How much does a personal trainer cost, and what does the same money buy?

What a personal trainer costs depends on where you train, how long each session lasts and how many sessions you buy at once. The prices on this page come from Bark's listing of personal trainers in Dublin, PureGym's page on personal training, the price list at UCD Sport and Fitness, Educogym's answers about its programmes and Thumbtack's guide to trainer costs in the US. Each source is listed at the end of the page with the day it was checked, and each price is also worked out over the 4 weeks TriageFit bills for, at one session a week.

What one session costs

A single session is the price a trainer quotes first. Bark's figures are averages across the trainers it lists, PureGym's are a rough benchmark for the UK, and Thumbtack's are for the US. The right-hand column is four sessions at the rate beside it, which is what seeing a trainer once a week costs over four weeks, and the sums in it are ours.

PureGym's benchmark is only a guide, since each trainer sets their own rates, and Thumbtack's full range is $40 to $100 an hour in the US. Most clients see their trainer once or twice a week, for a few months, by PureGym's account, so anyone booking twice a week should double the right-hand column.

What packages and longer blocks cost

Buying sessions in a bundle brings the price of each one down, and it asks for more money up front. UCD Sport and Fitness publishes its personal training prices in full, and the price of an hour there falls the more hours you buy at once.

• €320 for three one-hour sessions, about €107 a session
• €470 for six one-hour sessions, about €78 a session
• €730 for ten one-hour sessions, which is €73 a session
• €1,230 for twenty one-hour sessions, which is €61.50 a session
• €450 for ten half-hour sessions, which is €45 a session

Trainers elsewhere price the same way. In the US, Thumbtack lists sessions of 30, 60 or 90 minutes, usually paid for one at a time, with a discount on packages of five, 10 or 20 sessions. PureGym's page mentions a lower rate from some trainers for online coaching or for sessions paid for in advance. A bundle suits someone who already knows they will keep going, because the saving only arrives once the sessions are used.

What a coached programme costs in Ireland

Educogym, which has 15 locations in the Republic of Ireland, prices its programmes by the week. Its own answer on pricing puts a programme at about €50 to €60 a week in Ireland, which comes to about €200 to €240 for four weeks, and says the price depends on the goal, the length of the programme and the location. The price covers nutrition, exercise training, consultations and check-ups, and the training itself is 20-minute sessions three times a week, by appointment.

Set against four weeks of TriageFit at €50, the difference is where the training happens. Educogym's price buys appointments at one of its own gyms, and TriageFit's buys a programme you follow wherever you already train, with the week around it coached as well.

What pushes the price up

The things PureGym says move a trainer's price are the trainer's experience, the location and what the package includes, such as WhatsApp support. Thumbtack adds that a session can cost more when the trainer travels to the client's home or the session is at a private studio, that it can cost less at a public gym, where the membership already pays for the space and the equipment, and that a one-to-one session costs more than a group one.

The gym is a cost of its own. At PureGym, personal training is not included in the membership, so sessions are paid for on top of it and arranged with the trainer. Whichever way you train, you need somewhere to do it, so the fair comparison sets the trainer's fee against the coaching fee and leaves the gym out of both.

What a session buys, and the days between

A session with a trainer buys the full attention of someone watching every set, correcting your form as you go and choosing the next exercise from how the last one went. It also buys an appointment, and for someone who finds it hard to start, a booked time with a person waiting is often what gets them to the gym.

The session itself fills an hour or less of your week. A trainer may also write the sessions you do alone, answer messages between visits or advise on food, and each of those depends on the package, which PureGym lists among the things that move the price. Before you book, ask whether the price covers the sessions alone or the days between them as well, and whether anyone looks at how your week went as a whole.

What the same money buys with TriageFit

TriageFit costs €50 every 4 weeks, or €500 a year, with VAT included. In the UK the same 4 weeks cost £45, and in the US $55. That is about the price of a single session at the rates in the table, and it pays for all 4 weeks.

It starts with the intake, around half an hour of questions about your goal, the training you have done, any injury, the equipment you can reach and the time your week leaves for training, and you can stop partway and come back to it. From those answers TriageFit builds your programme out of four-to-six-week phases our coaches wrote, which keep cycling for as long as you train, and it chooses exercises that fit your kit and your experience. The same answers set your eating targets, with calories matched to your metabolism and macros that shift with each week's check-in.

When you want an eye on a lift, you film a set on your phone and send it in, a coach reviews it and tells you what to change, and you can film it again after trying the fix. Once a week, on the day you choose, you send a check-in that already lists the sessions you logged, rate your energy, recovery, motivation, sleep and stress, and get a reply within seconds, and a real coach reads it.

For the days that do not go to plan there is the AI coach, which answers at any hour. Tell it you are short of time, the rack you need is taken or you are away with only a hotel gym, and it proposes a change, a shorter session, a different exercise or a session moved to another day, which goes into your plan once you confirm it. You also train alongside a group with coaches in it, where a question to the coaching team is answered in the open and the group runs challenges you can join.

Which one fits you

A trainer in the room earns the price when you need someone watching every set, when you are lifting for the first time and want hands-on correction, or when a booked time is the only thing that gets you to the gym. If you already train on your own and want every session planned, your food and recovery coached as well and someone reading how each week went, TriageFit covers that for about the price of one session with a trainer.

The two also work together. Some people keep an occasional session with a trainer to check their technique and follow their TriageFit programme on the other days. Log that session as an extra session, with how long it lasted and how hard it felt, and it counts in your recovery score. The block plan has no contract, so you can cancel it whenever you want, and you can pause it for one to three months if you are away or injured.

How to start

Choose a plan on the pricing page, create your account and pay, and the intake opens. Online personal training sets out how the coaching runs week by week, the weekly check-in shows what you send and what comes back, and personal training for beginners is written for anyone starting out. Readers in Ireland and the UK can go on to online personal training in Ireland and online personal training in the UK. What an online personal trainer costs and whether a personal trainer is worth it take the comparison further.