Anyone who operates a riding lesson program knows that lesson horses are expensive. We pay for feed, farrier care, veterinary care, supplements, insurance, equipment, and facilities. But when I started looking more closely at the numbers in my own program, I realized there was a much bigger question:
Do we actually know what one lesson horse costs our business?
That question led to our recent Lesson Horse Cost Survey, where riding program owners, managers, instructors, and trainers were asked to share information about their lesson horses and operating expenses.
Responses came from programs across multiple U.S. states and represented several different business models, including programs operating on their own property, leasing facilities or stalls, and boarding lesson horses at outside facilities.
This is a preliminary survey with a relatively small, self-selected sample, so these numbers should not be considered national industry averages. However, the responses have already revealed some interesting patterns—and raised important questions about the economics of running a lesson program.
Several numbers immediately stood out. A useful preliminary benchmark for the reported monthly cost of a lesson horse was approximately $800, or about $9,600 per year. Many respondents reported their lesson horses working approximately 15–25 lessons per month, while many lesson prices fell in the $50–$80 range, depending on lesson length and whether lessons were private, semi-private, or group.
But those numbers only tell part of the story. The most interesting finding may be what isn’t always included when programs calculate the cost of their lesson horses.
Based on the preliminary responses, approximately $800 per horse per month appears to be a useful starting point for discussing reported lesson-horse costs. However, there was a very wide range. Some respondents reported monthly costs in approximately the $250–$400 range, while others reported costs reaching $2,000–$2,500 per horse per month.
There are legitimate reasons for such a large difference. Location matters. Feed prices matter. Farrier requirements matter. Veterinary needs matter. Some horses require considerably more maintenance than others. Facility arrangement also matters tremendously.
A program maintaining horses on its own property may report a much lower direct monthly cost than a program paying commercial board. But owning the facility doesn’t mean the facility is free. Fencing, pasture maintenance, utilities, tractors and equipment, repairs, manure management, bedding, property maintenance, and labor still cost money.
The question is whether those expenses are actually being allocated to the lesson program. If they aren’t, a horse may appear less expensive on paper than it actually is to the business.
This became a recurring theme throughout the survey: what we pay directly for the horse and what the horse truly costs the business aren’t necessarily the same number.
Many respondents reported lesson-horse workloads of approximately 15–25 lessons per month, although there were horses doing fewer than 10 lessons per month and others doing 30, 40, or more.
That gives us an interesting way to look at the $800 monthly benchmark. If a lesson horse costs $800 per month and participates in 20 lessons per month, the underlying horse expense represents approximately $40 per lesson.
And that’s before paying the instructor.
If an instructor receives $20 per lesson, we’re already at $60 per lesson between horse expense and instructor expense, before considering additional business overhead, administrative expenses, taxes, owner compensation, or profit.
This is only an example using preliminary survey benchmarks. It isn’t intended to represent every riding program. But it illustrates an important point: a $65 or $75 riding lesson can seem expensive to the customer while still producing a surprisingly small margin for the business providing it.
This may have been the most revealing part of the survey. Most of us know what we spend on feed, board, farrier care, and veterinary care. The less obvious expenses are much easier to overlook.
Tack and equipment were good examples. Many respondents indicated that they do not currently factor tack and equipment replacement into their lesson-horse costs but probably should. Saddles, bridles, pads, helmets, blankets, grooming equipment, and other supplies don’t last forever. We may not purchase a saddle every month, but eventually that saddle has to be repaired or replaced. That makes equipment a real cost of operating the program even when it doesn’t appear as a monthly bill.
Horse replacement was another recurring concern. Good lesson horses aren’t simply interchangeable pieces of equipment. Finding a safe, appropriate horse that can reliably do the job can be difficult and expensive.
Consider a simple example. Suppose eventually replacing a lesson horse costs $10,000 and that horse provides approximately eight years of useful service. To prepare for that eventual replacement, a program would need to reserve approximately $104 per month.
That number isn’t included in our $800 benchmark unless the respondent was already accounting for replacement—and many aren’t. If no money is being reserved for replacement, today’s lesson income may be paying for today’s horse without helping purchase tomorrow’s horse.
Retirement creates another expense. Eventually, some lesson horses reach a point where they can no longer maintain their previous workload. Their lesson revenue may decrease or disappear completely, but their expenses don’t necessarily disappear with it. They may still require feed, farrier care, veterinary care, medications, supplements, and housing.
That means retirement planning is not simply a horse-care question. It is also a business-planning question.
Then there is downtime. What happens financially when the horse can’t work? A horse that is lame for a month may still have virtually all of its normal expenses, while its ability to generate lesson revenue may drop to zero. The horse continues costing money while simultaneously losing its ability to produce income.
