I’m curious to see what the industry standard is these days. What do you pay for a lesson on a horse that is provided by your trainer? Is it a group or private? And what part of the country do you live?
$45 for an hour group or half hour private. SE Pennsylvania
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I have paid $55 for an hour lesson, $65 for a 45 minute lesson and $70 for a half hour lesson. Different trainers, dressage, all private lessons. I’m in the Midwest.
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$70 - $100 in New Jersey.
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$45.00 for a 45 minute private in NC (Tryon area)
and people wonder why training barns go out of business … the costs shown so far are the same that were charged in 1990
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Not really, no. They were $25-$35 here, now $45-$75 depending on discipline. And most lesson barns require you to buy packages of lessons, making them (at our barn) $50/hour group lesson. There are no private lessons unless you are on your own horse. Like feed and boarding prices, lessons have slowly increased in the last 30 years. Most services in other industries have as well-- hair cut/color, pedi/manis, pressure washing, painting, gutter services, landscaping, house cleaning-- they’ve all slowly increased. Hard to see when prices don’t jump dramatically.
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No current figures on hand but at our riding school, the more lessons you have in a month the less cost each lesson is.
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Bay area when i was in lesson program-75-125+/lesson (HJ barns)
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You might want to also ad the horse’s level of training - a old quarter horse that teaches up-down lessons or beginners to canter will be priced differently from a trainer’s retired upper-level warmblood schoolmaster that teaches tempis and pirouettes. 
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Funny that should come up. I just found a receipt from 1988. Dressage lesson, my own horse, half hour, $12. Of course, the trainer was up and coming (she still trains and shows today), and I was a kid.
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I would love to know what said trainer charges in 2021! 
You’d be hard pressed to find someplace that HAS lesson horses here.
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Yes! That’s the case in my area. At most hunter-jumper barns, the expectation is that someone will lease a horse after a few trial walk-trot lessons. Most barns have one, perhaps two (one larger horse and one pony for kids), usually older horses owned by the main trainer that aren’t terribly fun to ride. The focus is on getting the rider ready to show, and the barn makes most of its money through showing and leasing. Dressage and eventing barns cater almost exclusively to people who own their own horses. The trainer may have a schoolmaster to teach certain movements, or for more experienced riders with greener horses, but the horse isn’t a lesson horse per se.
At the few remaining lesson barns in my area, group lessons run around $50. Regarding whether that’s too much or not–I hate to say it, but many group lessons are so crowded, with such different levels of ability, they can be very frustrating. One person may be having difficulty with a green horse getting the correct lead and keep pulling up, another person may be having trouble with a horse cantering at all, another person may have a horse pulling into the center of the ring…making it difficult for other riders to properly give signals without having to pull up or to work on anything other than steering. I guess jumping lessons are a bit better, but in a crowded lesson, again, there’s not a great amount of time to warm up on the flat, and a great deal of time can be spent waiting around.
But more and more, it seems barn owners don’t feel that it’s worth their while to cater to people just taking group lessons, and financially I can understand it. Raising the price $10-$20 per student, per lesson wouldn’t necessarily make much of a difference, and might even lose them less serious students who are still reliably $50-$100 a week. Plus, there’s the wear and tear on the school horse, finding a school horse capable of coping with multiple riders every week, and finding school horses who can deal with the environment (i.e., being pulled up in the corner even by a competent rider if flanked by two kids who can’t get their ponies to canter or stick by the rail).
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I pay 90.00 for a weekly 45 min -1hr private lesson with a super safe eventing horse in NoVa. She tolerates all my giggles and is so safe.
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The going rate where I’m at is $50 per hour, private lesson. Through my lease mare and socializing at the barn, I’ve managed to find a lady who does lessons a little cheaper. But she does it as a side gig, doesn’t advertise for students. When I was a teen, $40 was the going rate in the area. I lucked out and found a lady who charged $20 an hour. She mainly showed and did lessons as a side gig- her only lesson horses were her retired show mare and an adorable but rotten pony. (Pony was a devil but he also taught me a lot!) I just wanted to improve my horsemanship, I was never concerned with showing so I didn’t need a fancy barn, just someone who knew their stuff and was willing to teach it.
It is $50 here for a lesson horse in a group lesson at my barn (middle of Canadian prairies). It’s $30 for the lesson and $20 for the use of the school horse. If you just want to use a school horse with no lesson it’s $30. If you want a private lesson it’s $20 plus $35.
I part-board (3 rides per week) a schoolie for $250 a month plus I pay $30 for each lesson (one day per week).
Averages around $65/hr for group up to around $90/hr for private H/J lessons around me. These are for show barn programs that also give lessons with varying levels of school horse quality and availability. There are fewer and fewer “lesson mill” barns (not trying to be negative, just descriptive) and I don’t have any recent experience with them.
All of my horses are show quality and schoolmasters, meaning they have their masters degrees in teaching people how to ride well. So my lessons are the same price no matter if a person owns or not.
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Southern New Hampshire, kind of on the edge of the Boston vortex: $50/hour private, $40 group (only ever 2-3), $5 less with a lesson contract. At another barn I frequent closer to Boston it’s $80 and $60 and also $5 cheaper with a contract. Both places have excellent school horses and I’d maybe call both eventing-oriented but both have a significant dressage contingent as well.
Looking at the above numbers I don’t think there’s much of a standard!
(PS: corrected one of the prices a day after posting.)
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