Every figure on this page links to the organization that produced it, and each was re-checked against that source before publishing. How many coaches there are and what they charge and earn, by the International Coaching Federation's own studies; how many coach by video, from ICF, the National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching and Sherpa; how big coaches' YouTube channels are, in our own read of 365 channels; what the research says about coaching by video; what the course, booking and video platforms report; where clients look for advice; what government statistics can and cannot count; and where the popular coaching numbers came from.
The median coach YouTube channel had 5,080 subscribers in our read of 365 coach channels on October 31, 2026. (Our count)See details
Only 24 of the 365 coach channels had 1 million subscribers or more; 206 had fewer than 10,000. (Our count)See details
The median coach channel was created in 2015; only 84 of the 365 started in 2020 or later. (Our count)See details
ICF estimates 122,974 coach practitioners worldwide in 2025, with $5.340 billion in coaching revenue. (ICF)See details
On ICF's estimates, the number of coaches grew 2.3-fold from 2015 to 2025. (Our calculation)See details
Most coaches earn little from coaching: 53% made under $30,000 a year from it in ICF's 2023 study. (ICF)See details
A year of average coaching income equals about 211 one-hour sessions at the average fee, about four a week. (Our calculation)See details
87% of board-certified health and wellness coaches deliver coaching by video, the most common mode, in NBHWC's 2025 survey. (NBHWC)See details
Coaches' use of audio-video platforms had already doubled to 48% by 2019, before the pandemic. (ICF)See details
In 333,715 CDC diabetes prevention participants, live remote delivery produced 4.7% weight loss, against 4.4% in person. (CDC study)See details
The '$20 billion coaching industry' is IBISWorld's estimate for management training courses (NAICS 61143), and it rose 41.8% between two editions a year apart. (Origin trace)See details
ICF's famous '7 times ROI' rests on 8.7% of the 2009 survey's respondents. (Origin trace)See details
How big are coaches' YouTube channels?
Most are small. In our read of 365 coach YouTube channels on October 31, 2026, the median channel had 5,080 subscribers. The frame is every person Wikidata lists with a coaching occupation and a YouTube channel ID, plus the channels on Feedspot's public life coach and business coach lists and the entries described as coaches on eight related Feedspot lists (career, dating, relationship advice, leadership, mindfulness, self-improvement, motivational and NLP). Feedspot sells an influencer database and ranks prominent channels, so this is not a random sample of coaches: it leans toward coaches who are already visible.
Wikidata returned 182 people with a coaching or motivational-speaker occupation and a channel ID; 127 passed our written rule for counting as a coach.
Feedspot's two coach lists showed 126 channels in their page HTML.
206 of the 365 channels had fewer than 10,000 subscribers, 73 had at least 100,000 and 24 had at least 1 million.
The median Feedspot-listed channel had 5,210 subscribers; the median Wikidata channel had 4,770.
The median channel was created in 2015, and only 84 of the 365 were created in 2020 or later.
The median channel had 347 public videos, and 15 had none.
We used the YouTube Data API's channel endpoint for every channel. The shared API quota ran out before we could read each channel's uploads, so this edition reports channel-level figures only; posting cadence, Shorts share and video length will be added when the upload read is finished. The per-channel data is published as channels.csv.
How many coaches are there, and how much do they earn in total?
About 123,000 worldwide in 2025, by the International Coaching Federation's estimate. ICF's 2025 Global Coaching Study, run by PwC, puts the number of coach practitioners at 122,974 and their total coaching revenue at $5.340 billion (ICF). These are estimates scaled up from a survey using membership ratios, not a census, and ICF disagrees with itself on the growth since its last study: the executive summary says practitioner numbers grew 13% (ICF), while its September 2025 press release says 15% (ICF press release). 109,200 to 122,974 is a rise of 12.6%, so the 13% figure is the one the counts support.
On ICF's own numbers, the estimated number of coaches grew 2.3-fold from 2015 to 2025. Divide the 2025 revenue by the practitioner count and you get about $43,424 per practitioner, below the average ICF reports for active practitioners alone, because the practitioner count includes coaches with little or no paid work. North America had an estimated 34,200 coaches in 2022 (ICF).
