Yoga Instructor Salary Explained: 2024 (UK Guide)

Whether you’re looking for a complete change of career or you just want to add an extra string to your bow, finding out how much you can charge as yoga instructor and the yoga teacher's salary (UK) is a must to determining if this is a career option worth exploring.

In this article you will find:

• What Is The Demand For Yoga Teachers?
• What is The Average Yoga Teacher's Salary?
• What Factors Influence Your Yoga Instructor Teacher Salary
• Where You Work And In What Capacity Influences Your Yoga Teacher Income
• Does The Type Of Yoga Class Influence Your Yoga Instructor's Hourly Wage? 
• How You Can Boost Your Yoga Instructor Salary
• Adding Strings To Your Bow That Directly Increase Your Yoga Teacher Salary
• How to Qualify as a Yoga Instructor

If this sounds like a career you wish to explore, take the first steps into the industry and earn your Level 3 qualification in yoga teaching! For more information about the content of this course, download our FREE course prospectus here.

What Is The Demand For Yoga Teachers?

Yoga was formulated 5,000 years ago by the Sarasvati civilization in Northern India and is just as popular today.

In fact, it is reported by Finder.com that now up to 460,000 Brits are taking part in yoga classes each week, which is just over 6.5% of the UK’s entire population.

Finder report goes on to state that there are now over 10,000 qualified instructors in the UK and between 20 and 30 thousand yoga classes take place each week.

With this increase in participation has led to the rise of the number of qualified yoga teachers and the subsequent increase in the number of yoga studios and private home led instructors.

This trend is set to continue in similar vein according to Allied Market Research who have forecast that participation will continue to increase, which will in turn increase the market value, the number of yoga specific training and certified yoga teachers as demonstrated by the graph below:

Demand is what determines any business and within the UK Yoga market this has led to yoga becoming a lucrative career for aspiring professionals to quit their boring 9-5 job and start a new path they’re truly passionate about.

But what is the typical average salary of a yoga instructor? Read on to find out and what factors influence your potential earnings….. 

What is the Average Yoga Teacher's salary?

According to Indeed, the average yoga instructor's hourly wage is £25.13 per hour, which is closely mirrored by Payscale's £25 suggestion.

Glassdoor reports the average yoga teacher's annual salary at just over £30,000, though Payscale reported it at just over £40,000, which is not too shabby!

These are quite varied salaries, but the location is a key variable to bear in mind. In London, the average yoga teacher's salary is vastly different to the rest of the UK, where Indeed estimates it to be £30.15 per hour. In contrast, the rest of the UK averages £21.50.

Compare this to personal training, which is a bigger market, where the average PT salary annual income is just £28,300.

Additionally, Payscale indicates that from the yoga teacher salary information they possess, that earnings increase over time and experience:

This trend is expected, as it may take you a little time to build your freelance client base, gain a promotion to a yoga studio manager or class coordinator, or even start your own yoga studio, thus increasing your yoga instructor wage vastly.

One thing to bear in mind with these yoga statistics provided by Indeed and Glassdoor is that they are job boards that base their analysis of yoga salaries on what employers post. They do not take into account other key variables that directly influence your yoga teacher earnings, which are key to factor in!

What Factors Influence Your Yoga Instructor Teacher Salary?

There are many contributing factors that will determine what yoga teacher salary (UK) and wage you will pick up, including: 

• How many hours you work
• How many clients you have
• How frequently those clients attend sessions /classes
• Where you work and in what capacity
• What services you offer / additional services you provide
• How much you charge for those services 

How Many Hours You Work & How Many Clients You Have

One key factor that the above yoga salary statistics from job boards like Indeed and Glassdoor do not factor in is the total number of hours you work or the number of clients you have.

Logically, the more hours you work, the more you can earn. But bear in mind that you could technically have an hourly rate of £100 per hour but only one private client that you see once per week.

This would make your part-time yoga instructor salary annual income just £5,200, while you're technically earning £100 per hour.

Of course, it could work the other way, where you have 100 clients that you see once per week but charge just £15 per hour. In this scenario you'd have an annual income of £78,000.