There was substantial variation in what respondents believed they should reserve for unexpected veterinary expenses. Some reported relatively small emergency budgets, while others believed several thousand dollars should be available.
This suggests that routine veterinary care and emergency reserves should probably be treated as separate financial categories. Routine veterinary care is a predictable part of maintaining a horse. Emergency veterinary reserves are part of protecting the horse and the business against financial risk. Both are real expenses, but they serve different purposes.
Another theme that stood out involved owner and instructor compensation. Several owner/instructors reported paying themselves little or nothing for some of the work they perform.
But the labor involved in a riding program extends far beyond the hour spent teaching a lesson. There is feeding, turnout, stall cleaning, schooling horses, scheduling, client communication, bookkeeping, tack maintenance, veterinary appointments, horse shopping, facility maintenance, and countless other responsibilities.
This leads to an important distinction: not paying ourselves for our time does not mean the labor costs nothing.
It may simply mean that the owner or instructor is personally absorbing part of the true operating cost of the program. That can make a program look more profitable on paper than it really is.
After reviewing these responses, I think one of the most useful ways to look at lesson-horse expenses is to separate them into two categories.
The reported cost includes the expenses we readily see: feed or board, farrier care, routine veterinary care, supplements, insurance, and other regular horse-care expenses.
The fully loaded business cost potentially includes all of those expenses plus equipment replacement, instructor compensation, owner labor, facility overhead, emergency reserves, horse replacement, retirement planning, and downtime or lost productivity.
Those two numbers can be dramatically different.
A program owner may accurately say, “My lesson horse costs me $600 per month.” But if that $600 doesn’t include labor, equipment, replacement, retirement, facility overhead, or downtime, it may not represent what that horse actually costs the business over the long term.
Perhaps the question shouldn’t simply be:
“How much does my lesson horse cost?”
Maybe we should also be asking:
“How much does this horse need to generate for my program to remain financially sustainable?”
Those aren’t necessarily the same number.
If a horse costs $800 per month, that doesn’t mean generating $800 makes the horse financially sustainable. Revenue may also need to contribute toward instructor compensation, facility expenses, administration, equipment, future horse replacement, retirement, emergency reserves, and ultimately enough profit for the business itself to remain viable.
Simply increasing the horse’s workload isn’t necessarily the answer either. Horse welfare and appropriate workload have to remain part of the equation. That means we also need to look at lesson pricing, program efficiency, instructor compensation, horse utilization, and long-term planning.
One of my favorite responses to the question about whether current lesson prices accurately reflect the cost of maintaining lesson horses was essentially:
“This survey is making me reconsider it.”
That may summarize the purpose of this project better than any statistic could.
The goal isn’t to tell riding instructors what they should charge. It isn’t to tell someone that their horse should work more. And it isn’t to suggest that every program should operate the same way.
The goal is much simpler:
Know your numbers.
If we understand what our lesson horses actually cost, what each lesson actually contributes, and which expenses we’re currently absorbing without accounting for them, we can make better decisions for our horses, instructors, clients, and businesses.
This survey has raised several questions worth exploring further. Future research could look more closely at lesson pricing, instructor compensation, horse workload, facility costs, emergency reserves, retirement planning, horse replacement, and the amount of revenue a lesson horse realistically needs to generate.
As additional information is collected, we can also begin comparing different types of programs and looking for patterns that may help riding instructors better understand their own businesses.
The ultimate goal is not to establish one “correct” price for a lesson horse. It is to develop better information that riding professionals can use to build programs that are sustainable for both the horses and the people responsible for them.
These findings are based on a relatively small, voluntary, self-selected survey of riding programs and should be considered preliminary. Respondents came from different regions, facility arrangements, program sizes, and business models, and they varied in how they calculated and reported certain expenses.
For those reasons, figures such as the approximately $800 monthly benchmark should not be interpreted as a national industry average. Instead, these results provide an early look at the range of costs riding programs are experiencing and, perhaps more importantly, the expenses that may not always be included when determining the true cost of a lesson horse.
Individual respondents and identifying information are not included in these published findings.
If you own, manage, train, or teach in a riding lesson program and have not yet participated, I would like to hear from you. The more programs that contribute information, the more useful these benchmarks can become.
Take the Lesson Horse Cost Survey: Link
If you’ve already participated, thank you. Your information is helping us start a larger and much-needed conversation about the economics behind our lesson programs.
Published by Riding Instructor Development & Education
The True Cost of a Lesson Horse — Preliminary 2026 Lesson Horse Cost Survey Results
Education for lesson programs and instructors
