How much do yoga teachers earn in Berlin?

In the course of running our teacher training, our trainees are often curious to understand what they can expect to earn from teaching yoga. Last week I set out to gain a broader overview on what our answer to this question should be, and I reached out to our community to find out what they are earning in Berlin. The below is a result of this work and I hope it will provide informative insights to you. 

And before I break out the numbers, I’d like to add a disclaimer. The survey underlying these numbers was a simple inquiry sent to yoga teachers working in Berlin, without any sort of controls in place to ensure that the sample truly reflects the full spectrum of Berlin wages. The purpose of the survey and this post is to provide transparency, so whilst I cannot guarantee absolute accuracy, I’ll provide as much context as I can to provide valuable insights into yoga teacher wages in Berlin. The responses are responses of self-employed freelancers only, this being the most common form of working as a yoga teacher in Berlin. 

Group classes 

Group classes in Berlin are typically 60, 75 or 90 minutes long. As most respondents report teaching predominantly 60 and 75 minutes classes, the average class length of this survey is 69 minutes. A remark that comes up in many of the responses is that teaching a class is never just the amount of minutes a class lasts. Teachers are expected to show up before students arrive, they stay after class to clean up and answer questions of students, and then there is the additional travel time, time spent on marketing classes, preparation and self study. 

Although these are definitely factors you should consider when estimating how much you can earn as a yoga teacher and how many classes you can sustainably teach per day, it is not something I have factored into the results as the amount of individual circumstances makes it very hard to come up with an accurate formula. Some teachers record lengthy travel times while others live in proximity to their studios. Some teach at multiple studios across the city while others teach in one. Some are expected to post a certain number of posts on Instagram to promote their classes, while others are free to determine how much time they invest in marketing.

With that said, the average fee for the imaginary 69 minute class is 47 euros, excluding VAT. The median fee is somewhat lower than the average, at 40 euros. The lowest wage indicated is 25 euro per 60 minute class, and the highest is 180 euro for a 60 minute class. On average, teachers teach 4.6 classes per week, which means that on a weekly basis they would earn 216,20 euros from group classes. 

Private classes

Private classes tend to be shorter than group classes, with most respondents teaching 60 minute classes. Most respondents do not teach private classes. Those that do (41% of respondents), teach an average of 2 classes per week. The average fee charged for a private class is 65 euros, with the lowest fee set at 25 euro (for an online private class) and the highest rate being 100 euro. 

Corporate classes

Corporate classes are somewhat harder to compare to the previous two categories, partly due to a flaw in the survey itself. In this category I am not able to gauge the length of each class, but the range seems to skew towards shorter lessons, of 30-45 minutes per class. Most respondents do not teach corporate classes at all, but those that do (about 38% of respondents) teach an average of 1.4 classes per week. The average fee for these classes is 89 euros, making it - somewhat unsurprisingly - the most lucrative class type of all. 

Retreats and workshops

Aside from teaching regular classes, 31% of the respondents organize at least one retreat per year (the average being 1.3 retreats per year), where they make a profit of 1633 euros. 24% of respondents offer workshops throughout the year, averaging 6.64 workshops at 293 euros for a 3 hour session. 

Other and overall earnings

In the survey I asked whether teachers are making any money aside from teaching group classes, retreats and workshops. Some of the respondents are yoga studio owners themselves, some are organizing and running yoga teacher trainings, some are content creators working as App instructors, some are contributing content and classes to yoga teacher trainings, some do content creation and marketing work for yoga studios and some do modeling work related to yoga. Others have side jobs that do not relate to yoga, or relate to it in a more abstract way (e.g. are psychologists or therapists). 

The average yoga-related net earning per month is 968 euros. The average yoga-related net earnings of full-time yoga teachers is 1760 euros, who account for about 6% of the respondents. The average salary of part-time yoga teachers is 896 euros, part-time meaning that they do work on the side in a different field.

How do teachers feel about their pay?

A criticism that echoes through many of the responses is that teachers wish that the years of experience and teaching qualifications would be factored into their fees. Interestingly, years of experience does not seem to matter when it comes to corporate class and private class fees, but there is a difference in earnings in group class average fees as well as being able to offer additional services, e.g. workshops, retreats, teacher training contents. Without understanding the background of the respondents and whether the years of experience reflect part-time or full-time teaching, it is impossible to draw any real conclusions, but there seems to be some room for earning higher as one progresses in their career. 

Another common concern is around the ways in which teachers’ group class fees are calculated. In this regard, many wish that their fees would not be linked to the number of students present in class. Some studios do not offer base fees, but rely solely on a per student fee structure. Other studios offer a combination of base fees plus per student fees, and in rare cases studios offer a fixed fee per class irrespective of how many students are present. Some studios cap the amount a teacher can make on a class, while others offer open-ended fees that are only limited by the capacity of the studio. In a few responses studios work with a rental structure where the teacher can rent the space and take home any earnings of the class. In most cases the teachers’ concern is not only the uncertainty of their earnings, but the fact that they shouldn’t be striving for maximizing profit in the context of teaching yoga. 

And as a last theme, there seems to be a high-degree of variation between how yoga teachers perceive their work and whether it’s valued accurately. Some teachers feel that their salaries are fair and would compare their earnings to those of group fitness instructors. They have suggestions on what they would like to see change (e.g. an additional fee in studios where they are required to register students to class themselves), but are broadly content with their pay. Others - and these respondents are in majority - believe that teaching yoga should be valued more highly, considering the amount of preparation and self-learning involved in being a well-rounded yoga teacher. As an example, a respondent would like to see their fee amount to 100 euros instead of the current 40 they make per group class, considering the overall  time invested.