Obviously, these are both extreme examples, but it is worth noting as this will have a direct impact on your yoga instructor earnings.

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Like this article? Go check out our other useful articles:

• How to Become a Successful Yoga Teacher?
• What Makes a Yoga Teacher a Good Teacher?
• How Long Does it Take to Become a Yoga Teacher in the UK?

Yoga Income Depends On: Client Attendance, Marketing And How Much You Charge

Another key factor that will influence your certified yoga instructor salary (aside from the number of clients and hours you invest) is how much you charge for your services, the structure of those services, and the demographics to which you wish to appeal to.

Naturally, if you always have the same number of clients per class, then the more you charge for your services, the more money you will make.

However, if the amount you're charging causes a knock-on effect of fewer sign-ups and enquiries, you may not be able to fill those classes in the first place. This is why finding the balance is key.

Additionally, how you plan to charge your clients, the number of classes you put on per week, and the number of people that will fill those classes are all key factors in your total yoga instructor earnings.

This is what all businesses go through - the fine balance between appeal, demand, and margins. Don't be intimidated; it just takes some time, practice, and experience to get this perfect!

If you have a strong background in advertising or marketing (or just have a strong will to learn), this will inevitably help you fill your classes, drive higher levels of enquiries, and ultimately push yourself to a better position in the market than other yoga professionals.

Where You Work And In What Capacity Influences Your Yoga Teacher Income

There are many avenues you can explore as qualified yoga teacher and each in turn will have a direct impact on your yoga teacher wage.

These routes can be broken down into two aspects, freelance or employed. 

Let’s start with the employed routes you could take and how much they pay!

Employment Routes And Registered Yoga Teacher Salary

There are a number of direct employment routes you can take within the yoga market. Below we have listed all of these options as well as what you can expect from the hourly or annual salary.

Working For A Gym Or Private Yoga Studio As A Yoga Teacher

As yoga has become more mainstream and catapulted into popularity, accessibility has improved, with more gyms offering alternative yoga classes and workshops on their timetables, as well as more private and tailored yoga studios popping up.

This has led to an increased demand for yoga instructors to fulfil the delivery of these classes. And, due to the volume of the role increasing, the opportunity for gaining employment within this role has grown alongside it.

Contracted Work As A Yoga Teacher

Many gyms and smaller studios will hire yoga teachers on contracts or on a part-time yoga instructor salary. This is to ensure you have enough work to cover all of their classes whilst giving their client base continuity.

This style of work traditionally pays around £20-£25 per hour, though it can be higher depending on your level of experience. Check out the example below from Beattitude Fitness in London:

Full Time Employment as a Yoga Instructor

Full-time roles are also readily available at yoga studios and fitness or sports facilities that have larger target demographics. Yoga instructor salaries can be both hourly and annual through this employment method.

With full-time roles, the hours can be varied. Because yoga classes are normally run when full-time workers are able to attend, you should expect some early mornings and late nights.

A typical yoga hourly wage for a full-time employee is around £15-£25 per hour and approximately £45,000 per annum (including bonuses) on a 40-hour week contract.

More experienced workers make, on average, £60,000 per annum. Check out an example of this this position from Agile Coach:

These types of jobs are normally found at yoga-specific studios and gyms, whereas most other yoga roles follow a contracted pattern of work, whcih we'll outline in the next section.

Freelancing As A Yoga Teacher

You might be drawn to becoming a freelance yoga teacher or to starting your very own yoga business. There are various methods and delivery styles you can look into, including but not limited to the following:

• Teaching yoga from a client’s home
• Teaching classes in the great outdoors
• Becoming an online yoga instructor
• Setting up your very own yoga studio
• Offering corporate yoga
• Combining multiple of these avenues

At OriGym, we wanted to find out not only the most popular freelance routes that yoga instructors explored post-qualifying, but also what their yoga instructor salary (UK) was, to give you an indication of what earnings you could expect. And some of the results were surprising!

