The first thing my close friend said when his Trainerize bill landed was that it wasn't the number he'd signed up for. He hadn't been overcharged. He'd just done what everyone does with Trainerize pricing: read the plan price, decided it was cheap, and not read the second half of the page.
I built Cohva because of what happened to him after that, so take my arithmetic with the appropriate amount of salt and check every figure yourself. But the arithmetic is the point of this post, and it's arithmetic anyone can redo in ten minutes. Everything below comes from Trainerize's pricing page, read the day this was published. Prices move. Check before you decide anything.
What the plans cost
Month-to-month, four tiers:
- Basic — free, 1 client seat, a limited feature set.
- Grow — $10/month, 2 client seats. "For coaches just starting out."
- Pro — from $25/month for 5 seats, with a seat selector running 5, 15, 30, 50, 75, 100 and 200. At 50 seats it's $135/month.
- Studio Plus — $275/month for 500 members, with 1000 and 1000+ above it, and custom pricing past five locations.
Annual billing takes 10% off every paid plan. On annual the page shows Grow at $9/month and Pro 5 at $23/month, Studio Plus at $248/month, and Pro 50 works out to roughly $122/month. That's a real discount and worth taking if you're staying.
Read that ladder alone and Trainerize looks like a bargain, because at the small end it genuinely is. Ten dollars a month for two clients is not a number worth arguing with.
The add-ons are where the bill actually forms
Underneath the plans sits a second price list. These are monthly, on top of whatever plan you're on:
- Advanced Nutrition Coaching — $20/month on Grow and Pro 5/15; $45/month on Pro 30 through Pro 200.
- Business — $25/month on Grow and Pro.
- Video Coaching — $10/month on Grow and Pro.
- Stripe Integrated Payments — $10/month on Grow and Pro.
- Custom Branded App — a one-time $169 fee on Pro.
Studio and Enterprise plans bundle all of it at no extra cost, which is a fair deal and tells you exactly which customer Trainerize is built to keep.
Look at the first line again. Advanced nutrition coaching is a paid add-on. If you coach physiques, nutrition isn't an advanced capability you unlock when business picks up — macros are most of what a client is paying you for. A pricing page that treats it as optional is describing its ideal customer, and if you're reading this, that customer probably isn't you.
The real monthly bill at three roster sizes
Do the addition at your own roster size. Here's what it looks like at three.
Two clients. Grow is $10/month. Add Advanced Nutrition Coaching at $20 and you're at $30/month — the nutrition add-on costs twice the plan. Cohva's free tier covers two clients with the entire platform, nutrition included, no card.
Five clients. Pro 5 is $25/month. Nutrition takes it to $45/month. Add payments and you're at $55. Cohva's Starter plan is $19/month and covers up to ten clients, so you'd have room to double before the price changes.
Fifty clients. Pro 50 is $135/month. Advanced Nutrition Coaching at that tier is $45, so the honest floor is $180/month. A solo coach who also wants video coaching, Stripe payments and the Business add-on is at $225/month, plus $169 once if they want the branded app. Cohva's Pro plan is $69/month for the same fifty clients, everything included.
None of that is a gotcha. Every figure is printed on Trainerize's own page. It's just printed below the fold, in a section most people scroll past, and the gap between the headline and the total is the whole reason coaches feel surprised on billing day.
Why the add-on model exists at all
I want to be fair here, because it would be easy not to be.
Trainerize serves personal trainers, studios, and gym chains as well as online coaches. A studio owner running class schedules and a 500-member roster genuinely does not need advanced macro tracking, and charging them for it would be worse, not better. Unbundling is a reasonable answer to a broad customer base. It is arguably the correct answer to a broad customer base.
It's just a bad fit for a narrow one. A physique coach needs nutrition, photo comparison, measurements and check-ins on day one, at two clients, before there is any business to speak of. Every one of those is table stakes rather than an upgrade, so an unbundled price list charges you most for the things you can least do without.
That's the same conclusion I reached the long way in the Trainerize alternative post, where the argument is about the workflow rather than the money. The pricing page just happens to say it faster.