Membership and credential counts are smaller than the practitioner estimate, because many coaches belong to no body. In October 2023 ICF had 54,698 members (ICF) and 50,785 coaches held an ICF credential (ICF): 26,765 at the entry Associate level, 21,867 at Professional level and 2,153 at Master level. The United States had 18,892 ICF credential holders. By 2024 ICF reported 60,741 members (ICF) and 56,667 credential holders, up from 2,122 members, all in North America, in 1999 (ICF). EMCC Global, the European body, says it has more than 17,000 members (EMCC Global, AC and ICF). The National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching counted 11,490 board-certified health and wellness coaches in October 2025 (NBHWC).
Who coaches: 72% of practitioners are women (ICF), 54% specialise in leadership and executive coaching, and Gen X coaches rose to 53% of the field between the 2023 and 2025 studies. In the 2023 study, 85% held a credential from a coaching organization (ICF), 80% said clients expect one, 67% named business coaching as their main specialty, and coaches said 57% of clients were sponsored, usually by an employer. Female practitioners were already 72% in 2022, up from 67% in 2015.
What do coaches charge and earn?
The average one-hour coaching session cost $234 in ICF's 2025 study, and active coaches averaged $49,283 a year from coaching (ICF). Both figures are means, pulled up by a minority of high earners: in the 2023 study, 53% of coaches made less than $30,000 a year from coaching (ICF), when the average session fee was $244 and average coaching income $52,800. Coaches spend an average of 11.6 hours a week coaching (ICF) with 12.4 active clients.
At the 2025 averages, a year's coaching income equals about 211 one-hour sessions at the average fee, about four a week. ICF's own table of revenue drivers explains the gap between fee and income: average hourly revenue recovered was $85 in 2022 (ICF), 34.8% of the average session fee, because a coach's working hours include unpaid time.
Executive coaches charge more. Sherpa Coaching, which sells executive coaching and coach certification, reported in its 2020 survey of 500+ respondents that executive coaches in business 15 years or more average close to $160,000 a year from coaching (Sherpa Coaching). 59% of coaches in ICF's 2025 study expected their coaching revenue to rise in the coming year (ICF).
Platform figures run higher, and they are not comparable. Kajabi, which sells course and coaching software, says the average life coach on its platform has earned $78K, the average business coach $143K, the average fitness coach $110K and the average marketing coach $150K (Kajabi). Kajabi does not say over what period, and these are means across sellers who chose its paid software, so they describe its customers, not coaches in general.
How many coaches coach by video?
Most of them, and they did before the pandemic made it compulsory. In the National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching's October 2025 survey of its board-certified coaches (2,328 of 11,490 replied), 87% said they coach by video conference, against 50% who offer in-person sessions, 44% by phone and 25% by text or email (NBHWC). 44% work exclusively online with clients nationwide, and 38% use AI in their practice. That survey covers health and wellness coaches only; no comparable 2025 figure for all coaches has been published.
Year
Who was asked
Video or remote delivery
Source
2006
Coaches worldwide
Main methods were face to face (54.5%) and telephone (41.9%); video was supplementary
The rows count different things, so they are not one trend line: ICF asked about use of audio-video platforms, Sherpa about session share, and NBHWC about delivery modes offered. What they agree on is direction. In mid-2020, 63% of coaches told ICF that coaching would not return to pre-pandemic methods (ICF), and 85% said clients had been willing to adapt to new technology. ICF's 2021 snapshot found coaches had increased their use of audio-video platforms by 83 percent (ICF), a rise in use, not a share of coaches.
Coaches use platforms for sessions more than for running the business. In ICF's 2025 study, one-on-one virtual sessions were the most common use of a digital coaching platform, at 35% of coaches (ICF); 53% said digital platforms were not built into their services, and only 19% had invested in new technology in the past year. 37% call adapting to technology a major concern, and 54% see better platforms as a priority. In the 2023 study, 64% agreed digital platforms are good for coaching, 46% expected AI to disrupt coaching or make the business easier to run, and 66% said its benefits are not yet established.
Inside organisations, video took over early. In one UK organisation's programmes for over 3,000 managers, video was already the most common coaching method before the pandemic, at 34% of coachees, with 31% mainly face to face (Institute for Employment Studies). In its first pandemic year, 77% of more than 6,000 virtual sessions ran on Zoom, and 91% of staff chose video over audio. Of coachees who had tried video in 2019, 94% rated it effective (Institute for Employment Studies).