This survey was conducted utilising Survey Monkey and used 411 yoga professionals (excluding those in employed positions) that have a minimum of 12 months of experience in the industry.

Each participant was asked to tick one of the below options and then to declare both their annual income and hourly yoga income.

Table to show the type of delivery of yoga career paths and delivery methods:

As you can see, most yoga instructors surveyed tend to combine more than one service to maximise their yoga instructor income with the lowest of those opting to take a corporate yoga instructor salary and “other” options.

To see how this translates into both hourly earnings and average annual income, check out the table below.

Table To Show The Average Wage Per Class Or Session:

Private home yoga sessions seem to be the most lucrative freelance route with an average of £41 per session, whilst the online yoga instructor wage per sessions seems to be the lowest at just £16.

But, how does this translate into yearly yoga teacher salary (UK)? See below:

Analysing The Results: 

Setting up a yoga studio seems to be the most lucrative route to increasing your yoga teacher salary, followed by starting an online yoga business, despite their fees per session rates not being as high as other options.

Corporate yoga and running outdoor yoga classes seem to produce the lowest income return, despite the per session rate being high for corporate yoga.

On the surface, these results may be surprising, but when you dive a little deeper, they make perfect sense.

Online yoga teachers are not bound by location, thus vastly increasing their reach and audience size. This means that even if they charge a smaller amount to their clients, their total yoga teacher income potential is far greater than other roles.

Studios also have a greater earning potential, as they are not restricted by a set hourly wage. They can also have a larger number of yoga classes that can be delivered by multiple teachers at one time.

This is a feature that other avenues, such as corporate yoga, home sessions, or freelancing between gyms, cannot offer, making opening your own studio a compelling option.

Does The Type Of Yoga Class Influence Your Yoga Instructor's Hourly Wage? 

There are many different types of yoga and some are more popular than others with both trainers and the general public.

We wanted to know though, if you could earn a better yoga teacher hourly wage based off the type of yoga class, so we also asked our group of graduates what style of yoga classes they ran and how much they make per class from the styles they adopted.

Here is what we found:

Yoga instructors could select more than one yoga style, but they had to individually input their total class income for that particular type of yoga. The table below shows the popularity of yoga styles taught from those surveyed:

This table shows how much income is generated per class and style of yoga:

Analysing The Results

The Bikram yoga instructor salary and the class rates seem to be the most lucrative discipline for yoga teachers to explore.

This could be due to the fact that hot yoga is especially trendy right now, or it could be related to the increased costs related to setting up a hot yoga class, which leads to an increase in the cost of class participation.

Because of the low number of instructors specialising in being Bikram yoga instructors and fewer studios boutique gym being set up to run hot yoga, those looking for hot yoga classes are usually willing to travel further to get the class they desire.

Interestingly, Hatha yoga, which is the most popular form of yoga and is run in most commercial gym, may actually be the most profitable option. It requires minimal overhead and pretty much has a guarantee of full classes due to its popularity.

Jivamukti yoga seems to give teachers the lowest income returns per class, though this could be down tot he fact that Jivamukti is one of the lesser-known forms of yoga with less mass-market appeal than other forms.

You also need to bear in mind that with the less popular yoga styles, your average income is spread over a smaller number of yoga teachers, giving you a smaller sample size when trying to get accurate figures.

How You Can Boost Your Yoga Instructor Salary (UK)

There are a number of ways you can increase your yoga instructor yearly salary. Choosing only one option rather than a selection of the most profitable is often where new yoga professionals go wrong.

Check out the ideas below to see if any fit with your teaching style.

Creating Yoga Packages, The Right Way!

One of the best ways to increase your yoga instructor salary (UK) is setting your packages up in the right way!

A common mistake made by new yoga professionals is to block sessions into 5, 10, or 15 classes for a set amount. On the surface, this may seem like there are no downsides - you get paid upfront on classes you haven't yet delivered, and ensure students come to a set number of classes.

However, there are a number of issues with this business model.

Firstly, when you create end dates for sessions, you inadvertently create an end date for clients. When your client has used all of the sessions they paid for, you end up having to constantly check in with them about whether they'll be coming again.

