How Much to Charge for a Mentorship Program

Charge for a mentorship program by pricing the mentor hours each mentee actually receives at your target hourly rate, then adding the value of the group and the assets. At $250 an hour over six months, that gives about $5,000 for one-to-one mentoring, $2,450 a seat in a cohort of 6 and $1,150 in a cohort of 20.

At a glance: pricing a mentorship program

• The formula (Access-Hours Pricing): price per mentee = (private mentor hours per mentee + shared group hours ÷ seats) x target hourly rate + group and asset value.
• The rate anchor: the International Coaching Federation’s 2023 Global Coaching Study put the average fee for a one-hour coaching session at US$244 in 2022. Coaching is not mentoring, but it is the closest published hourly benchmark.
• No public benchmark exists that we could verify for business mentorship program prices or cohort fill rates. Every hour count, asset value and close rate below is a labelled assumption.
• The sanity check: sales calls needed per mentee = 1 ÷ close rate. At 25%, that is 4 calls per mentee sold.

Rules of thumb (arithmetic from the worked example on this page, or sourced inline):

• A 6-seat cohort at $2,450 must sell at least 4 seats to clear $250 per mentor hour; at 3 seats it earns about $209 an hour.
• A 20-seat cohort at a 25% close rate needs 80 sales calls, about 60 hours of selling at 45 minutes each, more than the 51 hours it takes to deliver.
• At $150 a held call and a 25% close rate, selling one seat costs $600: 12% of the $5,000 one-to-one price but 52% of a $1,150 seat in the cohort of 20.
• On MentorCruise, the price a mentee sees on a monthly plan is up to 20% above the mentor’s payout (more on plans under $100), so set the payout you need, not the list price (MentorCruise help centre).

How much should I charge for my mentorship program?

A mentorship program should charge each mentee for the mentor hours they consume at your target hourly rate, plus a premium for the peer group and the materials. That is the Access-Hours Pricing formula, and it works because a mentorship’s scarce input is the mentor’s time, not the content.

The worked example below assumes a six-month program and a target rate of $250 an hour, which sits just above the ICF’s US$244 average one-hour coaching fee. Replace both with your own. Group hours are shared, so 24 group hours split six ways is 4 hours per mentee.

The $500 group and asset value stands for whatever a mentee gets that costs no live mentor time: recordings, templates, a peer group, introductions. If your program has none, set it to zero.

Frequently asked questions

What is a fair hourly rate to build a mentorship price on?

Use the rate you would accept for the same hour sold one-to-one elsewhere. The closest published benchmark is coaching: the ICF’s 2023 Global Coaching Study reported an average fee of US$244 per one-hour coaching session in 2022, ranging from $277 in Western Europe to $114 in Latin America and the Caribbean (ICF executive summary).

Should a mentorship program be priced per month or per program?

Price the whole program first with Access-Hours Pricing, then divide it into monthly payments if buyers need them. The six-month one-to-one example is $5,000 in total, or about $833 a month.

How much more should one-to-one mentoring cost than a group?

In the worked example, one-to-one costs about twice the cohort of 6 and just over four times the cohort of 20, because each one-to-one mentee uses 18 mentor hours against 7.75 and 2.55.

What if my mentorship cohort does not fill?

Set a minimum seat count before launch and say it in the sales material. In the example, a cohort of 6 earns $251 an hour at 4 seats and $209 at 3, so 4 is the go or no-go number; a cohort of 20 still clears $250 at 10 seats.

Can I add a peer group or templates to justify a higher price?

Yes, but only as the named group and asset value on top of the hours, and only for things the buyer can see: recordings, templates, introductions, a peer group. The worked example uses $500 for each tier as an assumption; if you cannot list what it buys, leave it out.

What each mentorship tier must include

Each mentorship tier must state its private hours, group hours, response time and materials in writing, because the price is built from those hours and a buyer compares tiers on them.

MentorCruise’s own pricing guide for mentors makes the same point: it tells mentors to spell out the number of sessions per month, session duration, response time for messages, whether resources or assignments are included and any feedback offered (MentorCruise, choosing pricing). The table turns that checklist into the three formats priced above.

