Most pricing advice gives you one number and asks you to trust it. Here are three real ones instead, from GMs who are actually running paid tables today - and why three convergent numbers are worth more than one confident-sounding guess.
Three Real Anchors
The ticket-price anchor. One working paid GM frames a session against something players already pay for without hesitation: roughly $10-20 for three hours, "like a movie ticket... very comparable to any other media transaction you might make." It's a useful starting reference specifically because it's not TTRPG- specific - it's what people already accept as a fair price for a few hours of entertainment.
The per-person hourly anchor. A second working paid GM, who runs multi-day tours built around real historical sites, uses a concrete hourly structure: roughly $10 per hour per person, which works out to about $200 for a five-person, four-hour session - with a firm minimum charge floor underneath it regardless of headcount. If a table is small, the per-hour rate goes up to protect that floor rather than letting a light table dip below what the session is actually worth.
The cost-of-living caveat. A third working paid GM makes the point that neither number above is universal, because cost of living changes both what a GM can charge and what they actually need to earn. A GM in a market like San Francisco can likely command higher absolute rates - but a $3,500/month one-bedroom apartment there means even a $100,000 income is a tight squeeze, while the same income goes considerably further somewhere with a lower cost of living. There effectively isn't one unified "market rate" - there's your market.
Why three numbers, not one: a single pricing figure reads as guessed. Three independently-arrived-at numbers from three different working GMs, in three different business models, read as evidence. Use them as a range to calibrate against, not a single target to hit exactly.
The Table-Size Math Nobody Talks About
Here's a genuinely non-obvious finding, from the same GM behind the per-person hourly anchor above: he targets six players per table, not the theoretically more attentive four - for a concrete logistical reason, not a preference.
A six-person target table survives one or two no-shows, which he says happens regularly, and still runs as planned. A four-person target table can be cancelled entirely by a single no-show. Three-player tables specifically struggle with combat encounter balance on top of the cancellation risk.
This ties directly to revenue: more players, up to a reasonable ceiling, means more income at a fixed per-person rate - while very small groups still have to hit a minimum charge floor to be worth running at all. A lone solo player, in this GM's own model, pays a meaningfully higher per-hour rate specifically to preserve that floor, rather than the standard per-person math working out too low to bother running.
The takeaway: table size isn't just a preference question. It's a real business-continuity number, and 4-6 players is the practical range working paid GMs actually price around.
How to Actually Set Your Own Number
Start at the low end of whichever anchor fits your format. Run three to five sessions before changing anything. If nobody says no, you're underpriced - raise it. If you get a mix of yes and no at a healthy rate, you've found roughly the right number for where you are right now.
One more thing worth saying plainly: a single decline isn't a verdict on your GMing. People turn down paid offers for budget, schedule, and "not the right game for me right now" reasons far more often than quality reasons. If this specific worry is what's actually holding you back from setting a price at all, read Am I Good Enough to Be a Paid DM? first.