Torch Coaching Pricing and Cost per Manager in 2026
/6 min read
Torch does not publish its coaching prices. Every Torch program is quoted per organization, usually on an annual contract, and the price moves with three things: how many people you coach, which coach tier they get (Executive, Core or Emerging), and whether you add group coaching, mentoring or the Spark AI practice tool. If you need coaching for a broad group of managers on a budget you can see before a sales call, an AI coaching platform at 12 to 25 USD per seat per month is the cheaper route.
See what a manager's coaching plan looks like before you buy anything
Type a goal such as "run better one-on-ones with my five reports", and the leadership mentor builds month one and this week's tasks.
Already comparing vendors? Our Torch coaching alternatives page puts Torch next to BetterUp, CoachHub, Sounding Board and an AI coach in one table.
This page is for the person signing the contract: a head of people, an L&D lead or a VP who has a Torch proposal on the desk, or is about to ask for one, and wants to know whether the number is reasonable and what else is on the market. We cover what you are paying for, how to estimate the total, and when it makes sense to buy something else for part of the population.
Torch coaching pricing at a glance
Torch Leadership Labs lists no plans or rates on its website. Prospects book a demo, and the pricing conversation starts from your population and goals. Review directories confirm this: Torch has no free version and no public pricing tiers, and the price estimate on G2 dates from 2022, so treat it as history, not a reference. Torch's own comparison pages describe both Torch and its main rivals as quoted per organization on annual contracts.
That is normal for human coaching. The cost of a program is mostly coach time, and coach time is priced by seniority. What you can do is break the quote into the parts that actually drive it, so you compare like with like.
What drives the price of a Torch program
Torch matches coaches to the level of the person being coached. Its site describes three tiers, and every coach is ICF-credentialed with at least five years of coaching experience:
| Torch tier | Who it serves | Coach credential | Effect on price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Executive | VP to C-suite | ICF PCC | Highest cost per person |
| Core | Director to senior director | ICF ACC | Middle of the range |
| Emerging | Individual contributor to senior manager | ICF ACC | Lowest cost per person |
On top of the tier, four levers change the quote:
- Session frequency and program length. Twice a month for six months costs roughly half of weekly sessions for a year.
- Format. Group and team coaching spread one coach across several people and lower the price per head. One-to-one is the premium format.
- Add-ons. Sponsored mentoring and Spark AI, Torch's AI practice tool that runs voice roleplays and check-ins between sessions, can be part of the package.
- Contract size and term. Larger populations and multi-year terms usually earn a lower rate per person.
How much does Torch cost per person
Without a published rate, the honest answer is: it depends on your quote. Enterprise human coaching across the category, from Torch to BetterUp and CoachHub, is widely estimated by comparison sites at several hundred to several thousand USD per person per year, with executive one-to-one coaching at the top. Executive coaching from an individual credentialed coach in the US often runs well above that.
Here is the arithmetic for a US company that wants to coach 100 managers. The human coaching rows use an assumed 1,500 USD per person per year purely to show the shape of the decision; replace it with the figure from your Torch proposal. The AI rows use published prices from the AiMentoring pricing page.
| Scenario for 100 managers | Annual cost | Who gets coached |
|---|---|---|
| Human coaching for 20 senior leaders at 1,500 USD each (assumed) | About 30,000 USD | 20 people |
| Human coaching for all 100 at 1,500 USD each (assumed) | About 150,000 USD | 100 people |
| AiMentoring Teams, 100 seats billed yearly | 14,400 USD | 100 people, weekly AI coaching |
| Human coaching for 20 leaders plus AiMentoring Teams for the other 80 | About 41,520 USD | 100 people, mixed |
The last row is the one most mid-size companies end up with. Senior leaders keep a human coach for judgement calls and transitions, and first-line managers get structured weekly practice at a fraction of the cost.
Is Torch coaching worth the price?
For senior leaders, often yes. Torch publishes its own results, including coached employees being 19% less likely to leave than matched uncoached peers, and many of its coaches are former industry leaders or psychologists. If a VP is stepping into a bigger role, or a leadership team is going through a reorg, a human coach who has seen that situation before is worth paying for.
The value drops further down the org chart. A first-time manager does not need a credentialed executive coach to learn how to run a one-on-one or give feedback on a missed deadline. They need many short practice loops, a plan for the week and someone checking whether they did it. That is where a per-seat AI coach pays off, and it is why many buyers price the two side by side. Retention is also not only a coaching question: if people leave over pay, setting defensible salary bands will move the number faster than any coaching program.
What is a cheaper alternative to Torch?
The main options split into human coaching platforms with similar pricing and AI coaching platforms with published per-seat prices.
| Tool | Type | Published price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| AiMentoring | Goal-based AI mentor with roadmap, memory and work reviews | Teams 12 USD per seat per month billed yearly, 25 USD monthly, 10 seat minimum | Coaching every manager and seller weekly |
| Torch | Human coaching by tier plus Spark AI | By quote | Leaders who need a credentialed human coach |
| BetterUp | Human coaching plus AI features | Individual plans published, enterprise by quote | Executive coaching and wellbeing |
| CoachHub | Human coaching in many languages plus the AIMY AI coach | By quote | Global multilingual programs |
| Valence | AI coach Nadia inside Microsoft Teams | By quote | Large Microsoft 365 enterprises |
| Cloverleaf | Assessment-based nudges in Slack, Teams and calendar | Team plans via resellers, enterprise by quote | Team dynamics and personality insight |
We compared the human coaching vendors in more depth on the BetterUp alternatives and CoachHub alternative pages, and the Teams-native AI coach on the Valence Nadia alternative page. If assessments are your starting point, see Cloverleaf alternatives, and if you are also weighing a scaled human coaching program, the Sounding Board coaching alternative page covers it.
How AiMentoring covers the managers a Torch contract leaves out
Each manager writes one goal, for example "hold weekly one-on-ones that end with agreed next steps". A level assessment of 8 to 12 questions sets the starting point, and the leadership mentor builds a monthly roadmap with three to five tasks a week. Every Friday a check-in email asks what got done and shrinks the plan after a bad week instead of piling it up. Managers can paste a review draft or a one-on-one agenda and get it scored against a rubric, and on Pro, Teams and Enterprise they can rehearse a hard conversation as a scored drill before they have it.
HR gets a panel with active seats, goals, milestone progress and the weakest skills per team, always as an aggregate of at least five people. Conversations and individual scores stay private, which is what makes managers use it honestly. Enterprise adds SAML SSO, SCIM, an audit log, a DPA and an SLA at 3,900 USD per month for 100 seats. The AI leadership coach page shows a full manager roadmap.
Questions to ask Torch before you sign
- What is the price per person for each tier, and how many sessions per month does it include?
- Is the contract 12 months, and can seats be moved between people mid-term?
- Is Spark AI included, and can people who do not have a human coach use it on its own?
- What reporting does HR get, and what stays confidential to the coachee?
- What happens to unused sessions at the end of the term?
Bring the answers and the per-person number to a side-by-side with a 60 day AI coaching pilot for 15 to 40 managers. Our guide to the best AI coach for managers walks through how to set that pilot up and what to measure.
Does Torch offer a free trial?
No public free trial is listed. Torch is sold through demos and proposals, and a pilot, if offered, is part of that negotiation. AiMentoring lets you try the planning step on any landing page without an account, and Teams seats can start on monthly billing with 10 seats, so a pilot costs 250 USD a month and can be cancelled at the end of any month.