Most trainers price by looking sideways. The coach on the next mat charges AED 300, so you charge AED 280 to win the client, and two years later you are doing thirty sessions a week and cannot afford a holiday. I did this. The fix is to price from your own numbers first and only then look at the market.
Start from the income, not the rate
Decide what you need to take home each month. Not what you would love; what covers rent, life, and a buffer. Say AED 20,000. Then be honest about three things most rate cards ignore.
- Weeks you will not work. Eid, a summer trip, being ill. Five weeks a year is realistic; two is fantasy.
- Slots you will not sell. A diary with thirty slots a week sells twenty-two to twenty-five of them over a year, once cancellations and gaps are counted. Call it eighty percent on a good year.
- Costs that come out before you. Gym floor fees or rent, insurance, your licence and visa if you are freelance, software, transport, the phone you run the business on. Twenty percent of revenue is a normal starting point in Dubai; higher if you rent a studio.
With those in, the arithmetic is short. AED 20,000 a month is AED 240,000 a year of take-home. At twenty percent costs you need AED 300,000 of revenue. Thirty slots a week over forty-seven working weeks at eighty percent sold is about 1,130 sessions. AED 300,000 divided by 1,130 is roughly AED 265 a session. That is your floor, before any package discount, before VAT.
The rate calculator on this site does this sum with your own numbers. Change the weeks off from two to five and watch the rate move. That gap is what most coaches are quietly giving away.
Packages that reward commitment, not discount it away
Packages exist to get paid up front and to lock in a pattern of attendance. Both are worth something to you. The mistake is pricing the package as a discount on the session rate and nothing else, because then the package is simply cheaper and the client who would have paid full price now pays less.
- Anchor on the pattern, not the count. "Two sessions a week for a month" is a habit. "Eight sessions" is a voucher that lasts until December.
- Give the discount for the commitment you want. A monthly renewing package at five percent off the session rate is worth more to you than a one-off ten-pack at fifteen percent off, because it renews.
- Put an expiry on packs. Ninety days for a ten-pack is fair to the client and protects you from a client who resurfaces in February expecting six sessions at last year's price.
- Price the first package to make the decision easy and the renewal to make it sensible. An intro of three sessions near the single rate, then the monthly package.
| Package | Sessions | Price (AED, ex VAT) | Per session |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intro | 3 | 780 | 260 |
| Monthly, twice a week | 8 per month, renewing | 2,000 | 250 |
| Monthly, three times a week | 12 per month, renewing | 2,880 | 240 |
| Single session | 1 | 280 | 280 |
These are illustrative figures built on the AED 265 floor above. Yours will differ. The shape is what matters: the single session is the most expensive, the renewing packages carry the discount, and nothing sits far below the floor.
Online coaching changes the maths
An online client does not take a diary slot. That is why online coaching is how in-person trainers get past the ceiling of hours in a day. Price it on the value of the weekly loop, not on session time: the programme, the nutrition targets, the weekly check-in and the replies. In the UAE, AED 800 to 1,500 a month is a common range for a full online service, and thirty online clients at AED 1,000 is AED 30,000 a month with no floor fees.
The condition is that the loop has to actually run every week, for every client, or the price collapses on renewal. Software matters more here than for in-person work: check-ins that land in a queue, nutrition the client can log in seconds, and payments that renew without a reminder.
Raising rates without losing people
Raise once a year, tell clients a month ahead, and honour the old price for anyone who prepays a package before the change. Most clients expect a rise; what they resent is a surprise. And the client who leaves over AED 20 a session was going to leave over something else.
Gymciety lets you sell packages from the app, collect through Stripe, and track sessions used against each one. But the pricing is yours. Do the sum before you look at what anyone else charges.
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Published 10 September 2026. Canonical URL: https://gymciety.net/blog/pricing-pt-packages-aed.