How Much Does it Cost to Start a Therapy Practice in the UK?

How much does it cost to start a therapy practice? It’s a question many a UK therapist will have undoubtedly asked at some point as they take their first steps towards establishing their new business.

It’s also a question which, at first glance, seems to be difficult to answer.

After all, not only is there so much to plan and pay for, but each item in your budget for a therapy practice can come in a variety of prices from the relatively cheap to the incredibly expensive.

Still, just because it’s difficult, doesn’t mean its impossible.

I’ve done the research and worked out that it could cost between £717.19 and £3,313.22 to start a therapy practice in the UK depending on your unique circumstances, requirements, and goals for your practice.

How did I come to these figures?

Simple:

I considered everything you might need for a new private therapy practice and tracked down the average cost for each one.

Below, I’ll help you set your own therapy practice budget by outlining the typical costs for everything you may need to ensure your new business gets off to a flying start.

How Much Does it Cost to Start a Therapy Practice in the UK? A Complete Cost Breakdown

All of the following costs are based on the average lowest and highest reasonable price for each item, though you find that each thing costs either less or more depending on factors such as the going rate in your area, your suppliers, and how much you can do for free on your own.

Read on for a detailed cost breakdown of each essential item, or use the table of contents above to skip to the item that you’re most interested in.

1. How Much Does it Cost to Register a Business?

It costs £0 to £40 to register your business with HMRC depending on which option you choose.

Sole Trader – £0

Registering as a sole trader costs nothing. You can do this free of charge via the HMRC website, and though it’s been years since I did it for myself, I recall that the process only took a couple of minutes.

For most therapists, this is going to be the easiest and most appropriate option to register as self-employed and ensure that you’re set up to file a self-assessment tax return.

Being a sole trader means less paperwork, fewer costs, and less complications as all you need to is file a self-assessment rather than submitting accounts to Companies House and paying corporation tax on top of your personal tax.

Limited Company – £12 – £40

If you do decide that you want to set-up a limited company, it will cost you £12 to register with Companies House online or £40 to do it through the post.

To be honest, unless you have a very specific reason why you want to take on all of the extra responsibilities of running a Limited Company, setting up as a sole trader is generally always going to be a better option if you’re a therapist working for yourself.

That said, if you’re struggling to decide which option to go for, here’s a guide from 1st Formations on the differences between being a sole trader versus establishing a limited company.

How Much Tax Will I Have to Pay as a UK Therapist in Private Practice?

When you operate as a sole trader, you’ll pay taxes on your profits, which is your earnings minus your expenses.

However, you do get a personal, tax-free allowance of £12,570 which means you only pay tax on any profits above and beyond that amount.

The amount of tax you pay is dependent on your taxable income and is decided at the following amounts:

• Basic Rate: £12,571 to £50,270 – 20% tax
• Higher Rate: £50,271 to £150,000 – 40% tax
• Additional Rate: £150,000 and over – 45%.

2. How Much Does Therapist Supervision Cost in the UK?

Supervision costs for therapists may total between £300 – £840 per year, paid on a monthly basis.

This is generally dependent on multiple factors including:

• The type of therapy you practice
• The experience and expertise of your supervisor
• Your location and the going rate in that area.

At time of writing, I currently pay £300 per year (£25 per month) for hypnotherapy supervision and £720 per year (£60 per month) for counselling supervision.

While the £60 p/m rate seems to be about average for a person-centered counselling supervisor in my area, I have come across supervisors who charge as much as £70 or more, hence I worked out the £840 p/y rate as £70 per month, multiplied by 12 months per year.

This is one of those occasions when it’s certainly worth shopping around and making a few enquiries to find a supervisor within your budget. That said, keep in mind that since supervision is so critical to ensuring we’re providing the best possible service to our clients, this isn’t something you’re going to want to scrimp on too much.

3. How Much Do Professional Memberships Cost?

It may cost between £50 and £318 per year to register with a membership association such as the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).