This leads into another issue; constantly having to re-sell to the same students. Neither you or your students enjoy having that awkward conversation regarding money. Rather than spending an inordinate amount of time re-selling, you should be focusing on growing your business, your marketing strategies, gaining new clients, and increasing your yoga instructor salary.

Selling in blocked sessions leads to a low client retention rate whilst simultaneously devaluing your service. When a client completes their block sessions, and you ask them to sign up again, you'll often be met with these sorts of replies:

• I’m interested in renewing, how much can you do it for?
• XYZ yoga company down the road are offering 10 sessions for less, can you beat that?
• I’ll be renewing in a few weeks after my kids birthday/Christmas/my sister’s wedding/etc.
• I’ve hit my goals and now I want to try it on my own

This leads to you reducing prices, leaving gaps in your schedule when people do renew, and even losing clients altogether.

A final issue you'll run into by selling blocked sessions is forecasting. This is the process of looking at past and present data for your business to predict its future financial performance.

By taking on new clients that pay upfront here and there, and losing others who don't renew, you aren't able to make effective forecasts. Without this, you won't be able to scale your business effectively or increase your salary as a yoga instructor.

So, how can you combat this problem? One simple method is to sell monthly packages. This is when you apply a monthly fee for your services based on the number of yoga classes an individual can attend. Below is an example of what this can look like:

Monthly packages can drastically improve your average yoga teacher salary whilst combating the issues raised in regard to selling in blocked sessions. There are even some extra benefits to this method:

1) Increases Sales - By offering only three simple packages, you simplify the buying decision for clients. This increases your conversions and lowers customer complaints about price disparities.

2) Increases Client Retention – Because there are no set end dates, much like a gym membership, your client retention levels improve drastically. Some clients will stick around for years without any gaps in payment, improving your yoga teacher wage.

3) Rarely Have To Re-sell – The lack of set end date means you won't have to spend hours of your valuable time asking clients to sign up for more sessions.

4) Forecast Accurately – As clients will be paying you monthly via direct debit or standing order, you can accurately assess what your salary will be each month, which, in turn, allows you to accurately plan how to scale your business further.

5) Increases Your Average Yoga Instructor Salary – BThe stable and continuous flow of income every month, plus higher retention rates and lack of gapping between clients, will inevitably lead to a salary increase.

Adding Strings To Your Bow That Directly Increase Your Yoga Teacher Salary

We have all heard the phrase “adding strings to your bow”, but where many fitness and yoga professionals go wrong is buying extra courses and qualifications without fully knowing how it will facilitate their existing business or increase their yoga teacher salary (UK).

The type of extra qualifications you should pursue are ones where it is a legal requirement to be qualified in that particular discipline of fitness and can directly impact your earnings as consequence of completing that course or widens your target market appeal.

Qualifications that fit this bill:

Add Personal Training To Your Yoga Business To Increase Your Client Base

Adding personal training to your arsenal is a fantastic way to increase your reach and diversify your market presence. Plus, it will help your yoga business to grow!

When you offer PT sessions, you'll notice that your yoga clients will start taking up PT programmes, and new PT clients will start joining your yoga sessions as well. This increases both your client base and your average yoga teacher salary. Check out our personal training course packages here.

Adding Sports Massage To Bolster Your Yoga Teacher Earnings

Another route to explore is getting qualified in sports massage therapy (SMT). The reason why SMT is an understated qualification and can make a huge difference to your yoga instructor wage is that not many yoga instructors are certified to offer, which creates exclusivity, but far more importantly is that it actually will increase your earnings.

Here’s how….

One of the most frustrating aspects for any yoga professional is when a regularly attending client sustains an injury, which can cause them to cancel sessions and break their exercise habit, resulting in lost potential earnings.

This is where the sports massage qualification comes in very handy, as you can directly substitute your yoga classes for SMT sessions without having to lose income or create gaps in your relationship with your client.