Does coaching work, and does it work by video?
The research finds a moderate positive effect for coaching, and no sign that video or phone delivery does worse than meeting in person, though few studies test that directly. A 2023 meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials only, by de Haan and Nilsson, pooled 39 samples with 2,528 participants and put the effect of workplace coaching at .59 (Academy of Management Learning & Education). Earlier meta-analyses agree on a moderate effect:
On delivery format, Jones and colleagues found face-to-face coaching had an effect of 0.29, almost the same as blended face-to-face and remote coaching (Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology), but only one study used technology alone, too few to test. A 2025 systematic review of digital coaching synthesised 27 studies and concluded outcomes are comparable to face-to-face coaching (Journal of Work-Applied Management). A 2020 meta-analysis found the working alliance between coach and client correlates with outcomes at r = .41 (Human Relations), which is the part of coaching a video session has to preserve.
Health coaching has the largest trials. Across 333,715 participants in the CDC's National Diabetes Prevention Program from 2012 to 2018, live remote "distance learning" delivery produced 4.7% average weight loss, against 4.4% in person (Journal of Diabetes Research), though in-person participants attended the most sessions, 15.0 on average. England's NHS programme found digital delivery at least as good as group face-to-face delivery (difference -0.284 kg) (BMC Health Services Research), and people attending video sessions during COVID-19 lost 2.40 kg on average (Diabetic Medicine); 47% of people offered remote or digital delivery took it up. Smaller trials point the same way:
In a 12-week trial of 30 adults with obesity, coaching by videoconference produced 7.7% weight loss (Telemedicine and e-Health). With 10 people per arm it is small.
In a 150-person trial at U.S. community health centers, 34% of videoconference participants lost more than 2 kg at six months, against 33% at a community site, and 58% of those offered video attended at least once (Obesity Science & Practice).
In a non-randomized study of military family members, 96% of the videoconference group stayed in the program, against 70% in person, and completers lost 5.3% by video and 6.2% in person (Military Medicine).
Where do coaches sell courses, memberships and sessions?
On course, community and booking platforms, whose own counts are the only measure of that trade, and each counts only its own customers. Kajabi, the largest seller of course software to coaches, says life coaches on its platform have made more than $1.42B in total sales from more than 18K active life coaches (Kajabi); business coaches $1.4B+ from 9.9K+ coaches; fitness coaches $1.6B+ from 15K+; and marketing coaches $710M+ from 4.7K+. Its coaching product, for selling one-to-one sessions, has carried more than $300M of sales and 20K+ sessions (Kajabi). These are cumulative totals on live marketing pages, with no start date.
Kajabi's own growth figures: creators had earned over $9 billion by April 2025 (Kajabi) and over $10 billion by August 2025 (Kajabi), when it said personal development creators had earned $1.4B of the total, its earning creators averaged $190K, nearly 1,800 had passed $1 million, and more than 75% of its six-figure earners had more than one revenue stream. It also said creators who joined since 2023 uploaded 123% more to YouTube. Kajabi's counts of customers disagree with each other: its homepage says 75M+ customers served (Kajabi), while the August 2025 release says 150 million (Kajabi).
Thinkific's filings show a flat market for course software: revenue grew to $73.2 million in 2025 (Thinkific) with GMV unchanged, average revenue per paying customer was $175 a month, and revenue in Q2 2026 was $18.6 million, with 67% of GMV paid through its own payments product. It has more than 35,000 customers. Teachable says it has served more than 100M students (Teachable), with 21M+ buyers across Teachable and Hotmart in 2023, and Hotmart said its creators passed $10 billion in March 2024 (Hotmart). Udemy's 10-K counts 91,000 instructors (Udemy 10-K) and nearly 84 million learners, and its subscription revenue share for instructors falls to 15% by 2026. Coursera has about 197 million registered learners (Coursera 10-K).
Sessions are booked through scheduling tools and held on video platforms. Calendly says more than 1.3B meetings have been booked with it by over 50 million people (Calendly), while its press boilerplate says 20 million users (Calendly); in 2025 more than 165,000 LinkedIn users put a Calendly link on their profile, and professional services sign-ups rose 34% year on year in April 2024. In its 2024 survey of 1,244 workers, 81% said more productive meetings would help them. Acuity Scheduling says more than 250,000 businesses use it, and claims 75% of them cut no-shows, without saying how it measured that (Acuity Scheduling). Zoom's revenue was $4,868.8 million in the year to January 2026 (Zoom 10-K); customers who buy online, the solopreneurs and small firms most coaches are, made up 39.7% of it and churned at 2.8% a month.