This is another worthwhile investment, as a mark of approval from a relevant and credible organisation a can be invaluable in providing a level of reassurance for clients and, of course, establishing yourself as a professional, legitimate operation.

There’s an enormous number of different organisations that you could potentially register with, and certainly too many for me to list every single one of them here. However, I have tracked down the costs for some of the more popular ones which you’ll find in the table below.

Please note, all of the costs mentioned are per year.

Professional Association	Yearly Fees	Membership Details
British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP)	£170	Visit BACP
National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH)	£70 – £120	Visit NCH
United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP)	£68 – £282	Visit UKCP
British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP)	£52 – £125*	Visit BABCP
British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC)	£257 – £318	Visit BPC
UK Association for Gestalt Practioners (UKAGP)	£30 – £140	Visit UKAGP
Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (IACP)	€194.00 – €289.00	Visit IACP
The National Counselling Society (NCS)	£125	Visit NCS
Association for Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy	£65	Visit AfSFH

*BABCP figures are for the annual membership, though you’ll also have to pay to apply for membership.

This is just a small number of professional associations you can join as a therapist. The Counselling Directory website has a comprehensive list which you can find here.

4. Privacy and Data Protection Costs for Therapists

Complying with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 may cost therapists between £50 and £530 depending on your circumstances and how you operate your business.

This covers things like secure file storage and registration with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Some expenses you may need to pay for include:

Disclaimer: Please note that the following recommendations include affiliate links, which means I earn a small commission from Amazon if you purchase these items. As with everything on Therapist Marketing Tips, I only recommend products that I’ve used myself and can personally vouch for.

• Secure filing cabinet (for paper notes) – A good quality cabinet like this one will set you back less than £80, though some top of the line models such as this one may cost several hundred pounds.
• Encrypted portable hard drive (for digital data) – Available from between £75 and £400. Personally, I recommend the Toshiba 1TB external hard drive as it’s relatively affordable compared to other models, has enhanced encryption, and provides a huge amount of storage space.
• Laptop security lock – I use this CaLeQi Combination Security Lock Cable, though there are options available from as little as £10 up to £50.
• Security software – Depending on what you already have on your computer, you may be looking at paying from £20 – £40 for decent security software.

How Much Does it Cost to Register with the ICO?

If you process client data electronically, you may need to register with the Information Comissioner’s Office. For therapists in private practice, this should cost no more than £40, or £35 if you pay via direct debit.

However, there are a range of fees that may apply depending on your circumstances.

Here’s the ICO’s fee tier calculator to help you determine your costs.

5. How Much Does Insurance Cost for Therapists?

The average cost of insurance for therapists in the UK is between £65.25 and £103.72.

These figures come from two of the most popular insurance providers who cover therapists, Holistic and Towergate.

Personally, I use Holistic Insurance, whose cover starts at £62.25. I don’t get any kind of a kick-back for recommending Holistic, I just find them very affordable and super helpful.

Towergate Insurance are another widely-used company that I see other therapists mentioning a lot. Their cheapest cover starts from £103.80.

To learn more about getting the protection you need for your practice, see my definitive guide to insurance for UK counsellors.

6. How Much Does a Therapy Room Cost in the UK?

A therapy room may cost between £0 – £400 per month depending on how you set things up.

For this, I’m counting only the costs of actually using/renting a space rather than furnishing and equipping that space.

A. Using Your Home – £0

If you have a suitable space in your home, you can obviously use that free of charge, though there may be insurance factors you need to consider as well as any terms in your contract if you’re renting.

B. Renting a Room By the Hour – £8 – £20

If you’re hiring a room, expect to pay between £8 and £20 per hour depending on where you’re based. I currently rent a space at a rate of £10 per hour for the first three hours, then free for any additional hours, meaning I pay no more than £30 per day.

Prior to that, I rented a room in a dedicated therapist’s center for £8 per hour.

