Browser-only practice arithmetic · no account
How many clients does a therapist have? Count yours from the week you want.
A week of kept sessions is not a caseload. Attendance, how often each person comes, and how long they stay decide how many people that week is, how many consults a year it takes to keep it full, and how long the workweek actually runs. Enter your numbers; the page does the arithmetic on them.
Your week →Your week
Three sourced anchors, and the rest are yours to set.
The median solo caseload is a survey figure, the session length is the CPT definition and the weekly hours cap is the Board’s; they are marked. Every other field is an assumption about your practice — attendance, cadence mix, notes, admin, tenure, conversion — and the page holds no data on it. Change any of them and everything recomputes.
Starts at the survey median.
Your assumption.
CPT 90837.
At other weeks
The same assumptions at seven session counts.
| Kept sessions a week | Active clients | Consults a year | Workweek, hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | — | — | — |
| 12 | — | — | — |
| 15 | — | — | — |
| 18 (median) | — | — | — |
| 20 | — | — | — |
| 25 | — | — | — |
| 30 | — | — | — |
Active clients, consults a year to keep it full, and the workweek in hours, on the attendance, cadence, tenure, conversion and admin figures above. The median row is the survey’s 18.
How it computes
Four steps, each one a division.
Kept ÷ attendance. If 88% of what is booked happens, 18 kept sessions need 20.5 on the calendar. The calendar, not the kept count, is what limits a week.
A weekly client generates one session a week, every-other-week half of one, monthly a quarter. The mix gives an average per client; scheduled sessions divided by it is the active caseload. Moving the mix toward every-other-week raises the head count for the same week of work.
If the median client stays eight months, an eighth of the caseload turns over every month — caseload × 12 ÷ tenure a year. Divide by the share of consults that become clients and that is the consult volume the practice has to generate to stand still.
Session minutes plus note minutes per kept session, plus the fixed admin hours. For an associate the total is compared with the 40 hours the Board credits in any one week; hours beyond it are worked, not banked.
Then what
The count is the easy part. These pages take it further.
What the week pays
The practice simulator
Sessions, rate and weeks off through costs, self-employment tax, federal and California tax to what you keep.
The rate the week needs
The rate-target calculator
Start from the take-home you need and work back to the rate at this caseload.
Keeping it full
Grow your therapy practice
Where consults come from, channel by channel, and what each is worth.
If you are an associate
The 3,000 hours calculator
The 40-hour week credit, the 1,750 direct hours and the 104-week floor, on your own schedule.
Where every figure came from
Sources.
The three sourced figures
- Heard, The Financial State of Private Practice 2026 — median caseload of 18 clients a week for a solo therapist; 1,950 self-reported responses across all states, California the most represented; 79.3% report no waitlist
- CMS, Marriage and family therapists and mental health counselors — the CPT codes and the 53-minute 90837
- Board of Behavioral Sciences, LMFT handbook — 40 hours credited in any one week toward the 3,000
Attendance, cadence mix, tenure, conversion, note time and admin time are the reader’s assumptions, entered on the page; nothing here measures them. The survey median is self-reported and national, not a California standard.