How many seats does a mentorship cohort need to fill?

A mentorship cohort needs enough paid seats that revenue divided by total mentor hours still clears your target rate, and the small cohort is far more sensitive to empty seats than the large one.

Group hours stay at 24 at any fill; private hours scale per seat:

• Cohort of 6 at 4 seats: 4 x $2,450 = $9,800 over 24 + 4 x 3.75 = 39 hours, or $251 an hour. Just clear.
• Cohort of 6 at 3 seats: $7,350 over 35.25 hours, or $209 an hour. Below the rate; the mentor would earn more selling the same hours one-to-one.
• Cohort of 20 at 14 seats (70% fill): $16,100 over 24 + 14 x 1.35 = 42.9 hours, or $375 an hour.
• Cohort of 20 at 10 seats: $11,500 over 37.5 hours, or $307 an hour.
• Cohort of 20 at 8 seats: $9,200 over 34.8 hours, or $264 an hour; at 7 seats it drops to $241, so 8 is the minimum.

The quotable version: a small mentorship cohort fails on empty seats, a large one fails on the cost of filling them. If mentor capacity rather than demand is your ceiling, the mentor-by-mentor seat maths is covered in how to fill a paid mentorship cohort, and the per-hour yield test for coach-led groups in how to price a group coaching program.

How many sales calls does each mentee cost?

Each mentee sold costs 1 ÷ your close rate in sales calls, so at a 25% close rate every seat takes 4 held calls, and a 20-seat cohort takes 80.

This is the seat-count sanity check. We found no public close-rate benchmark for mentorship sales calls, so the bands below are assumptions. The cost per held call is also an assumption, set at $150 for the worked example; LeadsNow sees booked-call costs of $30–$400, depending on industry, offer, price and many other variables.

The cohort of 20 is the cheapest seat and the most expensive to sell one call at a time. Three fixes exist: sell it without a call (a webinar or a written application with a deposit), raise the close rate so fewer calls are needed, or treat it as the entry tier and sell the one-to-one tier to its graduates.

Doing this yourself costs the hours in the table plus booking, reminders and chasers for people who go quiet. Mentors who would rather spend those hours mentoring can hand the booking to an AI appointment setting service, and the wider client-getting playbook is in how to get clients as a business mentor.

Do mentorship marketplaces change the price you should charge?

A mentorship marketplace changes the list price, not the payout you need: MentorCruise adds up to about 20% on top of a mentor’s fee on monthly plans, so the mentee pays more than you receive.

MentorCruise’s help centre states that its take rate is 16.6% per transaction on a global average, from a 20% markup on the mentor’s fee: a $100 plan is shown to mentees at $120. The minimum fee on subscriptions is $20, so a $50 plan is charged at $70 (a 28% take rate); on plans from $100 to $800 a month the fee is capped at $100; plans over $800, which only its Top mentors can offer, carry a 10% markup starting at $100 and capped at $200 a month; one-off sessions carry a flat fee of $9 to $39 (MentorCruise fees, read 3 November 2026).

Applied to the worked example: the one-to-one tier is $5,000 over six months, or about $833 a month. Listed on MentorCruise as a monthly plan above $800 (open only to Top mentors), the 10% markup works out at $83, so the $100 minimum applies and the mentee would see about $933 a month. Marketplace prices for individual mentors are set by each mentor, so we have not quoted any as a market rate.

Australian buyers compare paid programs with free and subsidised mentoring, listed in what a business mentor costs in Australia. For peer-led groups, use how much to charge for a mastermind instead.

Sources

1. International Coaching Federation, 2023 Global Coaching Study executive summary: average fee per one-hour coaching session of US$244 in 2022, and the regional range.
2. MentorCruise help centre, What fees does MentorCruise take?: 20% markup, 16.6% average take rate, $20 minimum, $100 cap from $100 to $800, 10% (minimum $100, cap $200) over $800 for Top mentors only, session fees. Read 3 November 2026.
3. MentorCruise mentor guide, Choosing pricing: what a mentorship plan should state (sessions per month, duration, response time, resources, feedback).