Career coaching prices are not published as transparently as they should be. The honest tiers are below — what each delivers, when each is worth it, and the under-hundred-dollar substitute that produces most of the same outcomes.
Tier 1 — Entry ($100-$200/session)
Newer coaches, often in the first three years of practice. Sometimes excellent value (eager, available, hungry to prove themselves), sometimes uneven (still learning the patterns). Best for clearly defined questions and short engagements. Avoid when the situation is complex; the experience gap matters there.
Tier 2 — Mid-market ($200-$400/session)
The bulk of working career coaches. Five to fifteen years of practice, established methodology, predictable quality. Best for most mid-career professionals with deliberate questions. The price point is reasonable for the leverage when the prep work is done.
Tier 3 — Senior ($400-$1000+/session)
Coaches with reputations, books, or specific specialisations. Worth the premium when the question is genuinely unusual or pattern recognition requires very specific experience. Most readers do not need this tier; it's often used as status signalling rather than for the substance.
Tier 4 — Executive ($2000-$10000+/engagement)
Specialised work with very senior leaders. The economics make sense at the C-suite tier where the cost of getting it wrong is millions. For mid-career professionals, this tier is rarely worth the premium — the substantive work is the same; the brand is what costs.
The under-$100 substitute (from a coach)
Direct disclosure. The book this site is built around — Berufung — is, in honest terms, the substantive work most coaching engagements teach across multiple sessions, condensed into seven Parts and four worksheets. The book costs less than fifteen percent of a single Tier 2 session. Run the worksheets first; if the question remains after, book one Tier 2 session for the specific pattern recognition. That sequence costs under three hundred dollars and outperforms most three-thousand-dollar packages.
When the premium is honestly worth it
Three situations. Senior leadership transitions where one wrong move costs significantly more than the coach. Co-founder or partnership crises where the structure is unusual. Specific industry transitions where pattern recognition is uniquely valuable. Outside those three, the premium is rarely the leverage point.
What to do next
The single most actionable spend is twenty dollars on the book and a weekend on the worksheets. After that, decide whether you need any of the four tiers. Most readers won't.
The full method — and the four printable worksheets that walk you through it — is laid out in Berufung. The reading takes a weekend; the work itself takes most readers two to four weeks. The free introduction is the opening chapter in full.