Sliding scale pricing for a studio: what people actually pay, and how to set it up

November 4, 2026

A $30 drop-in keeps some people out of the room, and owners know exactly who: the student, the line cook, the artist who would come three times a week at $20 and never at $30. A sliding scale is the usual answer. The usual way to run one is a price list on the website, a line that says "pay what you can," and a Venmo at the desk.

Frontmat now supports a sliding scale as an option for the prices you charge your members. It is off until you turn it on, and with it on, any product can still have one price. Before you use it, here is what people actually pay when the price is up to them, from the few places that have published their numbers, and what we built because of it.

Most people pay at or near the bottom

A yoga teacher wrote up almost seven years of sliding-scale classes at $5 to $15 a class. In the teacher's words: "the average per student has never consistently exceeded $6 or $7." The top of that scale was $15. The typical payment sat a dollar or two above the floor.

Rock Steady Farm, a farm that sells its shares on a sliding scale, published its split in 2020: 52% of members on the subsidized low-income share, 30% at the baseline price, 18% paying above it.

The lesson is not that people are stingy. It is that the lowest number on your scale is the number most people will pay, so it has to be a number you could run the studio on if everyone paid it. Set it there, not lower. The form in Frontmat says this next to the field, because it is the one thing owners get wrong on the first try.

The low number is the one that moves people

Marketing researchers ran a series of field studies on pay-what-you-want pricing, including a doughnut stand at Berkeley with different suggested prices on the sign. The write-up of the paper by Minah Jung, Hannah Perfecto and Leif Nelson in the Journal of Marketing Research puts it plainly: a $3 suggestion made no difference to what people paid, and low suggestions pulled the average down. Jung's advice to anyone using the technique: "find a balanced anchor. One that attracts more customers but that doesn't encourage very low payments."

So the slider in Frontmat does not start at the bottom. It starts at what a class costs you to run, marked on the track with "our cost" under it, and the member moves it from there. Leave the cost blank and it starts in the middle. Either way the first number a member sees is not the lowest one.

Cap the lowest-price spots

The Green Bottle scale, the three-tier model many studios borrow their wording from, comes with a rule its author states on the page: "There are a limited amount slots for products, services, and classes offered at the middle and lower end of the scale." An open scale drifts to the bottom without anyone meaning it to.

In Frontmat a drop-in priced as a range can cap how many people in each class pay in the low part. Members see how many are left. When they are gone, the low part closes for that class, and the private ask stays open. Two people paying for the last spot at the same moment is handled too: the second is refunded on their own and told why.

There is no $0, so there has to be a way in

Working Class Acupuncture, a clinic that has run on a sliding scale for years, raised its scale to $25 to $45 in 2024. The same post says: "If the low end of the scale is too high for you, please let us know, we'll work something out!"

Stripe will not charge less than 50 cents (its floor), and a $0 class at a studio that is a business is a gift, not a sale. So a sliding scale in Frontmat has no $0 price. Instead, under every sliding price, members see "Can't manage $20? Ask us privately." The note comes to the owner by email. Nobody is asked to prove anything. The owner answers by granting credits on the member's page, and the member books like anyone else.

Name the parts in the buyer's words

A range is named in thirds, each with a name and a line that says who it is for. Frontmat starts you with Community, "for you if paying for class means going without something you need"; Sustaining, "for you if your needs are met, with a little left over"; and Supporter, "for you if you have money to spare and want the room open to everyone." Change them to your own words once and they go on every product. A membership offered as a few prices uses the same three names on its cards.

How it works in Frontmat

• Optional, and off until you turn it on, under Settings › Payments. Nothing changes for you or your members until you do.
• On, every product asks how it is priced: one price, a range, or a few prices. A drop-in, a class pack, a membership, and any product we add later.
• A class still costs credits. Someone with no credits pays your drop-in's price once per credit, so a 3-credit workshop on a $20 to $45 drop-in is $60 to $135.
• A member on a sliding membership can change their amount from My account. The change starts at the next renewal.
• Owners and admins see what each person paid, with "sliding scale" beside it. Staff see "paid what fit." Rosters never show amounts.
• Reports shows what people chose: how many paid in each part, how many paid the lowest, and the average next to your cost.
• Turn it off and every product goes back to one price. Members keep their membership amount until they cancel. Everything you set is kept for next time.

The whole setup, screen by screen, is in the help center: Offer a sliding scale. The rest of payments is on the payments page.

Before you turn it on

1. Set the lowest to what you could live on if everyone paid it. Most people will.
2. Put your cost to run a class on the range. The slider starts there.
3. Cap the low-price spots in each class if the room is small.
4. Write the one-line note that goes under every price. Say what a class costs you to run.
5. Tell your members once, in your own words. The scale does the rest.