How Much Should I Raise My Rates By?

Q: I know I need to raise my rates, but I don’t know how much. Should I use a percentage? Should I jump to what I really want to charge, or go incrementally? How do I figure out the right amount?

There is no universal formula for the right amount of a rate increase. The right number is the one you can genuinely inhabit — not the largest increase you can justify on paper, and not the smallest one that feels safe. It is the number that feels settled rather than aspirational or defensive.

The way to find it: sit with different numbers and notice how each one lands. Not in a single moment of reflection, but over several days. The number you are looking for is the one that — after sitting with it, reviewing your outcomes, and testing it against your sense of what the work produces — feels like yours rather than like a number you are attempting.

How to arrive at the right rate increase amount: the amount of a rate increase is not purely a market calculation. It is also a question of inner settlement. A rate that is externally appropriate but internally ungrounded will produce a practitioner who cannot hold the rate when clients push back. A rate that is internally settled — even if it is somewhat conservative by market comparison — will hold because the practitioner inhabits it genuinely.

Useful inputs to the decision:

Your outcomes. What has the work produced for clients in the past year? The more specific and significant the outcomes, the more evidence you have for a meaningful increase.

The gap between your current rate and the rate you would charge if you were not holding back. Most practitioners know, when they are honest with themselves, that there is a rate they would charge if they were not worried about how clients would respond. The amount of a rate increase is often somewhere between the current rate and that honest number.

Value-based approaches to setting the new rate: value-based pricing asks what the outcome of the work is worth to the client, not what similar services charge. If the work produces significant change — in income, in relationships, in health — the value to the client typically exceeds the cost of the sessions by a meaningful multiple. A value-based approach grounds the new rate in outcomes rather than in market comparison.

Market rate versus value-based rate as inputs: market rates are useful as context — they tell you what comparable practitioners charge, which can inform whether your current rate is significantly below the market range. But market rate as a ceiling often underestimates what a genuinely skilled practitioner who produces specific outcomes can charge.

On incremental versus larger increases:

Incremental increases (moving from $150 to $175, for instance) work best when the current rate is not significantly below what the practitioner genuinely inhabits, and when the larger target rate would require more preparation than is currently available.

Larger increases work best when the current rate is genuinely too low — when the gap between the current rate and the inner number is significant — and when the practitioner has done enough preparation to genuinely settle into the new number rather than performing it.

How rate anchors can inform the increase: a rate anchor is a reference point that makes a rate feel calibrated rather than arbitrary. If there is a practitioner in your field or adjacent field whose rate and positioning feel genuinely comparable, their rate can serve as an anchor — not as a ceiling, but as a reference that helps calibrate the new number.

The inner test for the right amount: the inner test is simple: sit with the number for three days. Does it feel genuinely settled, or does it feel like a number you are trying to convince yourself to accept? The right amount feels like yours. The wrong amount — whether too high or too low — tends to feel like a performance or a retreat.

The Abundance GPS Skool community supports practitioners in finding the right rate increase amount through grounded inner preparation and evidence review. Join us here.