not move annual revenue or net income at all — it only stretches the same income across more hours, which is why a house-call rate is usually justified by the added hours, not by the drive itself.