Corporate coaching runs through coaching companies. BetterUp says it has 4,000+ coaches (BetterUp) and 750+ enterprise customers, against over 2,000 coaches and 100,000 members served in February 2021 (BetterUp); it passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue in July 2021 (BetterUp). CoachHub says it has more than 3,500 coaches (CoachHub). Learners say they use creators: 95% of 1,000 U.S. consumers in a Teachable survey said they had learned something from a creator (Teachable), and 92% of Americans in Thinkific's survey spend at least an hour a month learning online (Thinkific). Both companies sell to creators.
Where do people look for advice and self-improvement on video?
YouTube first. 84% of U.S. adults use YouTube in 2026, including 95% of those aged 18 to 29 and 65% of those 65 and older (Pew Research Center). In Pew's 2018 survey, the latest to ask, 87% of U.S. YouTube users said it is important for figuring out how to do things they haven't done before, 51% very important (Pew Research Center), rising to 53% of users under 30; 54% said it matters for purchase decisions. YouTube itself recorded more than 5.5 billion U.S. views of learning and how-to content in June 2025 (YouTube), more than 1 billion monthly podcast viewers (YouTube), 400M hours a month of podcasts watched on TV sets (YouTube) and 20 million users of its "Ask" button on academic videos (YouTube). In a 2017 survey Google commissioned, 86% of U.S. viewers aged 18 to 54 said they regularly use YouTube to learn something new and 7 in 10 for help with a problem (Think with Google); Google owns YouTube.
Coaches are a large share of the people giving that advice. In Pew's May 2026 study of prominent U.S. health and wellness influencers (100,000+ followers), 31% described themselves as coaches, such as diet, fitness or life coaches (Pew Research Center), 41% as some kind of health professional, and 45% had a YouTube account, against 86% on Instagram. 40% of U.S. adults get health and wellness information from influencers or podcasts (Pew Research Center), 52% of those aged 18 to 29; among those who do, 41% say a wish to make a change is a major reason, and among 18-to-29s 51% often get fitness content and 39% often hear about mental health. 36% of adults at least sometimes get health information from social media (Pew Research Center) and 66% from people with a similar health issue.
KFF's July 2025 poll finds the same scale and more doubt: 55% of U.S. adults use social media for health advice at least occasionally (KFF), 14% regularly get it from influencers, from 15% of YouTube users to 21% of TikTok users, and 61% of those who do think the influencers are mainly motivated by money.
Podcasts and short video carry the same kind of advice. 54% of U.S. adults listened to a podcast in the year to August 2025 (Pew Research Center), 67% of those under 30. In 2022, 88% of listeners said learning is a reason they listen (Pew Research Center), 32% regularly heard self-help and relationship podcasts and 27% health and fitness. In August 2026, a fifth of U.S. adults regularly got news on TikTok, up from 3% in 2020 (Pew Research Center), including 39% of those under 30 and 53% of TikTok users. 26% of adults had used ChatGPT to learn something new by early 2025 (Pew Research Center), 46% of those under 30. In 2015, 73% of adults called themselves lifelong learners (Pew Research Center).
Meeting a professional on screen is normal. By April 2021, 81% of U.S. adults had made video calls since the pandemic began (Pew Research Center), and 40% of them felt worn out by them at least sometimes. 37.0% of adults used telemedicine in 2021 (NCHS), falling to 30.1% in 2022 (NCHS); NCHS counts video and phone appointments together. 14.0% of adults had counseling or therapy in 2024 (NCHS), 20.2% of those aged 18 to 29, against 9.5% in 2019 (NCHS). 28% of adults talked with a mental health professional in the year to April 2025 (American Psychiatric Association). In the EU, 75.65% of people aged 16 to 74 made internet calls or video calls in the past three months in 2025, against 62.62% in 2020 (Eurostat); 16.52% in the past three months talked with instructors or learners on tools such as Zoom or Teams (Eurostat), 16.21% took an online course (Eurostat), 28.64% used online learning material (Eurostat), 60.28% looked for health information (Eurostat) and 23.74% for mental health information (Eurostat).
