How to Calculate Your Minimum Hourly Rate as an Equestrian Professional (Step-by-Step)
- Jun 11
- 6 min read
Many equestrian professionals set their prices the same way. They look at what others are charging locally, pick a number in roughly the same range, and hope it covers what they need. It's not a calculation — it's a guess with a plausible-sounding number attached.
The problem isn't that the number feels wrong. Often it feels completely fine. The problem is that it's never been checked against what you actually need to earn. The sense check never gets done. And so the money keeps disappearing — to fuel, insurance, tax, equipment, admin, CPD — and you can never quite work out where it went.
This article gives you the framework for that calculation. The numbers used throughout are illustrative — a worked example to show you the shape of it. Your situation will be different: different services, different geography, different working pattern, different cost base. The point isn't to copy the numbers. It's to understand the method, then apply it to your own reality.
Step 1: Start With Your Annual Income Target
Before anything else, you need to know what you're actually trying to earn. Not what feels comfortable to say out loud — what you genuinely need to live on.
This means your take-home income after tax. Not revenue, not turnover — what lands in your account at the end of the month.
For this example, we'll use €30,000 net per year. That's roughly €2,500 per month after tax — a modest but real income target for a solo professional. Your number might be higher or lower depending on where you live, your household situation, and what your life actually costs.
Write yours down before you go any further. The rest of the calculation only makes sense with your real number in it.
Step 2: Estimate Your Realistic Billable Sessions
This is where most calculations go wrong — because people count the hours or sessions they'd like to deliver, not the ones they realistically can.
Start with the full year and subtract what you can't bill:
Annual leave — even self-employed professionals need rest
Public holidays — these vary significantly by country
Sick days and contingency — one bad week can wipe out more than you'd expect
Non-billable working time — admin, invoicing, marketing, travel planning, CPD: all real working hours, none of them directly income-generating
How this looks in practice depends entirely on your setup. A mobile professional travelling between yards in a rural area will have very different dead time to someone who works from a fixed facility. Someone offering 30-minute slots fits more sessions into a day than someone doing 90-minute treatment or consulting sessions. Someone who also teaches clinics or group sessions has a different capacity profile again.
The worked example below uses round numbers for illustration. Yours will be different — and getting your own number right is more important than following this example precisely.
| Working days in the year | 260 |
|---|---|
| Annual leave | −20 days |
| Public holidays | −10 days |
| Sick / contingency days | −5 days |
| Non-billable working days | −47 days |
| Realistic billable days | 178 days |
| Sessions per day (example) | ×5 |
| Total billable sessions (example) | 890 |
The number of sessions per day is the variable that changes most dramatically between different equestrian professionals. Five sessions works as an example — for some it's three, for others it's eight. Use your own realistic daily capacity, not a best-case scenario.
A note on dead time: the travel between appointments that you can't bill is a real constraint on capacity, not just a cost. If you're driving 40 minutes between clients, that's time that isn't earning — and it limits how many sessions fit into a day. This is already reflected in the non-billable time above, but it's worth making explicit when you do your own version.
Step 3: Understand Your Annual Business Costs
This is the step that is most often skipped or underdone. The costs of running a legitimate equestrian business are more than fuel and a rough guess at tax.
What belongs in this calculation will vary depending on your business structure, your country, and what you offer. But the categories to think through include:
Insurance — public liability and professional indemnity at minimum. Non-negotiable for a registered professional.
Tax and accounting — whether you use a tax consultant or do it yourself, this is a real cost of being self-employed
Equipment — spread over its useful life, not just the year you buy it
IT and admin tools — booking software, invoicing, phone on business use
Continuing professional development — qualifications, training, courses
Vehicle costs — fuel, maintenance, and wear, especially if you're mobile
Marketing and online presence — even a basic website and occasional advertising is a real cost
For the worked example, we'll use €8,000/year in total business costs. In practice, this could be considerably more or less — a mobile professional in a high-cost-of-living country with a newer vehicle and comprehensive insurance will have a higher number than someone in a different situation. The category that most often surprises people when they actually add it up is the combination of insurance, accounting, and CPD — costs that are easy to pay individually without registering how much they total across a year.
Step 4: Calculate Your Gross Revenue Target
Your net income target is what you take home after tax. To reach that number, you need to earn more — because tax, social contributions, and your business costs all come out before you get there.
The exact relationship between gross revenue and net income depends on your country and business structure, so this is where your accountant's input matters. For illustration:
| What you need net | €30,000 |
|---|---|
| Business costs to cover | €8,000 |
| Tax and contributions (this varies significantly — example only) | ~€16,000 |
| Gross revenue needed (example) | ~€54,000 |
Treat this figure as directional. The shape of it — that gross revenue needs to be substantially higher than your net income target — is what matters. The specific numbers depend on where you are and how your business is structured. If you haven't had this conversation with an accountant, this calculation is a good reason to.
Step 5: Calculate Your Minimum Session Rate
Now divide your gross revenue target by your total realistic billable sessions:
€54,000 ÷ 890 sessions = €60.67 per session
That is your floor. The minimum below which the numbers don't fly — not because of any arbitrary rule, but because the maths says so.
This is not what you should charge. It's the point below which you are guaranteed to earn less than you need.
Full Calculation Summary (Worked Example)
| Variable | Example Figure |
|---|---|
| Net income target | €30,000/year |
| Annual business costs | €8,000 |
| Tax and contributions | ~€16,000 |
| Gross revenue needed | ~€54,000 |
| Realistic billable sessions/year | 890 |
| Minimum session rate | €60.67 |
Remember: every number in this table is an example. The method is what's transferable. Run it with your income target, your costs, your sessions — and you'll have your own floor.
What This Calculation Doesn't Cover
The minimum rate is the point at which your business breaks even on a living wage. It doesn't include:
Any profit margin — a buffer for slow months, unexpected costs, or investment back into the business
Growth ambitions — better equipment, more training, expanding what you offer
The value of your experience and specialisation — which almost certainly justifies charging above the minimum
The calculation is the starting point, not the destination. It replaces guesswork with a fact. From there, what you charge is a commercial decision — not an emotional one.
Why Benchmarking Against Other Providers Isn't a Sense Check
One thing this calculation makes clear: looking at what others charge locally doesn't tell you whether your pricing works. It tells you what other people are guessing.
Some of those providers are hobby professionals — they have skills, they charge for their time, but another income covers their life's expenses. Their cost base is effectively zero. You cannot compete with that price, and you shouldn't try. You are competing with something you can never win against if you stay in that comparison.
Your sense check is your own calculation. Not someone else's price list.
The First Step
If you've never done this before, the number that comes out might be uncomfortable. It might be higher than what you're currently charging. That's not a problem with the calculation — that's the calculation doing its job.
Charge whatever you feel comfortable with, and then add one euro. Then close the gap, step by step.
If you want a tool that does the maths for you, the Pricing Calculator does exactly that — input your income target, your working pattern, and your costs, and it returns your minimum session rate. It takes a few minutes and removes the guesswork entirely.
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