C. Commercial Property Rental – £250 – £400

Alternatively, you may decide to go down the route of renting a permanent office space/commercial premises, for which you may pay between £250 – £400 per month depending on the size of the space and commercial rental rates in your area.

7. How Much Does it Cost to Design a Logo for Your Therapy Practice?

It could cost between £0 and £200+ to design a logo for your therapy practice. Here, you have three main options:

A. Do It Yourself With Canva – £0

You could design a logo for free using an awesome and easy-to-use design platform called Canva. You can even get free access to one of their premium, paid-for icons if you use my referral link.

(I don’t benefit from this as I already pay for Canva’s premium service, but if it’s helpful to you, go forth and use it!)

This is certainly a good option if you’re really on a very modest budget. In fact, I initially designed my first ever therapy practice logo using Canva before I had the money to pay a designer.

However, I also found that designs were fairly generic and not very adaptable once you got them out of the Canva system. They certainly didn’t work all that great for printed materials.

B. Outsource to a Freelancer – £20 – £70

If you don’t like the idea of doing it yourself but you still don’t have a tonne of money to throw into a logo, your next best option would be to outsource to a designer via sites like Fiverr, or my personal favourite, People Per Hour (PPH).

These sites operate as an online marketplace where freelancers sell a variety of services, all at typically lower rates than you’d pay if you went to a professional design agency.

Since competition is fierce on these sites , you’ll often find that the person you hire will go all out to design an exceptional quality logo to help them improve their own ranking, meaning you’re getting top-level designs at a fraction of the cost.

I used PPH to hire a freelance graphic designer who created an excellent logo that I’m really happy with and included all of the source files so that I could edit it or use it however I liked. All this cost me just £25.

C. Outsource to a Graphic Design Agency – £100 – £200+

If you’ve got the budget to pay for it and you really want the absolute best of the best when it comes to how you represent your business, you could hire a professional graphic design agency to come up with something extra special for you, though my own personal belief is that since you can still get great quality work on freelance marketplace sites, there isn’t really any need to pay this extra amount.

8. How Much Does it Cost to Build a Website for Your Therapy Practice?

It could cost between £96 and £600+ to build a website for your therapy practice.

Really though, when it comes to the question of how much does it cost to start a therapy practice, this is the most difficult part to answer since there are so many different factors to consider and lots of different ways to build your site (or have somebody build it for you).

Below, we’ll look at the costs of what I consider to be the three best options.

A. WordPress: £81 – £300 per year

Since I started Therapist Marketing Tips, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I love WordPress because it’s super easy to use, almost infinitely customizable, and highly affordable.

In fact, the actual WordPress software is free of charge and all you have to pay for is web hosting, a domain name, any premium themes or plugins you might want to use.

The £81 figure quoted above assumes that you’re buying monthly web hosting at a cost of £5.99 per month and a domain name at £9.99 per year, building the site yourself, and relying on free themes and plugins.

The £300 figure is based on the typical cost to hire one of the better WordPress website designers on People Per Hour.

B. Drag-and-Drop Site Builders – £83.88 – £123 per year

While I love WordPress, I admit that drag-and-drop site builders like Wix can sometimes be a better option for anyone who isn’t too confident in their own technical abilities and that, yes, they can be chapter.

The figures quoted above are for one year of Wix’s cheapest packages (£6.99 p/m combo package) and one year of their most expensive package (£19 p/m VIP package). Other packages are available, and there’s even a cheaper £3.50 p/m package, however since it’s limited to 500GB of storage space and is tarnished by Wix’s own branding on your pages, I don’t recommend this one.

C. Hire a Professional Web Designer – £150 – £600+

Along with hiring a freelance web designer via one the marketplaces I mentioned earlier, you could also go to a professional web design agency and have them build your site for you. This will work out to be the most expensive option, but should guarantee that you get a truly unique, top-quality site.

If you want to hire me to build your website, I charge a minimum of £400.