In the UK, YouTube reached 51 minutes a day for the average online adult in May 2025, with 94% reach (Ofcom); NHS sites reached 57% (Ofcom) and Zoom 7.1m adults (Ofcom). Ofcom's two surveys disagree on learning: 73% of internet users in Online Nation say being online helped them learn a new skill (Ofcom), against 62% of adults in its late-2025 adults' survey (Ofcom), which used a different method.
The demand underneath is real. 69% of U.S. adults said in 2025 they needed more emotional support than they got (American Psychological Association) and 54% felt isolated at least some of the time. Daily loneliness reached 21% in 2025 (Gallup), and 18.3% of adults had or were being treated for depression (Gallup).
How much do employers use coaching?
More every year in the U.S., by SHRM's count. The share of U.S. organizations offering executive or leadership coaching as a benefit was 44% in 2024 (SHRM), 47% in 2025 and 55% in 2026 (SHRM). SHRM's recap pages do not give the sample size. In ATD's surveys, 62% of organizations used coaching or mentoring to train managers in 2025 (ATD), and 66% of U.S. government agencies used coaching to close skills gaps (ATD). In the UK, 40% of CIPD's 2023 respondents had used coaching for learning in the past two years (CIPD), the only method that had not grown over two years, and 9% expected digital coaching tools to grow most.
Managers are the gap coaching is sold into. Only 44% of managers worldwide had ever had management training in Gallup's 2025 report (Gallup), and manager engagement fell to 22% in 2025 (Gallup). Only 26% of employees strongly agree the feedback they get helps them (Gallup), 47% got feedback from their manager a few times a year or less (Gallup), 61% of those with weekly feedback are engaged (Gallup), and only 27% want feedback that often (Gallup and Workhuman). Gallup, which sells manager development, says managers trained in coaching see up to 18% higher team engagement (Gallup); that is its own estimate for its own programs.
Public employers coach at scale, mostly remotely. NHS England's Looking After You Too programme delivered virtual coaching to 5,400 primary care staff over 18 months during COVID-19 (Institute for Employment Studies), 3,860 of them in the first 14 months. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management's Federal Internal Coach Training Program gives 114 hours of virtual training (U.S. Department of Defense). The Veterans Health Administration had trained close to 2000 Whole Health coaches by 2021 (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health), and about 30% of its Whole Health services ran by telehealth during the pandemic (Global Advances in Health and Medicine).
What do government statistics count for coaching?
Nothing directly. No federal industry or occupation code is named for life, business or executive coaching, so every government count is a proxy that mixes coaches with other businesses. In the 2022 NAICS index, the only entry containing "coaching" is doula services, coded 812990 (U.S. Census Bureau). The nearest entries are personal development schools in 611699 (U.S. Census Bureau), professional development training in 611430 (U.S. Census Bureau), independent motivational speakers in 711510 (U.S. Census Bureau) and career counseling in 611710 (U.S. Census Bureau). Code 812990 is a catch-all whose examples include wedding planning, dating services and personal fitness training (U.S. Census Bureau), and 611699 excludes management instruction, so executive coaching sold to companies falls elsewhere (U.S. Census Bureau).
Occupations are split the same way. The Labor Department's O*NET database maps Life Coach, Employment Coach and Executive Coach to "Counselors, All Other" (O*NET), and Life Coach and Personal Development Coach also to "Social and Human Service Assistants" (O*NET). The only occupation titled "coach", Coaches and Scouts, covers the fundamentals of sports (O*NET).
Occupation (SOC)
Payroll jobs, May 2025
Median wage
Self-employed, 2025
Projected growth 2025-35
Counselors, all other (21-1019): where O*NET puts life and executive coaches
The payroll survey leaves out the self-employed, which matters most for coaching. Counting them, BLS puts "counselors, all other" at 49,800 jobs in 2025 (BLS), against 28,580 on payrolls; the mean payroll wage was $58,210 (BLS). Its self-employment rate of 38.8% is nearly seven times the rate for all jobs.