Additionally, you will also be able to ascertain new yoga clients through the medium of offering sports massage. When you get a new massage client, you get that 1-2-1 time with them to build rapport, develop relations and promote the benefits of your yoga classes or sessions and can convert them into a new paying client after they have completed their rehabilitation.

This is why SMT should be one of the “go to” qualifications for yoga professionals as it will help boost the average salary of a yoga teacher in more than just one way.

Become A Yoga Tutor & Assessor For Extra Yoga Income

Another potential skill that very few yoga professionals consider is becoming a qualified assessor of the next generation of yoga professionals.

There is a shortage of qualified assessors in the UK in general, but that is even more prevalent with yoga.

Completing your teaching and assessing qualification means you can work for a college or training provider (such as ourselves) where you can freelance to enhance your part-time yoga instructor salary either teaching practical’s or conducting assessments.

With daily rates of up to £200 a day and plenty of work available, this is another great avenue to consider boosting your earnings through taking extra qualifications. 

Becoming Proficient In Variations Of Yoga To Enhance Your Yoga Instructor Earnings 

You're probably aware that yoga breaks down into a variety of different styles and disciplines, including Hatha, Vinyasa, Ashtanga, Bikram, Yin, and many more.

Becoming more knowledgeable and fluid with different variations of yoga will increase your market appeal, allow you to run more varied classes, increase your reach, and enhance your yoga instructor salary.

Many yoga enthusiasts tend to have a "preferred" style of yoga that they stick with because it suits their fitness objectives better, which is why offering diversity on your class timetable will resonate with different target demographics.

Additionally, by segmenting your classes by ability (beginner, intermediate, and advanced), you will naturally increase your appeal to a wider range of people. You can appeal to newbies while still offering a challenging workout to your more experienced.

How To Qualify As A Yoga Instructor

Getting qualified as a yoga instructor is pretty straight forward.

You need at minimum a Level 3 diploma in yoga Instructing and there are no pre-requisite requirements in order to enrol onto a Level 3 Diploma.

Additionally, you can also enrol onto a Level 4 diploma in yoga teacher training, but you must be certified at level 3 status first or ascertain them both as part of bundled package. 

If you want to specialise in certain jurisdictions of yoga, like hot yoga, Iyengar or Hatha for example, many providers like ourselves do add on modules to your yoga teacher training, where you can specialise in these particular disciplines of yoga.

You can download our Yoga Teacher training Prospectus Here:

How To Find The Right Course Provider

Firstly, ensure the qualification and accreditation meets the NOS (National occupational standards) and is regulated by Ofqual.

Ofqual is the sister company to Ofsted, and regulates all vocational training within the UK. They cover everything from social care through to hairdressing and construction. 

Below Ofqual are governing bodies, better known as awarding bodies. These are the companies that actually certify your certificates, not the companies that conduct your actual training. The leading governing bodies for yoga to look out for are:

These awarding bodies all report to Ofqual and, in turn, training providers and colleges report to them.

Possessing an Ofqual regulated qualification from ones of these bodies is not just preferred, its mandatory to you working as a certified yoga instructor in the UK and ensuring you can ascertain the correct yoga insurance to run classes, 1-on-1 sessions or operate online.

Now you know what qualifications to look out for, use our checklist here to find the right course and provider for you:

• Study Method - Ensure the method of learning suits your schedule and how you learn best.
• Location - Can you access the location of all of the practical workshops and assessments?
• Reviews - Check third-party reviews sites like Trustpilot for reviews of the course.
• Financial Check - Check companies house to see the financial state of the company. 
• Support - How much support is offered both during and after the course?
• Costs - Comapre prices across different companies.
• Extra value - Are you getting any other qualifications alongside the main qualification that could supplement your yoga career?

Before You Go! 

Your yoga teacher salary is largely dependent on the route you elect to go down, adding strings to your bow and building a successful client base through high quality sessions coupled with good marketing. Being a yoga instructor is not just rewarding but as we have seen, can give you a very healthy income. 

So what are you waiting for? Enrol in our Level 3 Yoga Teaching course today, and start your journey into one of the most exciting industries in fitness!