DIY Web Design Costs

If you decide to build your own website using WordPress or a similar platform (other than drag-and-drop builders which will include most of these things), I thought it would be helpful to break down some of the things you’ll need to buy and the associated costs:

• Domain name – £9.99 – £20 per year
• Hosting – £42 – £108 per year
• Design/theme – £0 – £75 (one off fee)
• Images – £0 – £100 (stock photos, hiring a photographer for profile shots etc.)
• Content – £0 – £250 (free to write your own content, budget up to £250 if you’re hiring a copywriter depending on the amount of pages you want for your site.)
• SSL certificate – £0 – £50 per year (some web hosts and domain registrars offer a free SSL, some may charge extra).

9. How Much do Business Cards Cost?

Getting business cards designed and printed for your therapy practice may cost between £12.64 and £35 for 250 cards depending on factors such as the finish and size.

I based this figure on quotes for 250 single-sided, matte-finish business cards from three different places which worked out at the following rates:

• VistaPrint – £12.64
• InstantPrint – £21.64 (my personal favourite for print marketing)
• Canva – £35.

Keep in mind that these costs may be higher if you order more cards, a different size or style, or a different finish.

You’re also likely to pay more if you hire a graphic designer and/or local printers to create your cards.

10. How Much Do Flyers Cost to Design and Print?

When you’re factoring marketing expenses into the cost to start a therapy practice, budget between £24.90 and £120 if you want to create some flyers.

These prices are based on quotes for 500 x single-sided A5 flyers printed on standard paper from the same three sites as above:

• VistaPrint – £24.90
• InstantPrint – £27.83
• Canva – £120.

Again, these costs will vary greatly depending on the quantity, quality, size, and whether or not you go with double or single-sided flyers.

11. How Much Do Therapist’s Directory Sites Cost?

It costs £19.50 per month to register with either Counselling Directory or Hypnotherapy Directory.

Alternatively, you can choose to pay for a year’s membership in advance. This costs £195, saving you £39.

12. How Much Do Google Ads Cost?

Using Google Ads to promote your therapy practice may cost between £0.44 – £1.90 per click depending on the keywords targetted and other factors.

Marketing agency Digital22 have a great breakdown of Google Ads costs here.

The total cost to start a therapy practice in the UK that I mentioned at the start of this article includes a £20 Google Ads budget.

13. How Much Does it Cost to Take Card Payments?

Buying a card reader to take card payments can cost as little as £19 to £27 plus transaction fees.

These figures are based off the following two products:

A. Square Card Reader

•  £16 for the device
•  1.75% transaction fee for in-person payments via contacless, mobile, and chip-and-pin
• 1.9% transaction fee for online payments.

B. Zettle

• Free point-of-sale mobile app
• 1.75% transaction fee for card transactions
• 2.5% transaction fee for invoice and online payments

14. Additional Costs You Might Need to Consider to Start a Therapy Practice

Though I’ve done my best to cover every major essential cost to start a therapy practice in the UK, the guide above is far from exhaustive.

When creating your budget, you may also want to consider how much, if anything, you want to spend on things like:

• Continuing Professional Development (courses, books, additional qualifications etc.)
• Networking (events, Chamber of Commerce membership etc.)
• Stationary
• Additional print and digital marketing
• Loan repayments
• Self-care activities.

I haven’t included costs for these as they’re factors that are so unique to each therapist, their requirements, and their budget.

How Much Does it Cost to Start a Therapy Practice in the UK? A Final Note

Before I go today, I want to leave you with a final note on the costs detailed above.

Wherever possible, I aimed to provide you with the lowest possible price (including free options) as well as the average high-yet-reasonable price for each item.

That doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to find cheaper or even much more expensive prices out there, simply that these are the typical figures that the average therapist in the UK should expect to pay.

Keep these figures in mind when starting out, and you’ll find that it’s absolutely possible to get your new therapy practice off the ground no matter what kind of budget you have to play with.

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