Solo businesses in the catch-all code grew fast. Census counted 774,283 nonemployer businesses in NAICS 81299 in 2024, with receipts of $28.7 billion (U.S. Census Bureau), up 20.2% from 643,993 in 2019 (U.S. Census Bureau), and the average one took in about $37,118. Census publishes no finer split for education or consulting: 924,679 nonemployer businesses in all educational services (U.S. Census Bureau) and 1,187,781 in management, scientific and technical consulting (U.S. Census Bureau).
QCEW and County Business Patterns count establishments differently, so their totals for the same code do not match; compare within a row, not across. None of these codes is coaching alone, and the counts include doulas, wedding planners, tutors, driving schools and fitness trainers.
What the popular coaching numbers really say
Five numbers turn up in almost every coaching statistics roundup. We traced each one to the organization that first published it.
"Coaching is a $20 billion industry"
The $20 billion is IBISWorld's estimate for "Business Coaching in the US", currently $20.0 billion for 2026 (IBISWorld). IBISWorld defines that industry as NAICS 61143: companies running short courses and seminars for management training (IBISWorld), not coaches' fees. Its own editions moved fast: $14.1bn in September 2024 (IBISWorld, Internet Archive), $17.8bn in March 2025 (IBISWorld, Internet Archive) and $20.0bn in September 2025 (IBISWorld, Internet Archive), a 41.8% rise between editions a year apart. Roundups repeat it as the coaching market, for example $20 billion on HIGH5 (HIGH5).
The coaching-specific estimates are much smaller. ICF puts worldwide coaching revenue at $5.34 Billion for 2025 (ICF); the often-quoted "$2.85 billion" is its 2019 figure, $2.849 billion (ICF), followed by $4.564 billion for 2022 (ICF), and $2.356 billion for 2015 (ICF). Marketdata's own release puts U.S. personal coaching at $2.31 billion in 2024 (Marketdata), up from $1.08 billion in 2017 (Marketdata). A ResearchAndMarkets listing of a later Marketdata report says $16 billion (ResearchAndMarkets), counting life, health and executive coaches and modelled data. The "$15 billion" version (for example US$ 15 billones in El Economista (El Economista)) is credited to a coach-training business, and we found no study behind it. Use instead: ICF's $5.34 billion for coaching revenue worldwide, and say that IBISWorld's $20 billion measures management training courses.
"Coaching delivers 7 times / 529% / 788% return on investment"
Three different studies, none of them a measured average. The 529% and 788% come from one MetrixGlobal case study of one unnamed Fortune 500 company's programme: the 2001 briefing reports 529% (MetrixGlobal) excluding staff retention, and the 2004 handout adds retention to reach 788% (MetrixGlobal). The programme matched 9 coaches with 43 clients (MetrixGlobal) and cost $255,000 (MetrixGlobal). The benefit, 2,263,134 dollars (MetrixGlobal), is the sum of participants' own estimates after their own confidence discounts, for example a manager's guess of three hours saved a week valued at $10,800 and cut to $6,480 (MetrixGlobal). Only 30 of the 43 participants returned the survey (MetrixGlobal). Coaching firms repeat it as a general result, such as 788% on CO2 Coaching (CO2 Coaching) and 788% as the average on HIGH5 (HIGH5).
"5.7 times" is Manchester Inc.'s January 2001 release: its coaching returned 5.7 times its cost (Manchester Inc.), by the estimates of 100 executives who were Manchester's own clients (Manchester Inc.); 77% said coaching improved relationships with direct reports. It is still called the benchmark, as with 5.7x on Tandem Coach (Tandem Coach).
"7 times" is ICF's 2009 client study, which surveyed 2,165 clients (ICF) and found a median company return of 700% (ICF), with an individual median of 3.44 times (ICF). But only 189 respondents could give both cost and gain (ICF), 8.7% of the sample, and ICF itself advises caution. Roundups present it as typical, for example 7 times on CJPI (CJPI). Use instead: the effect sizes from randomized trials in the evidence section above, and quote any ROI figure with its sample.
"70% of coaching clients improve their work performance, 86% of companies recoup their investment"
Both are from ICF's 2009 client study. "Over 70%" merges three separate chart bars, 70% work performance, 73% relationships and 72% communication skills (ICF); 80% is self-confidence. The 86% who "recouped their investment" are only the respondents able to give ROI figures (ICF). The Institute of Coaching's page rewrote the chart as 80% self-confidence and over 70% better performance (Institute of Coaching) and dropped the qualifier on 86% (Institute of Coaching); a training firm now credits 70% to the Institute of Coaching itself (The Training Associates). Use instead: say these are 2008 survey answers from coaching clients, and that 86% applies to a subset.
