Pricing guide

How much should Registered Counsellors and Psychologists charge?

A guide to setting private practice cash rates, benchmarked against major medical aid tariffs.

23 July 2026 · 7 min read

What this guide is

This document averages the actual 2026 tariff rates across 8 major South African medical aid schemes — Discovery Health, GEMS, Bonitas, Momentum Health, Medshield, Fedhealth, POLMED, and Bankmed — for both Registered Counsellors (practice type 81) and Psychologists (practice type 86), broken down by session length.

The medical aid rate is what a scheme has decided it will reimburse for a session. It's a useful, real, market-wide reference point — but it is not a rule about what you're allowed to charge. Think of the numbers below as a benchmark to orient yourself, not a ceiling or a floor.

How to use this guide

If you see clients on medical aid, these averages show you roughly where the "floor" tends to sit — most practitioners charging cash rates price at or above the medical aid average, since medical aid rates are themselves a negotiated, often conservative, baseline.
If you're deciding on a private cash rate for the first time, or benchmarking an existing one, these numbers give you a sense of where the broader market sits for a given session length.
The gap between Registered Counsellor and Psychologist rates (consistently around double, across every scheme and almost every duration) can help you think about how your own pricing should scale if your practice includes both types of practitioners.

The most important thing to understand

You are legally and professionally free to set your own private practice cash rate. Medical aid tariffs are contractual rates that apply only to claims submitted to that scheme — they are not a legal cap, a recommended fee, or an ethical requirement. Your cash rate is your own commercial decision, and reasonable practitioners charge above, at, or (less commonly) below these averages depending on their experience, location, demand, specialisation, and business model.

The only real constraints are the ones that apply to any professional fee-setting decision:

Your fees must be disclosed clearly and honestly to clients up front (informed consent extends to cost).
Your fees must not be so as to constitute exploitation of a client in a vulnerable position, per the HPCSA's general ethical rules.
If a client is claiming from a medical aid, your invoice still needs to reflect the tariff code and reimbursement rate accurately for that scheme — but this only governs what you submit to the scheme for reimbursement purposes, not what you charge the client directly for a private cash session.

Beyond that, pricing is yours to decide.

Individual sessions — average tariff by duration

Psychologist averages are consistently around double the Registered Counsellor rate.

Average individual session tariffs by duration
Duration	Registered Counsellor	Psychologist	Psych. is
1–10 min	R60.75	R124.13	2.04x
11–20 min	R181.63	R371.91	2.05x
21–30 min	R302.59	R619.92	2.05x
31–40 min	R423.59	R867.52	2.05x
41–50 min	R544.55	R1,097.54	2.02x
51–60 min	R665.57	R1,327.94	2.00x
61–70 min	R786.48	R1,557.66	1.98x
71–80 min	R907.33	R1,788.05	1.97x
81–90 min	R1,028.45	R2,017.95	1.96x
91–100 min	No RC code	R2,247.67	—
101–110 min	No RC code	R2,477.55	—
111–120 min	No RC code	R2,707.56	—

Individual session tariff codes for Registered Counsellors only go up to 90 minutes in the data on file — Psychologist codes extend to 120 minutes.

Group sessions (per patient) — average tariff by duration

Same ~2x pattern holds for group work, priced per patient.

Average group session tariffs per patient by duration
Duration	Registered Counsellor	Psychologist	Psych. is
1–10 min	R12.29	R24.91	2.03x
11–20 min	R36.48	R74.56	2.04x
21–30 min	R60.75	R124.13	2.04x
31–40 min	R84.94	R173.66	2.04x
41–50 min	R108.98	R219.66	2.02x
51–60 min	R133.27	R265.54	1.99x
61–70 min	R157.53	R311.64	1.98x
71–80 min	R181.63	R357.50	1.97x
81–90 min	R205.88	R403.53	1.96x
91–100 min	R230.00	R449.54	1.95x
101–110 min	R254.28	R495.52	1.95x
111–120 min	R278.39	R541.49	1.95x

A note on the pattern

The ~2x ratio between Psychologist and Registered Counsellor tariffs holds remarkably consistently across all 8 schemes and nearly every duration — it drifts gently from about 2.05x on shorter sessions down to about 1.95x on the longest ones, rather than staying perfectly flat. This is a genuine market-wide pattern in how medical aids have set their rate cards, not a one-scheme quirk — worth knowing if you're thinking about how to price a practice that includes both professions.