What Cohva costs
Since I'm asking you to compare, here's my whole page. Free for 2 clients, Starter $19/month for 10, Growth $39/month for 25, Pro $69/month for 50, Elite $119/month for 100. Annual billing saves about two months.
Every plan includes the entire platform — programming, nutrition with full macro and micro tracking, daily and weekly check-ins, progress photos, body measurements, and blood-work tracking — including the free one. There are no add-ons, no per-message fees, and no percentage of your revenue. Free clients get the same software paying clients do. You can read it yourself on the pricing page, and the story behind the thing is on the about page.
That model has a cost I should name: you pay for capability you might not use. A coach who only writes programs and never touches macros is subsidising the nutrition engine. I made that trade deliberately, because the alternative is a coach discovering mid-prep that the feature they need is $45/month away.
When Trainerize is worth every dollar
Stay where you are if:
- You run a gym, studio or team. Studio Plus exists for exactly that and bundles the add-ons. Cohva has no class scheduling, no session booking, no front desk, and won't.
- You coach general fitness. If nutrition really is an occasional extra rather than the core of the service, unbundling saves you money and my pricing costs you money.
- You want a branded app. $169 once is cheap for that. Cohva doesn't sell one.
- Your total is already low and your week already works. If you're on Grow at $10 with no add-ons and check-ins take two minutes, switching costs more than it returns.
Trainerize is a broader product than Cohva and always will be. Breadth is exactly why its price list has a second half.
Price it yourself in ten minutes
Don't trust my totals. Open the pricing page and do this:
- Write down your current client count, then double it. Both numbers matter.
- Find the plan price at each, on both monthly and annual billing.
- Add every add-on you'd actually switch on. Nutrition is not optional if you coach physiques. Be honest about payments and video too.
- Do the same on any platform you're comparing, including mine, and compare totals rather than headlines.
- Then run one fake client through each free tier for a week and count how many screens a single check-in takes.
Step five is the one that decides it. Price only tells you what a platform costs; the screen count tells you what it costs you every week for the rest of the year. If you want the long version of that test, I wrote a ten-point checklist that works on any platform including mine: how to choose a physique coaching platform.
Try Cohva free — two clients, the whole platform, no credit card, no add-on list.
FAQ
How much does Trainerize cost a month?
Checked in July 2026: Basic is free for 1 client, Grow is $10/month for 2, Pro starts at $25/month for 5 and reaches $135/month at 50, and Studio Plus is $275/month for 500 members. Annual billing takes 10% off. Those are plan prices only — add-ons are billed on top.
Why is my Trainerize bill higher than the plan price?
Almost always add-ons. Advanced Nutrition Coaching is $20/month on Grow and Pro 5/15 and $45/month from Pro 30 up; Business is $25/month; Video Coaching and Stripe Integrated Payments are $10/month each. A Pro 50 coach running nutrition, video, payments and Business pays $225/month against a $135 plan price.
Is Trainerize's annual plan worth it?
The discount is 10% across all paid plans, which is real money at Pro 50 and above — roughly $122/month instead of $135. The only caution is committing a year to a platform you're still evaluating. Run a full check-in cycle monthly first, then switch to annual once you're sure.
What is the cheapest alternative to Trainerize?
Cheapest depends on what you count. On plan price alone, most competitors cluster in the same range. On total cost, the question is whether nutrition and payments are included or billed separately, because that's where the gap opens. Cohva is free for two clients and $19/month for ten with everything included, but I'm not neutral — I wrote a fuller comparison in the Trainerize alternative post, including the cases where Trainerize is the better buy. I ran the same add-on arithmetic on a different platform in the Everfit pricing breakdown.
Does Cohva charge extra for nutrition coaching?
No. Macro and micro tracking, food and water logging are in every plan including the free one. There is no nutrition add-on because there are no add-ons.
Does Trainerize charge a percentage of my revenue?
Not that its pricing page shows. Stripe Integrated Payments is a flat $10/month add-on, though Stripe's own processing fees apply separately on any platform, including Cohva. Verify current terms with both providers before you move payment processing.