"The average life coach earns $X"
The common figures are ICF averages for all coaches, relabelled. "$244 an hour" is ICF's 2022 average fee for a one-hour session, $244 (ICF), listed as a life coach's hourly rate on EntrepreneursHQ ($244, (EntrepreneursHQ)). "$61,900" is ICF's North America average coaching income for 2015, $61,900 (ICF), repeated as "the average life coach salary" by a coach-training school ($61,900, (Health Coach Institute)); "$62,500" is the 2019 North America figure, $62,500 (ICF). The 2022 averages were $52,800 worldwide (ICF) and $67,800 in North America (ICF), with 53% of coaches under $30,000 (ICF), from 14,591 responses (ICF). 93% of coaches also sell other services (ICF), so coaching income is not total income. A "$50,500 for full-time coaches" figure attributed to ICF's 2023 study ($50,500, (Tandem Coach)) does not appear in ICF's published study. Use instead: ICF's 2025 average coaching income of $49,283, with the note that it is a mean and that most coaches earn less.
"X% of Fortune 500 companies use executive coaching"
We found no original for any version. "25 to 40 percent, according to Hay Group" (Georgia Trend) appears on no archived Hay Group page from 1999 to 2006, and an older article repeats it as "a recent survey" (40 percent, (Street Directory)). "65% to 70%", credited to ICF and the Human Capital Institute (Tandem Coach), is not in their openly published findings, and "One-third" (CJPI) comes with no source. Use instead: SHRM's measured share of U.S. organizations offering executive or leadership coaching, 55% in 2026.
"59% of coaches prefer Zoom"
Credited to Statista (2024) on a coaching statistics page (59%, (EntrepreneursHQ)), with no Statista survey we could find. The measured figures are ICF's: in 2019, 48% of coaches used audio-video platforms (ICF), while 24% still always met clients in person (ICF). Use instead: ICF's 48% (2019) or NBHWC's 87% of board-certified health coaches using video (2025), each with its population.
We started from the questions people search for about coaching video statistics and looked for the organization that actually produced each answer. Every figure on this page sits in an evidence ledger with its source, the exact table or paragraph it came from, the measurement period, the population measured, and the date we checked it. This edition holds 381 figures from 69 publishers.
On October 31, 2026, each of the sourced figures on this page was re-fetched with the fetch cache cleared and matched against the recorded wording: the International Coaching Federation's Global Coaching Studies (2007 to 2025), fact sheets and releases, through Internet Archive captures because coachingfederation.org refuses scripts; NBHWC's 2025 survey; BLS data through its public API, QCEW open data and an Internet Archive capture of the projections table; Census Bureau NAICS, Nonemployer Statistics, County Business Patterns, Economic Census and Annual Integrated Economic Survey data; O*NET; Pew Research Center, KFF, NCHS, Gallup, the American Psychological and Psychiatric Associations, Ofcom and Eurostat; the meta-analyses and trials on their journal or repository pages; Zoom, Coursera and Udemy filings on SEC EDGAR and Thinkific's releases; and the platforms' own pages (Kajabi, Teachable, Podia, Mighty Networks, Kartra, Paperbell, Simply.Coach, Calendly, Acuity, BetterUp, CoachHub). Our own figures come from the YouTube Data API on the same day; the shared API quota ran out before we could read uploads, so this edition has channel-level figures only. We left out the Association for Coaching (its site refused automated reading), Ridler and HCI reports behind forms, vendor surveys whose own pages give no sample size (Kajabi's 2025 creator report, BetterUp's AI-coach preference figures), and roundup figures we could not trace to a producer.
We only cite the producer: government agencies, regulators, company filings and official posts, and the survey owner's own report. We do not cite statistics roundups, Statista-style aggregators, or salary sites without a public method. We did not bypass paywalls or sign-up forms; where a full report was gated, we used only the figures its publisher states publicly.
Figures marked "our calculation" are arithmetic on the cited numbers, and anyone can reproduce them:
This edition contains no Mark Studios customer data.
Limitations
Coaching has no government count. No federal industry or occupation code is named for life, business or executive coaching, so the Census and BLS figures are proxies that also count doulas, wedding planners, tutors, fitness trainers and counselors.
ICF's practitioner and revenue figures are estimates. ICF and PwC scale survey answers up using membership ratios; the method changed between editions, and ICF's own documents give two different growth rates for 2023 to 2025.
Delivery-mode figures count different things. ICF asked about use of audio-video platforms, Sherpa about session share, NBHWC about the modes a coach offers, and the Institute for Employment Studies asked coachees. They show direction, not one trend line.
Platform figures are the vendors' own marketing counts. Kajabi, Teachable, Podia, Kartra, Mighty Networks, Paperbell, Calendly and the rest sell to coaches; most of their totals are cumulative, undated, and cover all creators, not only coaches. Each is labelled where it is cited.
Our YouTube read is a snapshot of prominent channels. The frame is Wikidata's coaches and Feedspot's lists, which lean toward visible coaches, and this edition covers channel size and age only: the upload read (cadence, Shorts, length) stopped when the shared API quota ran out.
Few studies test video coaching head to head. The workplace meta-analyses had almost no technology-only studies; the large remote-delivery evidence comes from health coaching programmes.
How to cite this page
For a single figure, cite the original publisher named next to it, and link here if the verification trail is useful to your readers. Each figure has its own anchor, so you can link straight to it, for example https://www.markstudios.com/research/coaching-video-statistics#DRV-004. To cite the page as a whole:
Mark Studios. "Coaching Video Statistics." Last verified Oct 31, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/coaching-video-statistics
APA
Mark Studios. (2026, October 31). Coaching video statistics. https://www.markstudios.com/research/coaching-video-statistics
MLA
“Coaching Video Statistics.” Mark Studios, 31 Oct. 2026, www.markstudios.com/research/coaching-video-statistics.
Chicago
Mark Studios. “Coaching Video Statistics.” Last modified October 31, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/coaching-video-statistics.
BibTeX
@misc{markstudios_coaching_video_statistics_2026,
author = {{Mark Studios}},
title = {{Coaching Video Statistics}},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
url = {https://www.markstudios.com/research/coaching-video-statistics},
note = {Last verified 2026-10-31}
}
Our calculations and the evidence table are free to reuse with attribution and a link to this page. Each underlying figure remains the claim of its original publisher, and some publishers ask for a link when their figures are reused.
Institute for Employment Studies (IES), evaluator for NHS England and NHS Improvement, Coaching for wellbeing: Infographic (2021-12-15). Accessed 2026-10-31.
We re-verify every figure quarterly and when a major source publishes a new edition. The next scheduled review is January 2027. Corrections go to contact@markstudios.com.
Oct 31, 2026: First published with 381 figures from 69 publishers, each checked against its original source.
Frequently asked questions
How many coaches are there in the world?
The International Coaching Federation estimates 122,974 coach practitioners worldwide in 2025, up from 109,200 in 2022 and 53,300 in 2015. These are estimates scaled up from a survey of coaches, not a census.
How big is the coaching industry?
ICF puts worldwide coaching revenue at $5.340 billion in 2025. The often-quoted $20 billion is IBISWorld's estimate for U.S. 'business coaching', which it defines as management training courses and seminars (NAICS 61143), not coaching fees.
How much do coaches charge per session?
The average one-hour coaching session cost $234 in ICF's 2025 study, down from $244 in 2022. Fees ranged from $277 in Western Europe to $114 in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2022.
How much does the average life coach make?
ICF does not publish a life-coach figure. Its average coaching income across all coaches was $49,283 a year in 2025, and in 2023 53% of coaches made less than $30,000 a year from coaching.
How many coaches work by video?
In NBHWC's 2025 survey of board-certified health and wellness coaches, 87% coach by video. ICF found 48% of coaches used audio-video platforms in 2019, and 74% increased their use in mid-2020.
Is coaching by video as effective as in person?
The evidence suggests it is comparable. A 2025 review of 27 digital coaching studies found outcomes comparable to face-to-face coaching, and in 333,715 CDC diabetes prevention participants live remote delivery produced 4.7% weight loss against 4.4% in person.
Does coaching really return 7 times its cost?
That figure is ICF's 2009 median company return of 700%, based on only 189 of 2,165 respondents who could give both cost and gain. The 788% figure comes from one company's programme in a 2001 case study with 43 participants.
